One man serendipitously fell into the job of being the Ghost Players' unofficial videographer. Joe Scherrman heard that Keith Rahe, who was a natural at promotion, was gathering some of his local friends to appoint themselves as local representatives of those 1919 Black Sox.
"When I heard Keith Rahe and a bunch of his buddies were going to show up and play ball at the field, I thought, 'Let's go see what those boys are up to.' So I grabbed my camera and went out and shot my first Ghost Player tape," Scherrman said, thinking nothing at the time of adding one more tape to his growing pile of VHS cassettes that were the result of his videography hobby.
What started out as a one-shot appearance soon grew into a much-anticipated Ghost Players
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Since Scherrman was in the appliance business, he soon decided to bring a PA system to the Ghost Player's next event and play music for it. Then the crowds kept getting bigger, so Scherrman decided to hook a microphone up so Rahe could announce the Ghost Players over the microphone.
Scherrman became more entrenched with the Ghost Players in 1992, when ex-Cub, Randy Hundley came in with the Upper Deck baseball card company and started doing fantasy baseball camps. "They had a grand prize at one of the semi-pro baseball games. It was to participate in the fantasy baseball camp with all of these guys, like Dubuque native, Joe Hoerner," Scherrman said. "My son Tony showed up and said, 'Dad, you won!' I even got offers up to $1,000 from baseball fans who wanted to take my place. Tony said, 'Dad, you can't sell that! If you're nervous about not knowing all of the ballplayers, I'll tell you who they are.' I was actually thinking the 1,000 bucks would be nice!"
Scherrman thought he'd better keep his fantasy camp prize, more for his son to enjoy. "I won a 1919 White Sox uniform, which is how I got to be an honorary Ghost Player of sorts. So now I've got the sound system and I've got the uniform - kind of like being the one to show up at the game with the bat and the ball," he laughed.
As time went on through the 1990s, Scherrman collected massive amounts of Ghost Player footage. "The Dyersville Area Chamber of Commerce asked if I could put a little promo piece together," Scherrman said. "HBO or ESPN would call up the chamber and ask if they had any footage of all that's going on at the Field of Dreams, so they wouldn't have to send their own crews, so I'd supply the footage." Scherrman said he has received calls from broadcasters including Bravo, the Travel Channel, ESPN and HBO, as well as many Chicago-based affiliates. "I was becoming a bit of a supply house for promotional videos and 'B-roll' footage for companies.
"One time, right around 2000, I couldn't find one of my favorite tapes," Scherrman noted. "It was then that I thought I should try to archive all of my videos before I lost them, with the idea that I might make a documentary. I had to start pitching the idea. I ended up at the historical society in Des Moines, talking with a guy and who said, 'You may have some historically significant footage that tells of our culture and times.' So then I had two projects, the documentary and archiving the footage.
When I got tied in with the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque, they said I should pursue both, because the documentary adds buzz."
After weeding out extraneous footage, Scherrman still ended up with 660 hours worth of archive-worthy videotape. That footage will soon be available on searchable Internet sites by sub-category, such as the Ghost Players' 1996 tour of Japan.
"We're about 90 percent done with the archiving. We're storing it on three separate hard drives in three different locations: Cedar Rapids, Dyersville and Minneapolis. The long-term goal will be to make the archived footage available through a museum or historical society Web site," Scherrman said.
"The documentary had to be character-driven to be interesting, rather than purely historical," Scherrman said. "We've got guys who received a second chance, so to speak. Guys who dreamed of being big league baseball players. Then the Field of Dreams and the Ghost Players come along.
"Some of these guys got to do more traveling than big league ballplayers. They got to live their childhood dream. Keith Rahe wanted to be a promoter. Field of Dreams comes along, and what's he doing now? He's with the chamber. I wanted to be a filmmaker in high school. Field of Dreams comes along, and here I am making a film."
Scherrman will be "pre-screening" a rough cut of his documentary footage Tuesday, April 21, at 7 p.m. at the Mindframe Theaters in Dubuque. His goal for the screening will be to conduct an informal focus group to receive critical feedback from the screening's viewers.
In the meantime, Scherrman is making the rounds to find a distributor for his documentary. He has sent a rough cut to IPTV, Comcast Sports in Chicago, HBO, Major League Baseball. The final length of the finished documentary will depend on what broadcasters would be interested, how many installments, and at what length.