Brett Friedlander Shares His Book, Chasing Moonlight
On North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, October 4, at 5 PM

A single line of type in the Baseball Encyclopedia.

One major league game.

A career batting average of .000.

But the name—Moonlight Graham—suggested a hidden story. So did the circumstances. A North Carolina native, Graham lived out his life in one of the coldest places in North America, as if he'd been exiled. "Let's get up and go to Chisholm, Minnesota," author W. P. Kinsella told his wife, "and find out about him." And so began the ascent of Dr. Archibald W. "Moonlight" Graham from baseball footnote to cultural icon. In the novel Shoeless Joe, Kinsella described a selfless doctor who quit baseball to serve a remote mining community. His readers were intrigued. So were Kevin Costner and Burt Lancaster, who played Graham in Field of Dreams, the adaptation of Kinsella's novel. For millions, Graham became a symbol of broken dreams and second chances.

In the book Chasing Moonlight, Brett Friedlander and Robert Reising prove that truth is more interesting than fiction. The real-life Moonlight Graham didn't play just a half-inning for John McGraw's New York Giants, as depicted in Field of Dreams. Neither did he retire from baseball after his lone major league appearance. Rather, he became a fan favorite during a noteworthy professional career, all the while juggling baseball with medical residencies. Graham's life apart from baseball was just as eventful. He was a physician who sat with patients through epidemics and wrote a blood pressure study that was required reading at medical schools worldwide. But he was also a failed inventor and small-town character who built perpetual-motion machines and filled his home with tennis balls and empty oatmeal boxes. W.P. Kinsella rescued Moonlight Graham from the scrap heap. Field of Dreams made him famous. Now, Chasing Moonlight establishes him as a man.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Sunday, October 4, at 5 PM, Fayetteville’s Brett Friedlander shares his well-rounded portrait of a truly remarkable man of both sports and medicine.

Brett Friedlander has spent 25 years as a professional writer, earning 22 national, regional, and state awards. His honors include a 2007 NC Press Association Award in the sports feature category for two chapters from Chasing Moonlight. He is a reporter for the Wilmington Star-News and lives in Fayetteville, NC.

Don’t miss DG Martin’s all-new interview with Brett Friedlander on North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, October 4, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

During the 26-week season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests will also include:  John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed (Holy Smoke), Justin Catanoso (My Cousin the Saint), Todd Johnson (The Sweet By and By), Michael Walden (North Carolina in the Connected Age), Barbara Fredrickson (Positivity), Michael Davis (Street Gang), Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), Howard Lee (The Courage to Lead), Marianne Gingher (Adventures in Pen Land), Dan Barefoot (Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices), John Hart (The Last Child) and Elizabeth Edwards (Resilience).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to the Bookwatch on Facebook, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.