One of the most important events of my life

It’s been more than 100 years since one of the most important moments in my life.

On June… It’s been more than 100 years since one of the most important moments in my life.

On June 29, 1905, Archibald “Moonlight” Graham took the field for the New York Giants. He came on as a late defensive replacement in right field. He didn’t see any action in the field, and he didn’t get an at-bat. He was the kid with the thick glasses wearing dress shoes that the Little League coach sticks into right in the last inning, the one who only plays because his parents paid his money and the rules say he has to play.

But playing is all Graham needed to do. W.P. Kinsella saw his career statistics while combing the pages of the Baseball Encyclopedia, and made a mental note to write a story about the man. In 1982, “Shoeless Joe” was published, setting the stage for the best sports movie – in my opinion – of all time: “Field of Dreams.”

The movie isn’t really about Moonlight Graham. It follows the life of Ray Kinsella andhis quest to build a magical baseball field on which deceased players can come back and play. Where does Moonlight fit in? He’s the guy Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones go to find in a tiny town called Chisholm, Minn. His role in the movie is to fall short of his dream of getting a major league at-bat.

Graham never got to the plate because the game ended before his turn in the lineup rolled around. He couldn’t bear being sent to the minors again at the start of the next year, so he quit baseball and headed back to Chisholm. He spent the next fifty years as a doctor there,and, according to a newspaper article from the town archives, changed the lives of everyone in the town.

This part of the movie fascinates me the most because it’s the most accurate part of the film. Not the famous line, “Dad? You wanna have a catch?” That line’s enough to make me drive through the night across the state to play catch with my own father every time I hear it. But it’s part of the fiction. And there was no Terrence Mann, the character Jones played, so the brilliant speech about baseball at the end never happened.

But Graham walked away from the game. That part of the movie is based on the true story. The man was closer to his dream than most can ever imagine being to theirs, and he walked away. He had the one thing he wanted most at his fingertips, yet he turned from it to dedicate the next half century to others.

Every time I hear “You wanna have a catch?” I get a lump in my throat and call my dad to see how he’s doing. But every time I hear Moonlight Graham say, “Son, if I’d only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes-now, that would have been a tragedy,” I’m driven to think about others, and what I could be doing for them.

I had in my head for a while that I was going to be a trauma surgeon, and before that I wanted to be on the FBI’s Hostage Rescue team. Currently, when I’m home from college, I’m a volunteer firefighter. All of these jobs involve helping other people, and I can’t say for sure that I would have considered any of them if I hadn’t heard about Graham’s story.

The movie came out when I wasn’t quite six years old, and initially I watched for two reasons: The first is that I’m a lot like Ray Kinsella in that my father raised me to know everything about baseball history, so I was fascinated by the players, and the second is that I would count the swear words and ask my father how he could watch a movie with so much cursing. (I know. It was before I started playing golf and understood why they’re important.)

But from the moment I was old enough to understand Graham’s explanation for Ray as to why he chose his medical career, that was the part of the movie I concentrated on the most. I’ve wanted to make sure that some part of my life is dedicated to helping others.

Granted, my story’s a bit different. I’ll never be as close to the majors as he was, and as a result won’t walk away from nearly as much. But his choice to become a doctor was enough to instill in me the need to keep others as much of a priority as myself.

In the movie, Graham is rewarded for his dedication. The powers that be – who I can only assume are the Baseball Gods – allow him to come back to the Field of Dreams to play with the other ghosts. He finally gets his shot, and hits a sacrifice fly that scores the game-winning run. Technically, he still doesn’t have an at-bat, but let’s not ruin the moment for him.

The next day, he’s forced to give up his dream again in order to save Ray’s choking daughter. He walks off the field, the ultimate no-no for the players, and instantly changes from the young player he was back to the old doctor he is. But no worries: With his dream accomplished, he can return to the afterlife without the ever-present “What if I’d played?” haunting him for eternity.

The Graham story changed the way I look at life. What I take from this is that if the opportunity to live life for others presents itself, we should take it and run with it. If it means postponing our own personal ambitions for a while, so be it.

I have faith that somewhere, somebody is watching and will make sure that before our time is up, we’ll get the chance to fulfill any dreams we sacrifice to the gods of selflessness.

So thanks, Moonlight. You touched the lives of everyone in Chisholm. But you’ll never know that you touched a kid a century away.