Moonlight Graham

(Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, from wikipedia)

I recently caught the last part of Field of Dreams (1989) on TV.  It remains highly rewatchable.  If you haven't seen it, I won't describe the plot because it makes the movie sound ridiculous, while it is really wonderful.  And it is about much more than baseball.

For some reason, it got me interested in the background of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, one of the movie's characters.  I already knew that the real Archie Graham played in the outfield for two innings in a June 1905 game after being called up from the minors to join John McGraw's New York Giants.  It was his only major league appearance and he never batted.  In the 1970s, author WP Kinsella ran across a mention of Moonlight Graham and when he wrote Shoeless Joe (the book on which Field of Dreams is based) he included him as a character.

What I had not realized was how closely the fictionalized version of Moonlight Graham in the movie was to the real Archibald Graham.

In the movie, Graham's one appearance with the Giants takes place in 1922.  He later retires from baseball and moves to Chisholm, Minnesota, becomes a doctor and dies in 1972.  Doc Graham, as he is known, becomes a beloved figure in that small town, with a sterling reputation, and devoted to his wife Alicia, who always wears blue.  Doc always walks with an umbrella.  In one scene, Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) interviews older townsfolk about Doc Graham and they tell endearing stories of him.  In another scene, Terrence and Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) go to the local newspaper where a reporter reads to them from Doc Graham's obituary.

It turns out the real Archibald Graham was a college graduate, unusual in baseball in those days, and got his medical degree from the University of Maryland in 1905, the same year he played for the Giants, and after seeing an ad for a doctor, moved to Chisholm, Minnesota where he became the beloved Doc Graham, married Alicia, who always wore blue, and he always carried an umbrella.  Doc Graham died in 1965.  The anecdotes used in the movie are from the life of the real Graham, and the reporter in the film is reading from his actual obituary.

From the Chisholm Free Press & Tribune (1965)

"And there were times when children could not afford eyeglasses or milk or
clothing. Yet no child was ever denied these essentials because in the
background there was always Dr. Graham. Without any fanfare or publicity,
the glasses or the milk or the ticket to the ballgame found their way into
the child's pocket." [This was the portion read in Field of Dreams]

From a 2005 article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

While still new in Chisholm, he grew sweet on Alicia Madden, a
schoolteacher. She was a farmer's daughter from Rochester, and they married
in 1915.

They never had children. Instead, they showered their affection on every
child in town -- he as the full-time doctor for the public schools for more
than 40 years, she as the director of countless community plays.

They built a house that still stands in southeast Chisholm, on the fringe of
a neighborhood known as Pig Town, for the livestock kept by the hardscrabble
immigrant miners' families.

"That was Doc," said Bob McDonald, who grew up in Chisholm and has coached
high school basketball there for 44 years. "He and Alicia could have lived
up with the high and mighty on Windy Hill, but they chose to be among the
common people."

McDonald remembers a wiry, athletic man, dapper in an ever-present black hat
and black trench coat, walking everywhere and always swinging an umbrella.
Yes, he said, Alicia did always wear blue.

On the opening night of all of her plays, Graham would sit in the same seat
in the back of the high school auditorium, a dozen roses in his lap,
Ponikvar said.

People were poor, but schools used mining company taxes to meet needs. Under
Doc's care, kids got free eyeglasses, toothbrushes and medical care. He
lectured them on nutrition, inoculated them, rode their team buses, made
20-year charts of their blood pressure, swabbed their sore throats, made
house calls if they stayed home sick.

He bought apartment houses but charged rock-bottom rents, and no rent to a
single mother and her eight children, Ponikvar remembers.
"Doc became a legend," she wrote when he died. "He was the champion of the
oppressed. Never did he ask for money or fees."

The Summit

Today's the Trump-Putin summit.  Last year Walter Russell Mead, writing in The American Interest, had an interesting take on Trump's policy towards Russia.  Mead is a mainstream foreign policy expert, who seems to be an old-style liberal.  I have no idea who he supported in the 2016 election.  Mead pointed out:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

• Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
• Blocking oil and gas pipelines
• Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
• Cutting U.S. military spending
• Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran

He then goes on to note that while these were President Obama's actual policies, Trump was doing the opposite in each area.

From a policy perspective not much has changed since then.  As noted here a couple of days ago, the United States has just entered into an unprecedented joint security arrangement with Sweden and Finland designed to address the Russian threat.  The President just caused a storm of controversy by accusing Germany of becoming too economically dependent upon Russian natural gas and has been demanding our NATO allies increase defense spending.

On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, a Trump appointee, gave a speech at the Hudson Institute in which he said cyberthreats were our #1 security risk, and that the threat came from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, calling Russia as "no question . . . the most aggressive".

However, I am uncertain how this summit will turn out.  I was not convinced of the need for it in the first place (I think the meeting with Kim was much more justifiable).  My concerns are linked back to the last paragraph in Mead's piece:

America needs an intellectually solvent and emotionally stable press to give this president the skeptical and searching scrutiny that he needs. What we are getting instead is something much worse for the health of the republic: a blind instinctive rage that lashes out without wounding, that injures its own credibility more than its target, that discredits the press at just the moment where its contributions are most needed.

