DYERSVILLE, Iowa — Dave Lee traveled from Mission Viejo, Calif., to Dyersville — over 1,800 miles — with his fingers crossed.

Lee planned to wear a sign while walking through the city alerting people to his need for a ticket to the Major League Baseball Game taking place today at the Field of Dreams.

“It’s just incredible,” Lee said. “A guy writes a book (W.P Kinsella’s 1982 novel “Shoeless Joe”), and 30 or 40 years later, here we all are.”

The book led to the making of the 1989 “Field of Dreams” movie, which in turn led to the site becoming a tourist attraction. Now, the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees will face off tonight at an 8,000-seat stadium adjacent to the site.

While Lee was still searching for a ticket, he met his friend Mike Staudt, of Waterloo, Iowa, to take part in Beyond the Game activities that kicked off Wednesday in Dyersville. The pair became friends when they both attended the University of Northern Iowa.

“We’re going to take it all in and enjoy the food,” Staudt said. “We have a lifelong love of baseball.”

Many people headed to Westside Park on Wednesday afternoon for Beyond the Game festivities. Products from Iowa businesses were highlighted in the Experience Iowa Zone, and younger attendees played games and put their rock-climbing skills to the test in the Kids Zone.

Many people also strolled down First Avenue East to visit local businesses and restaurants, as well as the If You Build It exhibit, which shares information on the making of the “Field of Dreams” movie and the current site.

John and Linda Garrington, of Chariton, Iowa, were planning to visit the exhibit during their first trip to Dyersville. The couple, who are Yankees fans, were among the winners of the Iowa lottery to get tickets to the game.

“We were surprised,” John Garrington said. “I didn’t think I’d win. She screamed when we found out. … To me, winning this is like winning tickets to the Super Bowl.”

He said he has been a Yankees fan since the 1960s, and his wife said she has been a fan since the couple got married nearly 45 years ago.

The Garringtons said they enjoyed walking around Dyersville on Wednesday, and they hope to see the Yankees walk out of the Field of Dreams cornfields today.

“It’s an honor (to win tickets),” Linda Garrington said. “I have goosebumps thinking about it.”

Joyce Alpaugh, who is from the Los Angeles area, also counts herself as one of the lucky game ticket holders. Her daughter-in-law won two tickets through her job at GEICO.

“We were going to come anyway, but we didn’t know until Tuesday we got tickets,” she said.

She added that she grew up in Dyersville but moved away in 1962. She was going to use the Field of Dreams festivities as a chance to meet up with her siblings in the area.

She added that she kept running into people she remembered from her time in Dyersville while visiting local shops, including a woman she used to babysit.

“It’s just an experience, looking at the ways it’s all changed,” Alpaugh said. “When the movie was first made, we thought it was going to go away. And it was made in 1989, and all these years later, everyone’s still excited.”

She added that she grew up a Yankees fan, but she promised her daughter-in-law that she would wear a White Sox shirt for the game.

Jeff Lampe and his 12-year-old son, Jackson, were also enjoying Beyond the Game festivities Wednesday. Their family recently moved to Dubuque after spending years living in California and Colorado.

“We knew the Field of Dreams was in Iowa, but we didn’t know it was so close,” Jeff Lampe said. “It was one of the first things we did when we moved out here.”

He said he was also happy to recently watch the “Field of Dreams” movie with Jackson, noting that he loves the focus on the father-and-son relationship in the film.

Jackson now counts the “Field of Dreams” movie as a favorite, and he said he also enjoyed seeing the If You Built It exhibit.

“I just like sports a lot, and finding a movie all about sports was really cool,” he said.