Salinger and Ray travel to Chisholm, Minnesota, to discover what they can about Archie Moonlight Graham. He receives a message telling him to "go the distance" (96). While watching the game, Ray receives yet another mysterious message about a baseball player named Moonlight Graham who played for the New York Giants in 1905. At the Boston Red Sox game, Ray is surprised to learn that Salinger has no love for baseball and that the interview in which he had talked of his love for baseball was a fake one. When Ray reaches New Hampshire, he persuades the writer, through an act akin to a quasi-kidnapping, to accompany him to Fenway Park. The writer has not seen a live baseball game for over twenty-five years. Ray decides to pay a visit to the writer and take him to a baseball game at Fenway Park in Boston. Also, the fact that Salinger had created characters named Ray Kinsella and Richard Kinsella, the name of Ray’s twin brother, makes Ray feel that his connection with Salinger goes beyond their common love of baseball. Salinger who, Ray believes, is a devout baseball fan, based on a newspaper article Ray once read. Ray interprets this announcement as an instruction to seek the reclusive writer J.D.
Next, Ray hears another announcement that says, “Ease his pain” (32). All eight Black Sox baseball players, called the “Unlucky Eight,” now appear in their vivid forms, except the right fielder and the catcher, who remain shadowy. It takes Ray three baseball seasons to finish building the entire field. He promises to finish building the whole field. Ray talks to Shoeless Joe and tells him about his reverence for the game of baseball. He builds the left field and one night, the baseball players, including Shoeless Joe, appear on the field. However, all the other players, except Shoeless Joe, are shadowy distortions of their real appearances. He interprets the announcement as an instruction to build a baseball field in one of the cornfields at his farm. Ray believes that the "he" that the voice refers to is Shoeless Joe Jackson, who gained notoriety for his role in an infamous bribery scandal that marred the 1919 World Series.
Shoeless Joe begins with the narrator, Ray Kinsella, describing how one day, while sitting on the verandah of his home, he heard the voice of a ballpark announcer telling him, "If you build it, he will come" (1).
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