Since he began working at FOX in 1994, Joe Buck has called so many memorable games and events. This month, he had the opportunity to be the play-by-play voice for The Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa between the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox that was well-received by many people.
Buck was a guest on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast with Jimmy Traina and he mentioned that more people talk to him about that event than anything else he has done in his illustrious career.
“I think baseball, FOX, everyone involved, the state of Iowa was proud of that whole experience with the Field of Dreams game. I’ve had more comments on that in the week since than anything I’ve done in a long, long time. I feel like everybody I know in my life, in fact, people I don’t know want to come up to me and tell me how cool that was.”
One of the things that stood out to Buck in Iowa was the amount of equipment that FOX used to produce the game.
“It was the night before the game, getting there to go through the rehearsal and what Kevin Costner wanted to do and seeing the truck compound. It had as much equipment in the truck compound as any US Open I ever did, which had at least 3-4 times more equipment than any Super Bowl I’ve ever done. I said to one of the guys, is FOX paying for all this? It was a big, big production that had a lot of moving parts to it.
“I walked through the scaffolding and bleachers that they had constructed and walked onto that field and saw what it looked like and I was stunned…It was pretty breathtaking to see the extent to which they paid tribute to that movie and how excited the players were and these two teams were to even be there.”
In addition to calling the game, Buck had another role for the event and that was helping Kevin Costner figure out what he wanted to do for the event as Costner trusted Buck to lead him in the right direction.
“He said ‘I don’t want to throw out the first pitch. I want to make this feel cinematic’. I said ‘Well, everyone is piggybacking off your movie. Do what you want. This should be your call’. He was very particular the way he wanted it done and was confiding in me to try to help him get it done. FOX was on board and then getting MLB on board was pretty easy. What you saw was exactly what Kevin Costner wanted to do.”
