Father’s Day With Kevin Costner: Return To ‘Field Of Dreams’

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like having a mega-celebrity as a parent, imagine if your Daddy was Kevin Costner and you just spent part of Father’s Day weekend playing catch on the iconic Iowa set of Costner’s hit movie Field of Dreams.

That’s what Costner decided to do with a few of his children on Friday, after eight years away from the rural Dyersville site, which many imbue with magical qualities because of its ghostly nature in the movie. It wasn’t a random thing, of course; it’s the 25th anniversary of the 1989 movie about a farmer who built a baseball field in his corn crop (“Build it, and they will come…”), and few of Costner’s movies have resonated with fans as much as this one.

Costner, now Daddy to seven children, took to the field with a bunch of children, including two of his sons, Hayes, 5, and Cayden, 7.

“We don’t usually have this many people when we do this,” he said, according to News 1130.

But he wanted things just right. As soon as they ran on the field, organizers shut off the theme music booming from nearby speakers, so Costner had to ask, “Can you let that music keep going?” according to the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

After play time, Costner welcomed thousands of fans who’d come to watch the movie on a giant outdoor screen.

“I’m going to sit in a little cornfield in Iowa,” he said, “these lights are going to go out and we’re going to watch a movie. And I don’t think there’s anything more American, I don’t think there’s any bigger miracle for me that occurred than this movie that was made 25 years ago here in this field.”

Also along with Costner was his wife, Christine Baumgartner, and their 4-year-old daughter Grace, whose arm was in a cast.

He told reporters that he brought his youngest because they’d never visited the Field of Dreams set before.

“I can’t imagine my life if the ‘Field of Dreams’ had not been a part of it,” Costner said.

And when Father’s Day comes around, he can think of few movies more iconic and appropriate for another viewing. The movie, he said, is about “that biblical thing of men and their sons and maybe not getting along… I think women watch how beautifully orchestrated this movie was and they actually could turn to their husbands that maybe have never made peace with their father, or turned to their husbands who haven’t made peace with their own sons, and say, ‘You need to do something about this. You don’t want to go through life and wish you had played catch.'”

In what appears to be an orchestrated theme, Costner just gave a Father’s Day-related interview to The Huffington Post in which he shares what he hopes his children will most recall about their father: “That I played with them. That I didn’t talk down to them. That I was on ground-level with them. That their dad wasn’t afraid of anything.”

[Image courtesy of Charlie Litchfield/The Courier]