For diehard Yankees fans in Iowa, Field of Dreams game truly is a dream

CEDAR RAPIDS — The vote for biggest New York Yankees fans in the area should go to the Lewis family.

John Lewis has a pinstriped garage and a bathroom in his Cedar Rapids home with Mickey Mantle memorabilia all over it. Lewis won over 1,000 games as head baseball coach at Kirkwood Community College over a 32-year career, with his Eagles always wearing pinstriped uniforms … for obvious reasons.

“When we have Christmas, we have a separate tree that is strictly a Yankee tree,” he said. “It’s just a tree decked out in all Yankees ornaments. There are Yankee presents underneath, wrapped in Yankee paper.”

John’s son, Darren, and his wife Erica, have four children: a girl and three boys. The boys are named Bronx, Jeter and Gehrig.

You get that, right?

When youngest son Gehrig was born, doctors and nurses in the hospital wrote their guesses as to what his name would be on a whiteboard in the delivery room. They knew it had to be something Yankees related.

Darren and Erica didn’t disappoint. Then they told them all Gehrig’s middle name.

It wasn’t really a name but a number: 4, as in Gehrig’s uniform number. The birth certificate says Gehrig 4 Lewis.

“Everybody calls him G-4,” Darren Lewis said. “The hospital was like ‘Well, we can’t do a number.’ I was like ‘Well, Prince uses symbols.’”

Now that’s Yankees fandom.

And therefore an obvious indication of what Thursday night’s game at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville between the Yankees and Chicago White Sox means to the Lewises. You bet they’ll be there: father and son watching the first major league regular-season game ever in Iowa.

First pitch is scheduled for 6:15 at an 8,000-seat stadium Major League Baseball built specifically for this event. Fox will televise it nationally, and that includes to all of the state.

Iowa is inundated by TV blackout restrictions from six MLB clubs, of course. That won’t be a problem here.

“It’s like when you say you don’t have any words,” Darren Lewis said. “When they announced the game a couple of years ago, I got a call from a buddy I played ball with in college who works for Minor League Baseball now. He said ‘Hey, did you hear Major League Baseball is coming to the Field of Dreams, they’re going to build a stadium?’ I was like, what?

“So you’re thinking about what are the odds you can get a ticket to this thing and how much are they going to cost? This is that and another thing. Then, obviously, it got postponed last year. We try to go to games every year, take a ride to Kansas City or Minnesota to watch them. Take the kids, too. When we lived out east (in Rhode Island and Massachusetts), we’d go see the Yankees three or four times a year.

“But to actually do it in Iowa, with such a small seating capacity, getting lucky enough to get a couple of tickets, then also to go with my dad, that kind of puts the icing on the cake.”

Darren Lewis had a hookup for freebies, so he didn’t have to pay the listed $375 per ticket.

He and Erica initially were going to go together. Erica Lewis became a big Yankees fan when she and Darren met at St. Ambrose University.

“She didn’t really have a choice, I guess,” Darren said, with a laugh. “I don’t want to say she gave up her ticket, but, really, she did. She said ‘You know, you really should take your dad. Don’t take me.’ So she gets credit for giving up an exclusive ticket, so my dad has the opportunity to do it with me. Just super excited, interested to see how it all shakes out.”

John Lewis said he became a huge Yankees fan as a kid growing up in Vinton, watching games on the Saturday game of the week. The Yankees were regulars on those national broadcasts.

Mantle is his favorite player.

“You know, I’ve been to Yankee Stadium, watched them play at Kansas City and Minnesota. But for them to come to Iowa is something special,” John Lewis said. “My son called and said ‘Do you want to go to the game on Thursday night?’ I said ‘Why? You got tickets? How much are they?’ He said no, that a friend of his had gotten two free ones, and he wanted to know if I wanted to go. I kind of hesitated, he said ‘Dad, I need to kind of know right now.’ I just told him ‘Well, what do you think? Of course I wanna go.’”

John and wife Sandy have another son, Jeremy, who also likes the Yankees, though Darren says probably not as much as he and his dad. Jeremy Lewis played briefly professionally in the Chicago Cubs farm system.

“Both of us being the Yankees fans we are, and for them to come to the state of Iowa and to the Field of Dreams …,” John Lewis said. “The dream for us is that the Yankees are here playing in the state of Iowa.”

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