The jewel game series: A proposal for the 2024 MLB season
It’s time for MLB to adopt and promote the concept of a regular jewel game.
Previously in this space, I have called on MLB not to abandon the Field of Dreams in ensuing seasons.
Despite two successful iterations of the game, that possibility cannot be discounted. Due to construction at the site, there will be no game played in Dyersville, Iowa, in 2023, and no firm commitments have been made beyond that.
Indeed, at least part of MLB’s discussion has shifted from the Field of Dreams Game to other iterations of what might be termed a jewel game.
A jewel game could be thought of as a showcase contest devoid of competition on the MLB schedule and designed to emphasize an aspect of baseball history and/or culture.
The thing is, over the length of baseball’s normal six-month season, the idea of a jewel game — or an entire series of them — is not only entirely compatible with an annual Field of Dreams game, the two concepts mesh beautifully.
That’s why MLB executives should be working right now to institute, as early as 2024, an annual programmed jewel game series highlighting one major league contest per month in a setting evocative of a unique cultural aspect linking America’s National Pastime with America itself.
Given a season’s worth of planning time, there is no legitimate reason why this cannot be done, and why such games cannot be played in legitimate major league-quality facilities. Where restoration and/or expansion is required, the year’s worth of lead time would be more than sufficient.
What follows is a proposal for exactly how — on a one-game-per-month basis — a jewel game series could be developed, who ought to be playing in such a game, and what singular aspect of baseball history it ought to be designed to evoke.
MLB’s Opening Day jewel game
For much of its history, the MLB season opened at one of two sites. Those two sites were Cincinnati and Washington, D.C.
What a show it would be if MLB returned to that practice starting in 2024, with a season-opening spectacular pitting the Reds against the Nationals.
Both cities share a strong claim to being the site of an Opening Day “jewel game.” Cincinnati was home to the first openly professional team, the Reds of 1869, and as such can be thought of as the “birthplace” of the professional game.
Washington, of course, has the President of the United States, whose imprimatur upon the game (by dint of throwing out the first pitch) would in the concept of a “jewel game” be worth found gold to MLB.
Both sites have a powerful linkage to Opening Day, and therefore to be the site of an Opening Day jewel game. That shared claim is precisely why Opening Day ought to be split between those cities; in Washington one year, in Cincinnati the next.
That latter point may create some angst in Cincinnati, a city that takes a singular point of pride in hosting Opening Day. Only a half-dozen times in the franchise’s history have the Reds not opened at home, an occasion often marked with municipal parades.
Notably, however, one of those rare exceptions — a Reds season opening road game — was just this season. Thanks to lockout-prompted rescheduling, the Reds opened the 2022 season with a 6-3 victory in Atlanta.
The AAGPBL jewel game
Most of us know about the All American Girls Professional Baseball League through the much-praised 1990s era movie, “A League of The Own.” It told the based-on-fact story of the World War II era girls league put together by Chicago businessman Phillip K. Wrigley, which began play in 1943 and continued into the mid 1950s.
The original film became so iconic that an updated version has recently debuted on Amazon Prime video.
One obvious “jewel game” opportunity is to highlight and celebrate the history of the AAGPBL by bringing attention to it via an annual jewel game.
There is an obvious time of season to play such a game. That would be late May, the anniversary of the start of the first AAGPBL season in 1943.
Sites? It ought to be one of the places where the original movies was filmed. Happily, MLB would have several to choose from. At least one is of unquestioned Major League quality, and several others either fit that mode or could be brought up to standard with relatively minor modifications.
To take the easy rout, MLB could legitimately site a AAGPBL “jewel game” at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Not only was it used as a tryout field during the runup to the actual AAGPBL, but it was the site of filming of tryouts in the movie.
Don’t like the idea of hosting a tribute to the women‘s game in a standard MLB park? Okay, how about Evansville, Indiana’s Bosse Field. Aside from Wrigley, it is the best-conditioned still-in-use field at which filming for “A League of their Own’ took place. It now hosts the Evansville Otters, an independent minor league team.
And if you really want to go Old School, take a look at League Stadium in Huntingburg, Indiana. Used as the home field of the film’s Rockford Peaches, it dates back to 1894, nearly two decades older than the oldest existing Major League park, Boston’s Fenway Park. The grandstand is small, seating only about 2,800. It’s in southern Indiana, about one hour from Evansville.
As to who should play in it, the obvious option is to rotate participants annually … although given the strong southern Wisconsin aspects of the AAGPBL’s roots (Kenosha and Racine were two of the four rounding teams), designating the Milwaukee Brewers as a permanent host team would also make sense.
