If You Build It, They Will Come: Victory Field’s 1996 Opening Day Was Nothing Short of Magic

If you’re a fan of baseball, especially the kind of small-town, hot summer, true America’s pastime that can only be found amid miles and miles of Midwestern corn fields, you probably recognize this common misinterpretation of a line in a famous 1989 film about a man who hears voices while working on the family farm.

If you build it, they will come.

That line could never have been more representative of a ballpark opening than under a clear blue sky at 7:31 PM on July 11, 1996, in downtown Indianapolis. With the atmosphere of a major league-caliber stadium in a minor league city, 14,667 fans filled the seats at Victory Field to open what would become known over the years as one of the best minor league stadiums in the country.

It wasn’t necessarily an easy road to first cracking open the gates at 5 PM that night, with construction delays pushing Opening Day back from April of that season to immediately following the All-Star break. It wasn’t well received all around, either, with longtime fans holding tightly to memories and loyalty at 1501 West 16th Street, the site of Perry Stadium, Victory Field and Bush Stadium – one single ballpark that had a pair of name changes – home to the Indians since 1931.

But, despite one final coat of paint probably being applied somewhere in a pre-gates rush in nod to the chaotic nature leading up to the opening, and the hesitancy of fans who weren’t quite ready to let go of the past, IndyStar columnist Bill Benner said it best.

“To be there for its unveiling, to watch it fill to capacity with fans, to see the picnickers gather on their blankets on the grassy berm beyond the outfield walls, to watch dusk settle over the yard and, finally, to witness the gradual illumination of the downtown skyline to the point where it sparkled like a tiara over the lush green expanse, well, some things are just too wonderful for words.”

The movie “Field of Dreams” tells the story of Ray Kinsella, a farmer in rural Iowa with a deep connection to baseball rooted in his family history. While working in the cornfield one night, his wife and daughter on the porch swing just beyond the edge of their crop, a voice tells him: ‘If you build it, he will come.’

Kinsella, an unwitting accomplice to the will of a voice in his head, comes to his own conclusion that the step forward is to build a baseball field in the middle of his crop. His wife and daughter are supporting figures in what comes next. The rest of the town, not so much.

When Max Schumacher, then-president of the Indianapolis Indians, proposed plans to build a new ballpark to draw attention as a potential Major League Baseball expansion site way back in the 1960s, he was shut down. History repeated itself in the late ‘70s to early ‘80s before the RCA Dome broke ground.

Early in the 1990s, Max tried again. At the time, the ballpark known as Owen J. Bush Stadium had been used by the Indianapolis Indians since 1931, when the United States was only two years into the Great Depression. It sat just outside of the city hub, and it wasn’t evolving nearly as quickly as the times.

Seeing the success other teams around the country had to moving downtown, including but not limited to higher accessibility rates to fans and a boom in traffic to the surrounding areas, it became a no-brainer where the Indians wanted to be.

“There’s a reason the JW Marriott was built with glass and left people a nice view of the ballpark. White River State Park has taken off,” Bruce Schumacher, Max’s son and now-CEO and chairman of the board for the Indianapolis Indians, said. “I think we played part in that development, and I feel good about that.”

The plan, approved by then-mayor Stephen Goldsmith, was to move the Indians from the outskirts of the city hub to one of three locations in the center of downtown. The first was near where Market Square Arena – home of the Indiana Pacers from 1974-99 – sat just east of Monument Circle. The second was the current location of Lucas Oil Stadium.

One day following work at Bush Stadium in the early 1990s, Bruce took his car to the third location, a gravel parking lot at the corner of West Street and Maryland Street near White River. He pointed it toward the north-northeast, the way a ballpark should be built to account for the sun, and looked up. The skyline of downtown Indianapolis was spread out in front of him.

“Well, it’s got to be here,” Bruce remembers thinking to himself. “How could it be anywhere else?”

Moving from Bush Stadium to Victory Field wasn’t easy. Bush Stadium had been home to countless championship teams – the Indians won four consecutive American Association Championships from 1986-89 with Bush Stadium as their home – and countless memories outside of the white lines.

There was a different kind of connection to the old ballpark, one some fans weren’t quite ready to let go of.

“We had fans who said, ‘I don’t want to go to a new ballpark; I love Bush Stadium.’ Dad and I always talked about that because, as emotionally attached as they were, we were pretty emotionally attached to Bush Stadium as well,” Bruce said. “I grew up as a little kid there. Dad would take me out to the field and shag fly balls during batting practice.”

