…that last night’s Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa. was NOT played on the modest-sized, cornfield-flanked diamond that sits next to Ray Kinsella‘s (Kevin Costner‘s) Iowa farmhouse — built for the 1989 cult film, and which still stands and thrives today as a tourist attraction.

Last night’s game was played at a nearby (500 feet away) baseball field called the MLB at Field of Dreams, also cornfield-flanked but with stadium seating for 8000 people, according to both Fox Sports and The Sporting News.

In a pre-game press conference, Costner called Field of Dreams “the perfect little movie…the climax, rather than a big car chase, was ‘do you wanna have a catch?'”

Due respect but not quite. Field of Dreams was and is “a perfect little movie,” agreed, but it didn’t end with a father (Dwier Brown‘s John Kinsella) and son playing catch. If it HAD ended with the catch, Field wouldn’t be half the legendary perennial it’s become.

Field of Dreams ends, in fact, with a nighttime helicopter shot of a long stream of cars, lined up on a nearby road leading up to the Costner farmhouse. That shot of…what, 200 cars waiting to see the field and bask in those Shoeless Joe Burt Lancaster vibes…THAT’s what sold the film.

Without that line of cars, without that irrefutable evidence of what people want and need and long for in their lives, the film would’ve basically been a nice pipe dream.

Friendo: “To each his own, but every time Costner says ‘hey, dad, wanna have a catch?’, that chokes me up. That’s the film for me. The line of cars is just icing on the cake.”

HE to Friendo: “I never had a catch with my dad so it doesn’t get me as much. And in a broader sense sentiment doesn’t travel — it doesn’t expand or deepen. It always diminishes over time. Just ask John Ford and Steven Spielberg and the directors of The Bishop’s Wife and A Guy Named Joe. The only sentimental ending that never fails to get me is the Warren Beatty-Julie Christie ending of Heaven Can Wait, and for the worst of reasons.”

Friendo to HE: “It’s A Wonderful Life.”