The Negro League jewel game
At least four ballfields that once hosted Negro League baseball games still remain in playing condition, and could plausibly be the site of a June jewel game celebrating the history of that aspect of the game.
Of the four, Rickwood Field in Birmingham is probably the most obvious candidate. The home field of the Negro League’s legendary Birmingham Black Barons — whose alums included such greats as Willie Mays and Satchel Paige — Rickwood remains in use today on special occasions. Built in 1910, it seats 10,800, not large but bigger than the Dyersville site.
If MLB prefers to rotate the site of a Negro League jewel game, it has options. Hinchcliffe Stadium in Paterson, N.J., hosted the New York Black Yankees and the New York Cubans. Hall of Famers Cool Papa Bell, Monte Irvin, and Larry Doby called Hinchcliffe home for parts of their careers. The site has fallen into disrepair, but a decision by MLB to utilize it would certainly spur renovation efforts that have already begun.
Downs Field in Austin, Texas, hosted the Texas Black Senators of the Texas Colored League. Its alums include Hall of Fame shortstop Willie Wells.
A fourth option is Red Cap Stadium in Jacksonville, Fla. The field hosted the short-lived Jacksonville Red Caps in the late 1930s and during parts of World War II.
The dream schedule for a Negro Leagues jewel game would put the Dodgers against the Cleveland Guardians, those being the two franchises that integrated the American and National Leagues within a few months of one another in 1947.
The Hall of Fame jewel game
For many years, in connection with Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, a pair of major league teams were hijacked up to Cooperstown to play an exhibition at Doubleday Field.
That aspect of induction weekend ended 15 years ago when teams objected to interrupting their season to fly and bus up to Cooperstown to engage in a meaningless exercise nobody paid attention to.
But what if the game was not meaningless? What if it was a regularly scheduled and spotlighted jewel game complementing the induction ceremony?
There is no reason why a jewel game series could not and should not encompass baseball’s shrine.
Yes, Doubleday Field is small … at least by general big league standards. It’s 296 feet down the line to left, about 335 to the gap, 390 to dead center, and a bit deeper in right than in left. Yes, capacity is tight, although at a few fannies short of 10,000 it also is larger than Dyersville. The field has no lights, so a portable system would have to be used. If you are serious about the general idea, that’s really not a problem these days.
Would it be possible to push Doubleday’s fences back 30 or so feet to more closely resemble a typical major league park? I don’t know … take that one up with the good citizens of Cooperstown.
But even if not, the lure of playing a real annual game at baseball’s legendary home ought to be too good to resist. Besides, short dimensions are hardly unprecedented. It’s only 302 feet from home plate to the Pesky Pole at Fenway. At Philly’s Citizens Bank Park, the gap in left requires only a 355 foot carry. Yankee Stadium’s right-center gaps is two feet closer, 353.
So while Doubleday Field’s dimensions are certainly small, they’re not that much smaller than several stadiums in every-day use. For a once-a-year event, the field may be well worth the cost.
The Little League and Field of Dreams jewel games
Both of these are already established, and there’s no legitimate reason to dramatically alter either one. The Little League game is played on a field in Williamsport, Pa., in conjunction with the annual Little League World Series. It features rotating teams, although it would be geographic sense to institutionalize a half dozen teams on a rotating basis as “host clubs.” The obvious candidates are the Pirates, Phillies, Orioles, Guardians, Yankees and Mets.
The first two playing of the Field of Dreams game have been scheduled for August for aesthetic reasons. After all, that’s when the corn is at its highest and greenest. Moving it to early September is a concession to the attractiveness of reserving July for a jewel game in conjunction with Hall of Fame celebrations.
In that vein, though, September still works. Granted, the stalks will be browner … but corn harvest in Iowa doesn’t really get underway until mid-September, so an early September return to Dyersville ought to work out nicely from a visual as well as a cultural standpoint.
As with Williamsport, it makes the most sense to rotate host duties at Dyersville among a half-dozen or so geographically positioned teams with at least some rooting base in the region. The obvious candidates, beyond the Cubs and White Sox, are the St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals, Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins. Note: If the Brewers are designated as annual hosts for a League of Their Own game, then they drop out of this group.
Package the whole six-event jewel game rubric together and you have a recurring annual celebration of the shared heritage of baseball and America. From a public relations standpoint, there is nothing that MLB execs ought to want more than that, and there is also nothing that would be a greater benefit to the game.