It was 100 years ago today -- June 29, 1905 -- that a kid named Archibald "Moonlight" Graham made his Major League Baseball debut. He played one inning in right field for the New York Giants. Graham never fielded a ball and never got a chance at bat. Ever.That's because Graham retired from baseball later that day. He returned to his hometown of Chisolm, Minnesota to become a doctor.
Does this story sound familiar? It should. Archie Graham was later immotalized in the classic 1989 movie "Field of Dreams," where "Doc" Graham was played by Burt Lancaster (Frank Whaley played "Moonlight" Graham as a young man).
In the film, Graham went on to become something of a hometown hero as a doctor, and it seems that was the case in real life too.At one point Kevin Costner's character remarks that many people would have considered it a tragedy that Graham's dream to be a ballplayer ended after five minutes. Later Graham tells him, "Son, if I'd only got to be a doctor for five minutes, now that would have been a tragedy."
I love the movie Feild of Dreams.Its inspiring in a way and its also very mysterious and fictional although some of the characters used to be real people like "Moonlight" Graham and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson.
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