Finding of ‘dreams’
Autographs of Moonlight Graham are discovered at Baltimore medical school he attended
In the stuffy fourth-floor attic of a historic Baltimore academic building, amid discarded furniture and dusty filing cabinets, Larry Pitrof discovered treasure.
The trove isn’t worth millions. But it’s a fascinating relic and a historic bridge between fact, lore and baseball.
Archibald “Moonlight” Graham played two innings of right field in a major league baseball game in 1905 and had zero at-bats. That was the extent of his big league career, a forgettable footnote in baseball history.
Then, years after his death, author W.P. Kinsella included Graham in his 1982 novel “Shoeless Joe,” which became the inspiration for the 1989 film “Field of Dreams.” The film that immortalized the phrase, “If you build it, he will come,” and which is beloved by American fathers and sons, launched Graham into folk hero status.
But Graham is no tall tale. He spent most of his life as a doctor and attended the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore in the early 1900s.
Pitrof is the medical school alumni association’s executive director. He’s also a baseball fanatic who’s long been intrigued by Graham.
Every few months, for one reason or another, he’s visited the fourth floor of the school’s Gray Hall, a 182-year-old building less than three blocks from Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Each time, he’d pass a few cabinets, and each time, for 28 years, he’d half-pause and half-wonder if anything from Graham’s past was inside.
After Major League Baseball played its first “Field of Dreams” game on Aug. 12 next to the filming location in Iowa, Pitrof — on a hunch there might be some trace of Graham — decided to peek in the cabinets. There, within a stack of documents dating from 1812 to 1916, he found a dozen letters
between the school’s dean and one Archie Graham, one of baseball history’s most unassuming legends.
“There was that tingling feeling,” Pitrof said.
The Graham documents span 1903 to 1905, the years Graham attended medical school in Baltimore while continuing his baseball career in the summers. They include Graham’s matriculation cards and correspondence with the school.
Writing from Scranton, Pennsylvania — where he played in the minor leagues after his MLB appearance with the New York Giants — Graham noted he was enclosing $30, which he owed to the institution. In one letter, he sought a recommendation.
In another, he asked whether there was “any chance for me to get into Bay View” in a training position, likely referencing the current Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center east of the city.
Before this discovery, there were only a handful — as few as five or six — known Graham signatures. In the letters, Pitrof found four more.
Graham went on to become an adored doctor, as depicted in the movie. He also made essential contributions to medical research. It was his 1945 study that prompted pediatricians to begin regularly monitoring blood pressure in children.
There’s a bounce in Pitrof ’s step and a thrill in his voice when he discusses Graham, who some categorize as a “cult figure.”
“No,” Pitrof protests. “He was a role model.”
Jonathan Algard created an eBay account in 2000 in pursuit of a historic needle in a haystack.
A baseball autograph collector who works in a foundry in Pennsylvania, Algard had the remote goal of landing a Graham signature. He took a meticulous approach, purchasing yearbooks from a high school in Chisholm, Minnesota, where Graham lived as an adult. He hoped Graham, a school physician, might have signed one for a student.
Dozens of yearbooks and 17 years into his search, Algard found it: a 1943 yearbook Graham signed for a graduate before the young man headed to World War II.
Algard, 52, has been collecting autographs since he was 5 years old, and his collection numbers in the thousands. He estimates he has six Hank Aaron autographs. But he’s never gone to the lengths he did for a Graham autograph.
“The character itself in the movie, I don’t know, I think everybody can relate to, in a way,” he said, trying to explain his and others’ fascination with Graham. “Everybody had that chance that got away.”
It’s unknown why Graham’s moniker was “Moonlight.” His medical school yearbook notes he enjoyed “midnight” walks and it’s also been suggested it’s because he “moonlighted” as a doctor. But articles at the time dubbed him “Deerfoot” for his supreme speed and “Dr. Graham,” because of his medical background. He was an exceptional minor league player and a fan favorite.
And yet, he had only the solitary MLB appearance — 117 years ago last week — stepping into the on-deck circle once, but never batting. He later served as a doctor for more than half a century, until his death at 88.
“Field of Dreams,” a reflection on the relationship between a father and son, stars Kevin Costner as an Iowa farmer who plows over his corn to build a diamond for ghosts of baseball’s past. Graham is depicted both as a young ballplayer and, later in life, as a cherished pediatrician. When Costner’s character calls it a “tragedy” that Graham never realized his dream of batting in the big leagues, the fictionalized Graham replied: “Son, if I’d only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes, now that would have been a tragedy.”
The movie takes artistic liberties, such as portraying Graham as living his whole life in Chisholm, making no mention of his origins in North Carolina nor of him attending medical school in Baltimore.
But, as in the movie, Graham’s legacy is celebrated in real life. The high school in Chisholm awarded a scholarship in his honor for 20 years after the film’s release. The baseball field in the town is named for him, as is a festival held each August.
Graham’s pioneering research into blood pressure in children was “seminal,” Pitrof says. And after the doctor died in 1965, a U.S. representative from Minnesota inserted his obituary — which called Graham a “champion of the oppressed” for his generosity to children — into the Congressional Record.
“They did not embellish this man’s character,” Pitrof said of the movie.