The Sandlot's Ham Porter Finally Reaches the Field of Dreams
Patrick Renna — forever known to a generation of baseball fans as Ham Porter from 1993's The Sandlot — visited the Field of Dreams movie site in Dyersville, Iowa, for the first time on 13 August 2026, as Major League Baseball returned to the iconic cornfield ballpark for the first time in four years.
The occasion was the 2026 MLB at Field of Dreams game, a matchup between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Minnesota Twins played in a newly built stadium near the site used for the 1989 film Field of Dreams, which starred Kevin Costner, Ray Liotta and James Earl Jones. The game streamed live on Netflix (MLB.com).
Renna was on site through a partnership with John Deere, for whom he shot promotional content in the cornfields surrounding the ballpark. He told The Hollywood Reporter the scene was "spectacular" and "once in a lifetime," pointing to comedian Theo Von, the ballplayers in attendance, and the food as the highlights of his visit (The Hollywood Reporter).
The trip was a long time coming. Renna said his Sandlot castmates had visited the Field of Dreams site a couple of years earlier, but he had not been able to join them then. Finally making it himself clearly landed. "You're killing me, Smalls" — the line his character delivers in The Sandlot — remains the most common thing strangers say to him, he told the Reporter.
Renna has worked in the industry for 30 years, but has not topped the cultural footprint of The Sandlot, a film he credits to its writer-director-narrator David Mickey Evans. The connection between the two baseball films runs deeper than shared subject matter: both were shot on Iowa soil, both became touchstones for audiences who grew up reciting their dialogue, and both now sit inside the same piece of farmland in Dyersville.
For Renna, the visit also coincided with a reunion of sorts. He has reteamed with Sandlot co-stars for Dugout Dads, a series in which he also acts, set for release in August 2026.
The MLB game itself drew its own storylines. Minnesota Twins infielder Luis Arraez reunited with former Twins teammates at the event (CBS2 Iowa). Two days earlier, on 11 August, the minor-league Iowa Cubs beat the St. Paul Saints 6-3 in the MiLB at Field of Dreams game on the same Dyersville site (MLB.com).
What makes the evening resonate is the collision of two baseball-movie legacies on one field. Renna's Ham Porter is the kid who called "You're killing me, Smalls" into perpetuity; the Field of Dreams site is where Costner's character built a diamond in the corn. For one August night, those two pieces of American baseball mythology shared the same Iowa dirt.
