Ray meets “Moonlight” Graham
When Ray meets Terence Mann, he reluctantly lets him take him to a game at Fenway Park, where the two are prompted to seek out Archibald “Moonlight” Graham. Graham was a real baseball player who got into one game for the New York Giants and never got to bat, even though his appearance was actually in 1905, not in 1922 as the movie claims.
Still, it makes for a great story. When Ray seeks out Graham in Minnesota, he travels back in time to 1972, towards the end of Graham’s life, when he had become distinguished as a doctor. Graham, played by Burt Lancaster, tells Ray the story of his one inning with passion. “We don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they’re happening,” he says. His monologue on how it would have been great to get to bat just once was a classic.
Ray and Terence pick up a younger Graham on their way back to Iowa, and Graham gets to bat, hitting a sacrifice fly. Though, it turns out that’s not the most important thing that Ray does in the movie.
Terence Mann gives a great monologue on baseball
It has to be one of the all-time great monologues on baseball: “People will come.” James Earl Jones knocks it out of the park with his performance as Terence Mann. He slowly lets down his guard throughout the movie, and as Ray’s brother-in-law tries to persuade him to sell the farm, Terence explains what is so great about baseball.
Terence explains that fans will pay money to come to see these great players of the past, yet the speech serves as so much more. “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.” He later says about baseball, “It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”
Though this movie is over thirty years old, I can relate to this latter quote because we are going through such a hard time right now. Unfortunately, we don’t have baseball to help us get through it, as it’s currently unsafe for large crowds to gather. However, we do have old games and movies to watch, and we have live baseball to look forward to again in the future. That’s helping me to get through this time.
Check out this video from back in 2015, when several MLB players recited the famous speech.