My dream house is a small ranch-style dwelling that sits atop a hill on a 120-year-old farm in South Carolina. It has camo-green siding, a gravel driveway and a dilapidated barn in the backyard.

It's not much to look at, I know, but the view -- oh, the view. No, my dream house doesn't overlook the ocean, a lake, a golf course or even the mountains. Here's what makes this house my dream: from the rickety whitewashed swing on Jason Lamb's front porch, you can see all the way to the plate inside Charlotte Knights Stadium, home to the local Triple-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox.

The house looms just beyond the left-centerfield fence, and shares the driveway with the Charlotte Hornets training facility. To me, this is a palace. I mean, they say location is everything. And with the price of tickets and suites getting so expensive, I figure it might just be cheaper to buy a house. This one is so close to the field Lamb can mow his lawn at midnight under the glare of the outfield lights. It's so close you can climb the pecan tree in his front yard and see every player on the field. It's so close guys on the Knights and Hornets wave to you like regular neighbors. It's so close Lamb's 3-month-old son, Christian, sleeps to an almost nightly lullaby of Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

"It's cool to be able to say my next-door neighbors are a baseball team," says Lamb, a youth minister at a nearby church who moved in a year ago with his wife Neva. "But at times, I've had so many college buddies stop by for a free game it can seem like we're running a halfway house for baseball junkies."

Ah, so this is what the sequel to Field of Dreams would look like. If you build it they will come -- and keep on coming until you are out of chips and want to strangle Shoeless Joe Jackson. I can see it now: six months have gone by with a baseball field in Kevin Costner's front yard and, anemic from consuming nothing but hot dogs, Crackerjack and stale Stroh's, Costner now has a tongue-biting seizure when he hears Who Let the Dogs Out -- 87 times before lunch.

Maybe this isn't my dream house after all. I mean, how would you like to have the Stadium Rock CD collection as the soundtrack to your life? For the Lambs, rain delays sometimes mean the post-game fireworks go off after midnight. You ever seen what a baseball can do to a lawnmower blade? And it's not like the Knights are all that chivalrous. So far this summer they're 41-42. And you thought your neighbors were boring.Then there are the obnoxiously goofy members of the media who show up out of nowhere and want to climb the pecan tree in your front yard to take in the view first-hand. (Or, um, so I'm told.)

Each spring the Lambs must also endure the annual tryouts for National Anthem singers. You remember Roseanne's rendition of that song? Try listening to it 75 times in one day. Talk about your Field of Screams.

"They need to do those tryouts without using the PA system," Jason suggests. "'Cause it's like six or eight hours of listening to cats meow."

Perhaps, like drowning in beer, too much of a good thing can actually be gawd-awful. (I will try to remember this lesson on the 4th of July.) All in all, though, the Lambs love living in deep left-centerfield. They don't want to sell. They like it here in Barry Bondsville. So I decide against making them an offer. Just as well -- this is probably the wrong neighborhood for me. 'Cause I just know if Hornets owner George Shinn ever knocked on my door in his bathrobe asking to borrow a cup of sugar, I wouldn't be singing Who Let the Dogs Out.

I'd be doing it.

David Fleming is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail flemfile@aol.com.