DYERSVILLE ― Dubuque County Sheriff's Deputy Devyn Hafer spoke with the Register on Thursday, Aug. 13 about the conditions around the Field of Dreams Movie Site. The site is scheduled to host a Major League Baseball game between the Minnesota Twins and Philadelphia Phillies at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday. Wet weather has made preparations more difficult for MLB officials and Field of Dreams staffers. Hafer, 30, lives in Dyersville. Here are excerpts of what he told the Register on Thursday afternoon:
On gameday conditions: "I know there were some issues with people getting stuck in the mud, but they have some like towing services on hand, and they were bringing all that gravel in. ... Lightning causes a safety issue, but I don't think we're really going to run into that. And according to everyone I talked to at the MLB, it's going to be game on, and the field can absorb a lot of water, so no particular challenges yet." What preparation looks like for law enforcement: "So I know there were just a lot of meetings between the higher-ups and the sheriff and the chief deputy and everybody. They've been out here pretty much exclusively, like 12, 15, hours a day. And the first day when we were here Tuesday, the captain took us through the entire facility, so we knew where everything was at and where people need to go for bad weather and AEDs (automated external defibrillator) and all that kind of stuff. And there's just there's just a lot of law enforcement, a lot of different agencies here." How the event is special: "It's just not every community gets the opportunity to have something like this here. We're all hoping that we can just have the game go. We don't want to take the rain day (Friday). I mean that makes it hard for everybody, whether it's security, staff, the fans. Yeah, we're hoping that we just have good weather so that we don't have to make up on another day and put all the resources into that. And then a lot of us, including myself, we got to go back to our normal jobs tomorrow. So since it's Thursday, so just hoping it's game on and not a lot of delays." This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Sheriff's deputy expects 'game on' despite Field of Dreams wet weather