Anyone familiar with the book, Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella or the movie adaptation, Field of Dreams, will recognize the name Moonlight Graham. Archie ‘Moonlight’ Graham was a character in both the book and movie. In the movie Burt Lancaster, in his final performance, plays Doc Graham and Frank Whaley plays a young Moonlight Graham. As a young minor league baseball player, Graham is noted for playing the outfield in exactly one inning for the Major League New York Giants in 1922. He never got an official at bat, left standing in the on-deck circle as the final out is made. As Archie explains it, that was the final game of the season. He knew he would be sent down again and couldn’t bear the thought of another season in the minor leagues, so he retired and became a doctor.
Well, as it turns out, there really was a Moonlight Graham and he is fairly accurately depicted in both the book and the movie. Author W.P. Kinsella was doing research for the book and came across a statistic on page 955 of the baseball encyclopedia. He became curious. Who was this old-time ballplayer that warranted the merest of mentions in the baseball Bible and yet never made an appearance at the plate? He decided to include Graham as a minor character in his story but, upon digging deeper into the man’s life, decided to expand the role. There’s a scene in both the book and the movie where the main character, Ray Kinsella, goes to Chisholm Minnesota looking for information about Graham. At the office of the local newspaper he meets Veda Ponikvar. She knows Graham, as does everyone else in Chisholm, as Doc Graham. As she tells it, “His baseball career didn’t amount to much, so he went to school and became a doctor.” The scene is an almost exact depiction of the real life meeting between W.P. Kinsella and the real life Veda Ponikvar, when he met her in Chisholm while researching the book. He incorporated the scene in the story, making Veda something of a local celebrity in the process.
Archibald Wright Graham was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on November 10, 1879. He was the second of nine children born to Alexander and Kate Graham, a third generation American descended from pure Scottish highland blood. It seems his entire family was dedicated to over-achieving. Not only was Billy Graham a distant cousin but both his father and mother were educators. His father became the Superintendent of schools in Fayetteville and created a legacy as the father of the graded school system in North Carolina. With that background it was not surprising that all nine children attended university, a rarity for that time. Four sisters and a brother also went into academics. He had another brother that was a lawyer but died of pneumonia in 1914. Another brother, Frank, became the president of the University of North Carolina and was a United States senator for a short time. Frank was even offered a chance at the vice presidency under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
It was his older brother, David, that Archie looked up to and tried to emulate. David was probably the best all-around athlete in the family and played some semi pro baseball. He attended medical school at the University of Maryland but had to quit due to poor eyesight. He eventually went into the electrical business instead, settling in Philadelphia. Just prior to World War I he enlisted in the Marine Corps and, sadly, was killed while in France on June 6, 1918 during the battle of Belleau Wood. Archie probably became a doctor, at least in part, because of his older brothers’ influence.
Archie began his medical studies at the University of North Carolina near the turn of the century. Like his brother David, he was a gifted athlete and played on the school baseball team under coach Eddie Ashenback. In 1901, on a lark, he played a single minor league game for Tarboro of the Virginia-North Carolina league. That was his introduction to professional baseball. In 1902 Eddie Ashenback was also coaching the Charlotte Hornets of the North Carolina Baseball League and asked if Archie would be interested in playing for the team that summer. After some consideration, Archie decided it would be fun to play for his old coach and pick up some extra cash while staying close to home. Finishing his studies for that academic year, Archie joined the team on June 4, some 25 games into the season. In his first game he got two hits in four at bats with a double. He also flawlessly made all six plays in left field. It wasn’t long before he developed a reputation as a solid hitter with speed in the outfield and an ability to steal bases.
After the season, Archie returned to his studies at UNC. He was such a good student that he managed to not only maintain a high grade point average but he also went back to play on the varsity baseball team. During the summer of 1903 he went back to the minor leagues. The Virginia-North Carolina league was in disarray and on the verge of folding, not an unusual occurrence for minor league clubs or entire leagues in those days. Instead, Archie went to play for Nashua, New Hampshire of the class B New England League. He played so well that the Manchester team traded for him late in the season with visions of making him their every day left fielder in 1904.
That fall, after the season ended, he followed in his brother David’s footsteps, transferring to Maryland to complete his medical studies. That year he also added football to his resume, becoming the Terrapins varsity squad halfback. The football experience put him in the best physical shape of his life when he returned to Manchester that summer to play another season in the minors. He hit a respectable .272 for the club and scored 70 runs, although he only managed 15 stolen bases. Because of those offensive numbers and his speed and superior defensive skills, Manchester invited Archie back for the 1905 season. But he never went back to New England. That fall he was finishing his medical degree at Maryland and was already being offered internships at several prominent hospitals. Major League Baseball was also taking notice and on September 25, 1904 the New York Giants bought his contract from Manchester.
It is uncertain how Archie picked up the nickname, Moonlight. There are several anecdotal stories out there, some seeming more reliable than others, but nothing concrete. Probably the most plausible seems to be that it was given to him by his teammates because in the fall and winter he was studying to be a doctor, then in the spring and summer he was moonlighting as a baseball player. Regardless of how he got it, by 1905 the moniker was his for keeps. He was called up to the big club in early June and rode the bench for the next three weeks.
Baseball was a lot different back then. Pitchers routinely pitched complete games, even into extra innings. If you had a strong starting eight you very rarely used your bench players. The Giants, under Hall of Fame manager John McGraw, won 105 games that year. He very rarely made changes to his starting lineup and just as rarely substituted players while a game was in progress. McGraw probably had little use for a player like Archie Graham. The man, a yankee to boot, lived and breathed baseball and believed the players around him should be just as dedicated. Despite his natural gifts, this young man, a southerner and the son of a confederate officer, appeared to be more interested in being a doctor than a ballplayer. Always the gentleman and not one to complain, Graham would say years later that he learned a lot about baseball sharing the bench with the old man.
