Baseball went back to the cornfield Thursday night, and Kyle Schwarber made sure everyone remembered why the Field of Dreams Game works. The Phillies and Twins played the third installment of MLB's Iowa spectacle in Dyersville, with both rosters walking out of the actual corn from the 1989 movie set before first pitch, and Schwarber turned the pregame goosebumps into a real-deal blowout.
Twins and Phillies players line up and emerge from the cornfield onto the dirt path before first pitch.
Schwarber didn't wait long to make it his night. He crushed the third pitch of the game over the right-field wall for his 36th homer of the season, a leadoff shot that tied him with Curtis Granderson for the seventh-most leadoff home runs in MLB history. Barstool's feeds lit up instantly.
Schwarber rounds the bases after his leadoff homer as the scoreboard flips to Phillies 1, Twins 0.
That would've been enough content for one night, but Schwarber wasn't finished. Three innings later he got hold of another pitch and sent it deep enough into the Dyersville wind to clear the wooden outfield fence and land in the actual corn — reportedly the first ball of his 376-homer career to do that. The Phillies had pulled ahead 4-1 by the time it left the yard, with an outfielder leaping at the wall in a futile attempt to rob it.
A Phillies right fielder leaps at the cornfield-lined wall but can't reach Schwarber's second homer of the night.
The reaction across Barstool's baseball accounts was pure delight, with Pardon My Take and Barstool Gambling both hammering home the same two words — corn and Schwarbomb — as the second blast landed. It's the kind of moment the event was built for: an MLB-leading slugger doing MLB-leading slugger things on a stage designed to feel like a movie.
Schwarber jogs toward home after his first-inning homer as the Phillies grab an early lead.
The Field of Dreams Game has become one of MLB's better traditions precisely because it leans into the sentimentality instead of running from it. Before this year's game, Schwarber himself said he was excited just to see the actual filming location, and the pregame ceremony delivered on the nostalgia in a big way, with roughly two dozen Hall of Famers walking out of the corn in right field — reportedly the largest gathering of Hall of Famers at a single game since the 2008 All-Star Game. Between that and Schwarber's night, the corn theme wrote itself.
Philadelphia closed it out 7-1, and Schwarber's two-homer night pads a home run total that already had him near the top of the league leaderboard. For a franchise trying to keep pace in a loaded National League, a laugher in Iowa is a nice change of pace — even if nobody will remember the final score nearly as long as they'll remember the ball that landed in the corn.