While I fully agree with Mead's sentiment regarding the press, and believe the situation has only gotten worse since he wrote, I think it also fair to point out that I don't consider the president "intellectually solvent and emotionally stable" (unfortunately that was not on offer from either candidate in 2016).

Most of Trump's actions, and certainly the actions and words of those in his administration, whether Coats at DNI, Pompeo at State, and Mattis at Defence have been consistent in confronting Russia.  The problem is Trump's own statements are erratic, unpredictable, often hard to decipher, and he is the ultimate decider.

In addition, Trump's personality poses a risk in a one on one meeting.  He is not an ideologue, he is transactional.  Unlike Putin, he will not be knowledgeable in the details of issues or their back history, but he believes in the ability to do deals on a personal basis.  These characteristics are very similar to those of President Franklin Roosevelt in his dealings with the Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union.  FDR was not ideological, had a vague notion that our two systems would somehow converge in the future, and believed he could charm Stalin into moving in America's direction.  While FDR was a superb wartime leader, his complete misunderstanding of Stalin and the Soviet system would like have had significant negative repercussions if he had survived to serve out his term.

And Trump has one additional trait beyond FDR's - he is susceptible to flattery.  As he himself has said, if you say something nice about him he'll say something nice about you.  It led him to make some of those atrocious statements about Russia during the election campaign, statements reminiscent of Obama's apologetics to foreign countries.  What that means for the Putin meeting we will find out, but I wish it was not happening.

UPDATE:  Well, my worst fears were realized.  First, we had last night's disgraceful tweet blaming problems with Russian-American relations solely on the United States followed by Trump's awful performance at the press conference with Putin.  I'll end with this from the conservative blog Powerline:

Trump seems unable to handle that truth. All that matters to him is the absence of any suggestion that his 2016 victory was tainted. Thus, he puts his own ego ahead of the national interest in responding to a Russian assault on our democratic process. That’s disgusting.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:  The President's course of action since the summit only compounds his problems.  His retraction of his controversial Helsinki statement, followed by his retraction of his retraction, followed by something I can't even figure out, along with his entertaining (however briefly) Putin's offer to trade interviews of US and Russians, and his seeming endorsement of Russia's second gas pipeline to Germany, after telling the Germans they were foolish to allow it make him look foolish and inept.  I don't like the idea of the fall summit with Putin in DC, because when Trump is with Putin he acts like a star struck teenage girl.

Ballpark Roadtrip 2018

After seven long, grueling years, THC and LDC reached the end of their quest to see games at all thirty major league ballparks, with our recent visits to Denver Seattle, and San Francisco.  For all of our annual trip reports go here.

Ballparks Visited

CITY	NAME	CAPACITY	OPENED
Denver	Coors Field	50,944	1995
Seattle	Safeco Field	47,715	1999
San Francisco	AT&T Park	41,915	2000

Game Results

DATE	SCORE	ATTENDANCE	TIME
July 3	Rockies 8, Giants 1	48.072	2:51
July 5	Mariners 4, Angels 1	32,128	3:22
July 8	Giants 13, Cardinals 8	38,855	3:47
July 9	Giants 2, Cubs 1 (11 innings)	38,024	3:09

Winding up our travels with visits to three outstanding ballparks was a treat.  As nice as Coors and Safeco are there is no doubt that AT&T is the best stadium we've seen (excepting, of course, Fenway - hey, THC is a Red Sox fan, what'd you expect?), edging out PNC in Pittsburgh.  We enjoyed AT&T so much we changed our plans and went to a second game there the following day.  Adding to the enjoyment was going to games with two old friends from high school and with the THC Son and his girlfriend.

(Old Friends - MG, LDC, and THC)

AT&T gets the #1 rating by virtue of the views (our right field seats in the upper part of the upper deck featured views of McCovey Cove, San Francisco Bay, the Oakland Bay Bridge, and the SF city skyline), the sight lines to the field (excellent from anywhere we looked in the stadium), and the food which ranks with Petco Field in San Diego (try the tri-tip steak sandwich in the food area behind the center field scoreboard).

The July 3 game at Coors Field featured a spectacular fireworks display at the end of the game which drew a huge crowd (second biggest to the Rogers Centre in Toronto).  We had to wait for a least a half hour after the end of the game as they emptied the bleachers, moving fans onto the field, because the fireworks were launched from the back of the bleachers.  We were close enough to have debris fall on us.

Photos and our annual awards follow.

COORS FIELD

SAFECO FIELD

Seahawks and Mariners stadiums.

Mike Trout hitting a double.

AT&T Park

AWARDS

Best Pitching Performance

Kyle Hendricks of the Cubs made it look easy on July 9 against the Giants, pitching 8 innings of five hit ball, walking nobody and fanning eight.  Very few hard hit balls and a game he should have won 1-0, but for the joint efforts (or non-efforts) of our next award winners.

