I feel like Major League Baseball’s Field of Dreams game was made with me in mind.

I haven’t missed a pitch of a Pittsburgh Pirates game in more than five years, and it isn’t just background noise. I watch intently as former Hawaii Islander turned excellent color man Bob Walk explains a bad team that struggles to do simple things and didn’t play with any urgency until Derek Shelton took over Clint Hurdle’s job as manager.

I can count on one hand the number of movies I have watched more than once, and “Field of Dreams” is one of them, even with Shoeless Joe Jackson — one of the greatest lefty batters of all time — hitting right-handed and the best character (Eddie Scissons, the oldest living Cub) from the book it was based on, W.P. Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe,” strangely omitted.

Knowing better than trying to find a baseball game in blackout-heavy Hawaii on MLB.TV, I dusted off the old antenna that seems to only pick up KHON with any regularity. I knew it was going to be a designated hitter game — I fear they will all be DH games after this season — but got excited when the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox followed Kevin Costner out of the cornfield anyway.

They were doing this for me; I had to tune in and try to accept Joe Buck’s annoying voice, the ugly swoosh on the uniforms and cameras constantly searching the stands for celebrities.

For some reason, I expected it to be an homage to baseball as it was 100 years ago. White Sox starter Lance Lynn certainly looked the part in his Black Sox duds, but it became obvious that this was not about what is right about baseball. It was more about all of the things the perfect game has left behind.

The place was packed with 8,000 fans paying an average of $1,400 each — the highest of any regular-season game ever, and more than all but a few World Series games. In the movie, Terrance Mann’s character says “It’s only $20 per person. They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it, for it is money they have and peace they lack.”

That’s quite a bit of inflation over 30 years, or maybe it is just a reflection of the peace that has been lost since 1989.

It was a fun game to watch, a station-to-station affair won by the White Sox 9-8 on a home run by Tim Anderson following the contest’s 11th base on balls.

That made 42 of 79 plate appearances in which a fielder other than the pitcher and catcher didn’t have a chance to touch the ball.

Commissioner Rob Manfred was on hand and seemed pleased to be able to see the house that was seen in the movie, but I doubt he watched the whole game. I don’t think the man has ever watched an entire game, considering that pace of play seems to be the man’s biggest project and the solution is simple to anyone who has seen a game. The official time of the game was nearly 31⁄2 hours, a long time for him to resist checking his phone for the latest NFL or NBA news.

Supposing Manfred did actually watch the game instead of standing in line for one of Guy Fieri’s apple pie hot dogs, he might have noticed that the only true dead time in the timeless game was when players were playing catch while waiting to play. There were nearly three minutes of commercials between innings and more than two minutes for pitching changes. That adds up to nearly an hour of ads in a game that was promoting a 30-year old movie that lasted only an hour and 47 minutes.

So you are telling me that a pitcher needs three minutes to warm up? Boxers only need a minute between rounds.

But, yeah, pickoff throws to first — which are limited in the minor leagues this year — are the problem because there is no price tag attached to them.

Changes will keep coming, and nothing is sacred. The 60 feet, 6 inches between the pitching rubber and the plate was lengthened in the Atlantic League and Red Smith’s perfection of 90 feet between bases was shortened in Triple-A this year. I don’t think anyone has shared my outrage, and other than catchers allowing baserunners to steal second base at will, it doesn’t look like it caused the wholesale change in the game I feared.

During the many commercials during MLB games this season, San Diego’s Fernando Tatis promises that things are never going back to the way they were. That’s fine — the game evolves and always will. Just give me an alternative to DH games, even the dreaded double hook used in the Atlantic League where the DH is lost as soon as the starting pitcher leaves the game, and I am fine.

But if I had been in Dyersville, Iowa, last Thursday, you would have to excuse this grumpy old baseball fan if his reaction was “get off my lawn.”

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Reach Jerry Campany at jcampany@staradvertiser.com.