Life imitates art as visitors’ hopes live on in an Iowa ‘Field of Dreams.’

Life is imitating art in a cornfield near this dot of a town.

“Ray, people will come, Ray. They’ll come to Iowa. . . . They’ll turn up your driveway and they won’t be sure why they’re doing it. They’ll be right at your door . . . it will be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters,” says actor James Earl Jones, portraying a writer in this summer’s movie-fantasy “Field of Dreams.”

He’s urging failing farmer Ray Kinsella, played by Kevin Costner, to keep the baseball diamond he carved into his Iowa cornfield for the ghosts of baseball players. It will be a source of revenue, Jones says.

“People will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.”

In the movie’s final scene a seemingly endless line of cars is heading toward the farm.

Now, in an eerie fulfillment of that prophecy, thousands this summer have made pilgrimages to the ball diamond Hollywood built on Don Lansing’s little farm.

The Field of Dreams has become a shrine.

Town Now a ‘Landmark’

“The movie has made Dyersville a landmark,” says Connie Trenkamp, Chamber of Commerce manager. “It could be the next Mt. Rushmore. Seriously.”

Already, dozens of cars arrive on weekdays. On weekends, hundreds come to dip themselves in the mythical “magic waters” of this remote place, 25 miles west of Dubuque. They drive the final few miles to Lansing’s driveway along dusty gravel roads, guided by a few difficult-to-spot, hand-lettered signs.

They leave their cars quickly, drawn to the lush emerald green ball diamond with its edges of crushed red brick and an outfield outlined by an eight-foot-high wall of forest green corn.

Some just look. Some are compelled to walk around the bases. Some play ball--fathers pitch to their sons and sons pitch to their fathers as visitors replay the father-son relationship in the movie.

Some walk to where the field ends and the corn begins. A few, misty eyed, climb the bleachers to look at the “Ray loves Annie” carved inside a heart on the top bench--carved not by a real Ray but by Hollywood. Some sit in the porch swing Hollywood set designers added to the house.

And most leave notes in the little guest register Lansing keeps on the players’ bench. People have traveled here, the ledger shows, from almost every state. “Thanks for allowing the public to your farm,” wrote Steve and Sandy Traeger of Winter Springs, Fla.

Touched by Film

Based on the W. P. Kinsella novel “Shoeless Joe,” the film depicts a failing farmer who hears a voice telling him to plow under his corn and build a baseball diamond where a ghostly Shoeless Joe Jackson, disgraced in a 1919 baseball fixing scandal, returns to play with other long-dead stars of the game. Critics say it is a film about baseball, second chances, dreams and the relationships between fathers and sons.

Many of those who come to the Field of Dreams say they are drawn because the film touched them in profound ways.

“It had a special quality, themes that were important to us as we were developing our relationship,” said Lucinda Wright, 36, who stopped with her new husband en route from their Redding, Mass., home to a Colorado honeymoon. “Themes like personal redemption and keeping sights on dreams and keeping dreams alive.”

“The movie had to do with death and life of your parents and the death and life of your children,” said David Lee who, with his wife and three children, made a brief detour on the way to a Wisconsin vacation from Moline, Ill.

“It was the most emotional I’ve ever gotten watching a movie,” says Ed Johnson, a fifth grade teacher in Sycamore, Ill., who played ball on the field with his two sons.

‘Too Beautiful to Destroy’

The movie “hits a lot of people, a lot of hearts,” says Lansing, who kept the ball diamond, “for sentimental reasons, for the memories . . . it was just too beautiful to destroy by taking a plow out and digging it up.”

Lansing, a part-time farmer and full-time fork lift operator at a nearby John Deere farm machinery factory, has placed the two acres used by the ball diamond and right field into a government program that requires him to idle some land each year to qualify for federal assistance on his crops. And in small ways, Lansing is also profiting.

Visitors Leave Money

In fulfillment of another of the film’s prophecies, visitors to the field are leaving money, depositing pennies and dollar bills in a container where Lansing has written “Keep the Dream Alive.” (“They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it,” the James Earl Jones character said in the film). Visitors also buy T-shirts, caps, buttons and soft drinks at a little stand Lansing has set up on the gravel driveway.

Lansing says he uses the money to maintain the field and for the balls, bats and gloves he keeps for visitors who don’t bring their own.

While everything on Lansing’s property is as it was in the movie, left field, which was on the property of Al and Rita Ameskamp, was plowed up this spring and planted with corn.

“I really don’t see what they see over there,” says Al Ameskamp, who unlike Lansing is a full-time farmer. “And I ain’t got no regrets. A lot of the neighbors say, ‘I’m glad you plowed it up.’ ”

Physical education teacher Debbie Johnson, who accompanied her husband, Ed, to the field, also doesn’t understand the fuss. “A baseball field is a baseball field is a baseball field,” she says.

Researcher Tracy Shryer in Chicago contributed to this story.