Is This Heaven?

It doesn't matter how many times I've seen it, probably around 12-15 times, I always find myself crying at the end of Field of Dreams. It's one of only three films that can do that to me, It's A Wonderful Life and the Directors Cut of Cinema Paradiso are the others, with each viewing.

Now the farm and that field can be yours if you have $5.4 million to spend. The farm is close to Dyersville and is owned by Don and Becky Lansing. The farm and surrounding 193 acres has been in the Lansing family for over a century but now the current owners are approaching retirement and want to sell and see out their salad days doing something other than listening to tourists whisper, "If you build it he will come."

Becky Lansing told The Associated Press. "We really would just love to become spectators. We want to sit in the bleachers. We want to look forward to all that the 'Field of Dreams' will become in the future."

The baseball diamond was built by Universal Studios for the 1989 film which starred Kevin Costner who played Ray Kinsella a farmer who hears voices and who ploughs up part of his farm to accommodate the ghosts of baseball past. The family have continued maintaining the baseball diamond for the past twenty odd years, the Lansings actually purchased the left field and center portions from neighbor Rita Ameskamp in 2007, ending a long-standing split over the commercialization of the site.

Included in the sale are the baseball diamond, a two-bedroom house, six outbuildings that include a concession stand, and a 193-acre parcel. The land includes the mystical cornfield where the ghosts of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, "Moonlight" Graham and others emerge to play ball. There's little doubt that the property's iconic place in sports movie history will help its resale value.

"We are the caretakers of a living piece of sports memorabilia," Becky Lansing said. "This is an organic, living, breathing piece of memorabilia."