But even for those who called Bush Stadium home, those who grew into fan favorites on that field, knew that Victory Field would usher in a new era of baseball to downtown Indy.

“I’ll miss Bush Stadium,” all-time Indians favorite Razor Shines said on Victory Field’s Opening Night, as chronicled in the IndyStar. “But I’ll get over it.”

With the amount of hesitation there was, the level of excitement could replace it thousands of times over. According to an IndyStar article published ahead of Victory Field’s opening, long-term leases on all 25 luxury boxes sold quickly following the announcement of the new park. The season-ticket base more than doubled, and when single-game tickets went on sale in the month prior to the opening, demand was high.

If you build it, they will come. Right?

Bruce Brantingham was on the telephone for more than an hour waiting to order his tickets for Opening Day when they went on sale in June 1996.

When he finally got through, he was left with the choice of lawn tickets just outside the outfield wall or looking into the stadium from beyond the fence. His hopes were low on the quality of the view from the lawn, but at least it would get him through the gates.

He spread his blanket out on the lawn on Opening Night, and it didn’t take long for his disappointment to subside. As chronicled in the IndyStar: “Oh my,” he said, looking at the field right below him, so close it seemed he could play the outfield from where he sat. “I don’t mind this at all.”

As the voice inside Kinsella’s head guided him away from the past, it also led him toward the future he was unknowingly building. The same feeling developed over the night on July 11, 1996.

The gates opened at 5 PM that night, two hours before first pitch, to allow for fans to explore the new ballpark. Benner wrote: “The game was sold out, and sidewalks around the park were packed long before first pitch. Cars backed up for more than a block waiting to park in nearby lots. Scalpers on street corners added to the atmosphere; one said he had sold $7 lower-deck reserved seats for $45.”

It was the second Opening Night festivities the Indians had that season. Governor Evan Bayh, Mayor Goldsmith and Capital Improvement Board President Patrick Early threw out ceremonial first pitches. Former Brooklyn Dodger, teammate of Jackie Robinson and Indiana native Carl Erskine performed the National Anthem on his harmonica. The game was nothing memorable – the Indians lost, 5-3, in a game that Oklahoma City never trailed – but no one cared.

“We had all spent so much time at the new Victory Field trying to get it ready from when it was just a hole in the ground up to when it was finally finished,” Bruce said. “It was special to see it fill up with fans on July 11, after so many people did so much work for so many years.”

On July 11, 2021, when the sun sets on that breathtaking Indianapolis skyline from over the stands on Victory Field’s third-base side, the quarter-century mark will have passed on the night where no one remembers anything about the baseball game and everything about the history and significance of being in that place at that time.

The shine has faded just a little bit over those 25 years. The ballpark has changed, with the bleachers out in right field paying homage to Bush Stadium replaced with a patio. Suites have been removed to make way for the Elements Financial Club, the park’s newest premium space, and now fans have more ticket options than they ever could have dreamed of.

But through the years, Victory Field has also rooted itself in Indianapolis’ sports culture as the city’s home for professional baseball. Other things never really change. The skyline still sparkles like a tiara as the sun sets over the lush, green outfield grass.

“What we have here is not just a place to watch baseball, but to feel baseball,” Benner wrote on Opening Night. “It is wonderfully modern in every way, but it has an old-time look, like it’s been there for years. Indeed, it’s difficult to comprehend that just 18 months ago, the land on which Victory Field now sits was a weed-infested parking lot littered with trash and broken glass.

“The grandstands angle toward home plate, and the fans, from nearly all seats, are not only close to the action, but seem to envelope it.

“This is a Triple-A version of Baltimore’s Camden Yards or Cleveland’s Jacobs Fields. Add another 30,000 seats and put Indianapolis in the major leagues, and the national baseball poets soon would be spinning verse about our Victory Field.”

If you’re a fan of baseball, especially the kind of heart-stopping, one-strike-away, win-or-go-home, true America’s pastime that can be found across the country in the dead summer heat, you probably recognize this famous monologue in a famous 1989 film about a man who brings people closer together by building a ballpark in the middle of a cornfield.

The speech, performed by James Earl Jones in the role of Terence Mann, foreshadows the final scene in “Field of Dreams” where cars line up for miles to attend a game at the field Kinsella built. It reads:

People will come, Ray… They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game – it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

And, well, there’s just no better representation of Victory Field on July 11, 1996, or over the past 25 years, than that.