On June 29 the Giants held a substantial lead over the Brooklyn Superbas (eventually the Dodgers). With future Hall of Famer Christy Matthewson cruising on the mound McGraw did the unthinkable. In the fifth inning he began to insert his bench players into the game. In the bottom of the eighth inning, with most of his starters now on the bench, McGraw stood before Archie and said just two words to the young player, right field. Archie never made a play as the Superbas went down in order with two strike outs sandwiched around a long fly out to the center fielder. Archie now found himself in the dugout in the top of the ninth inning batting fifth in the order. After two quick outs the next batter hit a home run to make the Giant lead 11-0. The next batter was the pitcher with Archie taking practice swings in the on-deck circle. Unfortunately, those practice swings were as close as Archie would ever get to live Major League pitching as the pitcher hit a shallow pop up to the second baseman. There was still the bottom of the ninth to play. The records of that half inning aren’t especially clear, so it is uncertain as to whether or not Archie actually handled the ball defensively. What is known is that there were two hits in the inning and a run scored on a bases loaded walk. There is at least a good probability that Archie did handle the ball at some point.
In the movie, Archie tells Ray that we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they are happening. We think there will be other days. What Archie didn’t realize was that that was the only day. For all intents and purposes, Archie Graham’s Major League Baseball career was over. He stayed with the Giants for another week, riding the bench, before McGraw decided to send him down to the Scranton minor league team on July 5. At the train station Archie was greeted by a familiar face in the form of Eddie Ashenback who had been hired to manage the Scranton Miners just a few weeks earlier. At the time, the Miners were solidly in last place with a record of 19-36. Things didn’t get much better right away either and by August 1 the team was still a miserable 32-53. But then the team began to turn things around. In the month of August the team went 21-10 with one tie, moving out of last place and passing two teams in the process. The team finished the season 56-67 but, with five games left, Archie packed his bags and said good-bye to his team mates as he headed to Maryland to do his post postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins, thinking his baseball career was at an end.
The Giants, though, still owned his Major League contract and ordered him to report to Memphis for the start of the 1906 season. At first he resisted, but eventually did go to Memphis. His heart wasn’t in it, though, and it wasn’t long before the Giants released him. He had committed himself to playing ball that summer so, with time on his hands, and having enjoyed his experience the previous summer, Archie returned to Scranton just in time for the start of their season. It was a good thing he did. Scranton picked up where they left off the previous season and kept right on winning. They finished the season 82-48, winning the league championship. Archie himself won the batting title with a .335 batting average while stealing 38 bases and scoring 65 runs. The team even played McGraw’s New York Giants in an exhibition game, winning 9-1. Archie acquitted himself well, going 2 for 3 with a walk and an RBI in the game.
Even though he was now ready to go into private practice Archie was not quite ready to let go of the sport he loved so much. For a brief time, the Boston Red Sox owned his contract, giving him hope of possibly getting back into the major leagues. When they let him go, he had again committed the summer to playing baseball, and ended up back in Scranton for the 1907 season. As the defending batting champion, he got off to a slow start, going 0 for 29 before finally getting his first hit on May 18. Henry Ramsey had replaced Eddie Ashenback as the manager and his style did not mesh well with the team. They struggled early and found themselves in fifth place early in July. Then, in those so-called dog days of summer, they got hot and surged into first place in mid-August. Unfortunately, a late season collapse found them finishing in second place. Archie hit .265, seventy points off the previous season. He did steal 34 bases and scored the same 65 runs as he had the season before.
the 1908 season was Archie’s last in organized baseball. He again went to play for the Scranton Miners. He loved the town, having played there two-and-one-half seasons. And the town loved him as he became a favorite son. Malachi Kittredge was the new manager of a very talented team which seemed to respond to his style although it was a struggle. Archie got off to his customary slow start and a host of injuries slowed the team’s momentum. Then the grandstand at Athletic Park, where they played, caught fire and burned to the ground. This meant for an extended road trip and accompanying losing streak which momentarily forced them into second place. They managed to recover and eventually won the championship that season. Archie hit just .277 for the season but, ever the catalyst, still managed 32 stolen bases and scored 75 runs.
And so ended Moonlight Grahams professional baseball career. He was just shy of 29 years old and, having fallen in love with the town of Scranton, decided to settle down there and open up his practice. That never happened. And his friend Veda was correct. His baseball career never really amounted to much. If not for the book, Shoeless Joe, and the movie, Field of Dreams, his career would ever be a footnote in the baseball encyclopedia. He died 15 years before the book was published, 24 years before the movie came out. His career as a doctor though had a much larger impact on the world at large. Ray Kinsella tells Archie that 50 years ago, for five minutes, you were this close to your dream. For some men, to come that close and not achieve it they would consider that to be a tragedy. In response Archie says if I had only been a doctor for five minutes, now that would have been the tragedy. I think that sums up the man pretty nicely.
So what happened? How did an old-time baseball player, born and raised in the South, and spent most of his baseball playing days in Scranton, Pennsylvania end up as a doctor in the small town of Chisholm Minnesota for over 50 years? With his education and background at Johns Hopkins he had his pick of places to set up a practice. And what did he do as a doctor that was so special? For the answers to those questions join me for Part 2 of Who Was Moonlight Graham? I hope you enjoyed reading this blog as much as I enjoyed writing it. I have been wanting to write it from the start, but I needed to do my research first. It was fun to write, and I learned a lot about this unassuming and quirky man. I will discuss all of that next time.
Don’t forget to leave your comments. Especially on this one as it was close to me and my favorite post so far.