DES MOINES, Iowa — The Dyersville Area Chamber of Commerce expects next year's Major League Baseball game at the Field of Dreams to be literally bigger and better than ever.
Executive director Karla Thompson tells Local 5 the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forced the city to scale back some of its plans surrounding Thursday night's between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees, which has been widely praised as one of MLB's best ideas in years.
Thompson said the chamber wanted to bring in some former major leaguers and movie stars beyond Kevin Costner, who gave opening remarks before Chicago's thrilling 9-8 walk-off win Thursday.
Plans for some mobile museums to accompany the "Beyond the Game" watch party in Dyersville's town square were scuttled as well.
The game totaled 5.9 million viewers across FOX and FOX Deportes, the network announced.
The event went so well, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced before the first pitch had even been tossed there will be another game in Dyersville next August.
"There was a lot of things we wanted to do. But because of COVID, we had to cut back," Thompson said. "So this was like a good test year."
Thompson said they do not yet know how many people visited the town beyond the roughly 8,000 fans in attendance or how much money the game brought in. But she did say the town is beyond thrilled to get another chance to host a game between two undetermined opponents next summer.
"Just stay tuned," Thompson said. "We got a lot of positive feedback from all over."