SF Giants chosen for 2024 'Field Of Dreams' game

Baseball's 2024 'Field of Dreams' game will take place in Alabama against the St. Louis Cardinals

Is this heaven? No, it's Alabama.

Major League Baseball chose the SF Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals to play in the 2024 edition of the Field of Dreams game, previously held in Dyersville, Iowa, near the place where the 1989 movie was filmed. That location is unavailable next season, since developers are building nine new ballfields on the site in an $80 million project.

That's why the 2024 edition, a home game for the Cardinals when the Giants visit, will likely be played at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama. There's a connection to the Giants there, as it was the home ballpark of the Birmingham Black Barons, Willie Mays' Negro League team from 1948-50.

Mays began playing for Birmingham as a 17-year-old high school student in 1948, participating only in Black Barons home games to retain his eligibility for high school football. Mays was so good at 17 that he batted third and played center field for the Black Barons in the Negro League World Series that year.

By 1950, Mays had signed with the Giants, and by 1951, he was starting in the World Series as a 20-year-old.

In the previous two Field of Dreams games, teams have worn throwback jerseys. LaMonte Wade Jr. told the Chronicle that he hopes the Giants get to wear Black Barons jerseys.

"I would love that, that would be really cool," Wade said. "I hope it is us who wears the jerseys, for sure. That would be something to remember forever."

Some people have complained that the matchup shouldn't be called the Field of Dreams game if it's not in Iowa. However, it's important to remember that "Field of Dreams" is a fictional film. The previous games weren't played on the field from the movie, but rather next door. It's really just a tourist attraction, not a place Ray Liotta tricked movie audiences into thinking Shoeless Joe Jackson hit right-handed.

Also, that movie has a horrifying premise when you think about it. The ghosts of the 1919 Chicago White Sox team that threw the World Series is forced to play baseball every day, for free, for all eternity. When Shoeless Joe asks Kevin Costner's daughter, "Is this heaven?" it's clear that these players are in some sort of purgatory of the after life - since they haven't reached heaven in the 70 years since the Series.

In fact, who would mistake Iowa cornfields for heaven unless they had previously been in hell? Or been driving across the state of Nebraska, same difference.

Also, why doesn't Kevin Costner's daughter know how to eat a hot dog? Does no one in Iowa know the Heimlich maneuver?

But we digress. And "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings" game is far too long of a name.

It's admirable for baseball to honor the legacy of the actual Negro Leagues rather than a fictional movie about segregation-era baseball. And it's an honor that the Giants were chosen to be a part of it.