Much like a one-hit wonder on the FM dial, we have glorified even the most obscure professional baseball players because they have lived the dream of actually being on the field, even if for only an at-bat or a half-inning in center field.

You may or may not have heard of Eddie Gaedel. At 3'7, he is the shortest person ever to play in a major-league game. In a stunt in 1951, Bill Veeck, owner of the St. Louis Browns, sent Gaedel to bat. He instructed Gaedel to stand at the plate and not swing and Gaedel promptly walked on four pitches.

And while Gaedel never again appeared in a game, he went down in the Guiness Book of World Records as the shortest person ever to play in the major leagues. His picture is surely somewhere in Cooperstown.

In the movie "Field of Dreams," the character of Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham is shown as a tender-hearted old man who once played in one inning of a major-league game but never got to bat and never figured into a defensive play.

"It was like coming this close to your dreams, and then watch them brush past you like a stranger in a crowd," Burt Lancaster, as Graham, says of his moment in the majors.

So Ray Kinsella, Costner's character, brings Graham to Iowa and gives him the chance to live his fantasy by playing on the aptly-named Field of Dreams with his baseball heroes.

In the movie, Graham's character shows the childish quality of baseball. It is not childish in a negative way but rather, shows idealism and innocence.