Get Off My Lawn Guy surrenders

 OK, OK, O-KAY. So that was pretty cool.

It was pretty cool the way the Yankees and White Sox came walking out of the corn in that temporary ballpark MLB built next to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa.

It was pretty cool the way they sprayed the corn with dingers -- the Yanks clubbed four, accounting for all of their eight runs, and the  White Sox rainbow-ed six -- which gave all of us plenty of whacks at various corny home run calls.

Mine was "Aaaaand He Who Walks Behind The Rows gets another souvenir!" But that's  because I'm a Stephen King fan, and some people aren't, which means it's an inside joke only a select portion of the audience would have gotten.

Kevin Costner walking out of the corn to start Fox's broadcast, that was cool, even if it was too Hollywood even for this Hollywood event. Tim Anderson's walkoff homer into the corn to win it for Chicago, 9-8, on the other hand ...

Well. That was Hollywood, too, so much so it felt like a setup. Although you have to think not even MLB would be knuckleheaded enough to pull that sort of stunt.

No, that was just karma, moment colliding head-on with circumstance -- the circumstance being MLB riding piggyback on an iconic film to generate some desperately needed buzz (and, ahem, a little coin, too). The game's devolved into an extended episode of Home Run Derby, stripping it of much of its traditional appeal. When both going yard and going down swinging become the rule instead of the exception, both become mundane. Instead of a Moment, they're just moments.

So maybe Get Off My Lawn Guy was just being his harrumphing self when he bah-humbugged the whole idea the other day. He now admits, grudgingly, that MLB not only needed this, it actually pulled it off. He admits it wasn't nearly as crass as he feared it would be. He even admits it almost wove the same spell the movie did, which your mind told you was completely ridiculous but which had you reaching for the tissues at the end anyway.

Field of Schemes last night may have been. But in the end -- yeah, OK -- you couldn't help cheering. 

Dammit.