Archibald Wright "Moonlight" Graham was an American professional baseball
player, then doctor, who appeared as a right fielder in a single major league
game for the New York Giants on June 29, 1905. His story was popularized by
Shoeless Joe, a novel by W. P. Kinsella, and the subsequent 1989 film Field of
Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, and featuring Burt Lancaster and Frank
Whaley, respectively, as older and younger incarnations of Graham.
Biography Graham was born in Fayetteville, North
Carolina, the second of ten children born to Alexander and Katherine B. Sloan
Graham. His brother, Frank Porter Graham, was president of the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was later a U. S. Senator. Every one of his
brothers and sisters also finished college. He played baseball at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was also a member of the
Dialectic Society, a debating organization.
= Professional baseball career= Graham went on to play baseball in the
minor leagues for seven seasons, starting with the Charlotte Hornets in
the Class C North Carolina League in 1902. The following year, he played with
Nashua, New Hampshire's team in the Class B New England League. Graham also
played for the Lowell, Massachusetts and Manchester, New Hampshire teams that
season, eventually batting .240 in 89 games with seven triples. In 1904, he
spent the entire season with Manchester, hitting .272 in 108 games.
Graham started the 1905 season with the Binghamton Bingoes in the Class B New
York State League. He was purchased by the Giants, who had won the National
League pennant the previous year, reporting to the team on May 23, 1905.
On June 29, the Giants were the visiting team against the Brooklyn Superbas at
Washington Park. At the conclusion of the eighth inning, Graham replaced right
fielder George Browne. In the top of the ninth inning, Graham was on deck when
Claude Elliott flied out, resulting in the third and final out. Graham played
the bottom of the ninth in right field, never having the ball hit in his
direction. That game turned out to be his only appearance in the major
leagues. Graham returned to the New York State
League, appearing with the Scranton Miners for the rest of the season and in
1906. For the 1905 minor league season, playing for two teams, he hit .288 in 64
games. The following season, he hit a career-best .329, split between two
teams: Scranton, where he hit .336 in 124 games; and the Memphis Egyptians of
the Class A Southern Association, where he hit .262 in a dozen games. He
returned to Scranton for the 1907 and 1908 seasons, where he hit .285 and .263
in 131 and 130 games, respectively. Graham ranked second in batting average
for the New York State League, losing the 1906 batting title by four points.
= Medical career= Graham completed his medical degree from
the University of Maryland in 1905. While there, he had also played on the
school's 1904 and 1905 baseball teams. Graham had also added some weight to his
5’ 10" frame and resumed his collegiate football career. He played halfback for
Maryland's football team in 1904 and 1905. He obtained his license the
following year and began practicing medicine in Chisholm, Minnesota.
"Doc" Graham, as he became known after his career as a ballplayer, served the
people of Chisholm for fifty years. From 1919 to 1959, Graham was the doctor for
the Chisholm schools. The Graham Scholarship Fund, established in his
honor, provides financial assistance to two Chisholm High School graduating
seniors each year. The award is given to one boy and one girl, $500 to each. For
many years, "Doc" Graham made arrangements to have used eyeglasses
sent to his Chisholm office. On Saturdays, he would have the children of
the Iron Range miners, from Grand Rapids to Virginia, come to his office, have
their eyes checked and then fit them with the proper set of glasses, all free
of charge. Graham died in Chisholm in 1965. He is
buried in Rochester, Minnesota. A biography of Graham, Chasing
Moonlight: The True Story of Field of Dreams' Doc Graham, was written by
sportswriter Brett Friedlander and college professor Robert W. Reising in
April 2009. In fiction
In 1975, author W. P. Kinsella happened to notice Graham's entry in The Baseball
Encyclopedia. He made note of his unusual career, and then incorporated
Graham as a character in his 1982 novel Shoeless Joe, on which the movie Field
of Dreams was based. Much of the description of Graham's life in the
novel came from the people of Chisholm as Kinsella visited seeking information
on him. In the novel, the dates of Graham's
big-league appearance and death are kept as in real life, making the 1905
appearance 74 years prior to the book's 1979 timeframe, and the Ray Kinsella
character quickly finds out that Graham has been dead since 1965. The
time-travel scene has Kinsella meeting Graham in 1955, ten years prior to
Graham's death. In the movie, the Fenway Park scoreboard
shows Graham's appearance as having taken place in 1922, 66 years prior to
the film's 1988 time frame. A woman in Chisholm, a long-time friend of Graham's
who wrote his eulogy in the newspaper on the day of his death, later tells Ray
Kinsella and author Terrance Mann that Graham had died in 1972. In the
time-travel sequence of the movie, lead character Ray Kinsella goes back to the
year of Graham's death, and is told by "Doc" Graham that his appearance was on
the final day of the season, rather than the middle. In the background of the
scene on the street when Ray and Moonlight meet, the Plaza Theatre sign
shows The Godfather is playing, noting that it was "one of this year's 10 best"
movies, and Ray notices a poster calling for Richard Nixon's re-election as
President of the United States displayed, fittingly, in a store selling
tape-recorders. References
"A Career as 'Quick as a Flash of Moonlight'" – article in The New York
Times, June 26, 2005, section 8, p. 3 External links
BaseballLibrary – career review Career statistics and player information
from Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube, or
Baseball-Reference Graham Scholarship Fund
100th Anniversary of Moonlight Graham's Only Game