Even more important to the story line could be the fact that farm prices would explode again in corn country, thanks to the increasing prices the futures markets were bidding for that particular commodity. As Fortune magazine reported this May 10, the Kansas City Federal stated, “despite the drought in Iowa last year, farmland prices have nearly doubled since 2009 to an average price of $8,296 an acre.”
So that 1989 movie’s charming idealism could be updated to today’s more cynical and extremely profitable reality: Between the near tripling of the price of corn and the bubble-level price of $8,296 an acre for Iowa farmland, Kinsella and his family find that their windfall is far greater than watching the ghosts of the 1919 White Sox play yet another boring game.
In the film’s climax, Kinsella would walk proudly out onto the field. There he would inform his father and Shoeless Joe Jackson that they’ve played their last game on his farm because, after he sells the final corn crop for a fortune on the commodities market, he will be selling the farm for eight grand an acre. And with that line the idealistic Ray Kinsella would become the Gordon Gekko of Iowa.