Moonlight Graham

Archibald Wright "Moonlight" Graham (November 12, 1876 – August 25, 1965) was an American professional baseball player and physician 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.

His brother, Frank Porter Graham, was president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was later a U. S. Senator.

Graham also played for the Lowell, Massachusetts and Manchester, New Hampshire teams that season, eventually batting .240 in 89 games with seven triples.

He was purchased by the Giants, who had won the National League pennant the previous year (and had refused to play the Boston Americans in a World Series), reporting to the team on May 23, 1905.

On Saturdays, he would have the children of the Iron Range (Minnesota) 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.

The Graham Scholarship Fund, established in his honor, provides financial assistance to two Chisholm High School graduating seniors each year.

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.

In the movie, the Fenway Park scoreboard shows Graham's appearance as having taken place in 1922, 66 years prior before film's 1988 time frame.