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'If You Film It, They Will Come'

If America is obsessed with movie stars, it becomes doubly so when sports are involved. The baseball diamond where the "Bad News Bears" became Little League legends, the meat locker where Sylvester Stallone trained in "Rocky" and that magical "Field of Dreams" in Iowa where Kevin Costner communes with the spirit of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson have all become tourist destinations, if not pop culture monuments.

"You have an emotional connection with a movie — and people come to these places to bring them closer to the events," says Chris Epting, author of "Elvis Presley Passed Here," his third guide to America's newest cultural landmarks.

Unless you're convicted of a serious felony, you'll probably never get to walk the grounds of Georgia State Prison at Reidsville. You'll also never get to see where Gary Cooper stepped up to the plate as Lou Gehrig in "The Pride of the Yankees." Yankee Stadium is still around, but that film was made at Wrigley Field — and not the one where the Chicago Cubs play, but the one in Los Angeles, which long ago met the wrecking ball.

Still, if you're a serious sports movie buff, you can actually play ball with the stars. Epting's books are a great place to start. Here are some of the spots where you might find me:

1. Dyersville, Iowa: 'Field of Dreams'
"If you build it, they will come," an unseen voice tells Kevin Costner in 1989's "Field of Dreams," and 16 years after he cut a baseball diamond in a cornfield, fathers and sons are still coming to Dyersville to play catch.

The Lansing family farm is open to the public and owner Don Lansing has resisted temptation to commercialize the field where 20,000 people visit each year and sign the guest registry, making it one of the state's top tourist attractions.

Admission is free, and a few token souvenirs are for sale. The field is mowed, manicured and irrigated thanks to voluntary donations. Is this heaven? As they in the movie, "No, it's Iowa,"

2. Chatsworth, Calif.: 'Bad News Bears'
If Yankee Stadium is "The House that Ruth Built," Mason Park might be known as "The Bad News Backstop."