In his prime my grandfather could hit the most beautiful fly balls. Behind his wood-frame house, on the long, narrow lot with the rusty rabbit cages and the fruit cellar where we hid from tornadoes, sat his own field of dreams. Here my grandfather was king: the empty diamond, glorious in its isolation; the clean white chalk of the foul lines; the unattainable fence; the comforting summer smell of fresh-mown sod; and the raked dirt, ground to the fine black dust that is the lifeblood of eastern Iowa.