Best Heads Up Play & Worst Fielding/Lack of Hustle Play

Alen Hanson/Anthony Rizzo/Javier Baez.  In the bottom of the 5th, with the Cubs leading 1-0, Pablo Sandoval hit a weak ground ball on which Rizzo made an error catching the throw.  The next batter, Alen (that's really how he spells it) Hanson hit a grounder, forcing Sandoval at second. Hendricks made a pick-off attempt on which Rizzo made an error.  Rizzo and Javier Baez showed a lack of hustle getting to the ball, allowing Hanson, who turned on the jets, to score all the way from first.  Watch the play here.

Best Pitching Performance By "Who Is That Guy?"

Antonio Senzatela was recalled from the minors by the Rockies on July 3, in time to start that night's game.  We had no idea who he was, but he tossed seven innings of three-hit shutout ball.  Unfortunately, Antonio gave up six runs in six innings in his next start.

Most Enjoyable Player to Watch

Pablo (The Panda) Sandoval.  He doesn't look capable of playing the field and falls over a lot but he was very effective at third base.  Pablo also hit a three run homer into McCovey Cove (see next award) on July 8, and the next day had the walk-off game winning single in the 11th inning.  To the chagrin of this Red Sox fan, Panda was more productive in those two games than during his entire Red Sox career (look up "debacle" in the dictionary and you'll find his Sox free-agent contract).

Most Home Runs Into A Water Body

And the winner is McCovey Cove, the inlet behind the right field stands at AT&T Park.   Two balls reached the Cove on July 8, Sandoval's homer and a smash by Matt Carpenter of the Cards.  One was picked out of the water by a kayaker, the other by someone onshore with a fishing net.

Most Exciting Player

Dee Gordon of the Mariners hit a triple and can that guy fly!  He also made a tremendous play at second to stifle an Angels rally.  Watch his catch here.

Best Repeat Performance Arguing Balls & Strikes

Baseball's best player (I'm required to write that) Mike Trout usually doesn't get too excited but he twice got into an argument with the ump on called third strikes.  Trout has a pretty good eye (he leads the AL in walks) so he probably had good reason to be upset.  He lost both arguments.

Best Game To Take Someone To Who's Never Seen A Game Before 

The Giants-Cardinals game which the Giants won 13-8.  Lots of action which gave old-guy THC plenty of opportunity to explain the details of the game to a novice, who kindly pretended to pay attention.

Best Ballpark For A Willie Mays Fan

As my readers know, Willie Mays is my favorite player, so you know the answer.

Best Drive

From south of Portland, Oregon to Petaluma, California (over two days).  We drove through the Willamette Valley and then the mountains and valleys of southern Oregon on I-5 before turning off at Grant's Pass and heading towards Crescent City, the northernmost town on the California coast, where we stayed overnight.  The next day, we took Route 101 along the coast until it turned inland south of Eureka, got off for thirty miles to drive the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt State Park, and then followed 101 to Ukiah and through the wine-growing valley to the south.

The Sunday morning drive the next day on 101, across the Golden Gate Bridge, through San Francisco, and the on I-280 to Palo Alto wasn't too shabby either.

Most Exciting Drive 

LaHonda Road in Woodside, CA.  Several miles of twisting, turning and narrow pavement, with sheer drops along the side, up the mountains to Skyline Drive which runs along the spine of the peninsula south of San Francisco.

Biggest Tree

Best Place To Watch Junkies Shooting Up 

Courtyard Marriott Pioneer Square in Seattle.  Very nice room but it was in rear of hotel, facing an old brick building with broken windows.  Glancing down into the alley below we saw one apparently homeless person doing odd stuff with scraps of something scattered on the pavement and who was soon joined by another person sitting several feet away who was clearly shooting up.  Actually, a lot of downtown Seattle, particularly near the Pike Street Marketplace was occupied by a motley collection of characters and it was pretty grimy.  Like NYC in the 70s although we walked a lot of the city outside the immediate downtown area and it was quite pleasant.

Boy, Do I Feel Old

Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Dwight Evans.  Fenway Park, July 14, 2018

A Bad, Bad Thing

Recipe:
1 John Lee Hooker riff
A tablespoon of seductive vocal stylings
A mess of suggestive lyrics
A cup of rockabilly guitar
Two spoonfuls of vocal and musical modulations

Result:
A tasty Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing by Chris Isaak.

I think it was very bad indeed.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm . . .

Found this interesting in light of the uproar over the recent NATO summit.

Just became aware (thanks to Austin Bay at Strategy Page) that in May, the Swedish and Finnish Defence Ministers came to Washington and signed a Trilateral Agreement with the United States regarding the national security relationship between the three countries, in response to what is seen as a growing threat from Russia. Neither country is a member of NATO.

While the US has had informal bilateral agreements in the past with each country this is the first time America has joined in a tripartite agreement. Among the items agreed to was a joint military exercise in 2021 to be hosted by Finland.

Announcing the agreement, Secretary of Defence Mattis praised the two European nations for “providing a steady anchor of stability in a region more tense as a result of Russia’s unfortunate, unproductive and destabilizing choices from the Ukraine to Syria.”

Here is an article from a Finnish paper on the agreement.
And one from a US publication.