Shoeless Joe

Ray, Salinger and Archie Graham travel together through Iowa. They stop at Minneapolis to explore a baseball field at night. Later, while going toward Iowa City, Ray stops at the Bishop Cridge Friendship Center, where his friend, ninety-one-year-old Eddie Scissons, lives. Ray invites Eddie to his farm to show him the baseball field. Ray has received another message while at Metropolitan station, in Bloomington: “with the ambiguousness of a true oracle, the voice spoke of sharing and betrayal in a way that I knew meant Eddie Scissons” (150).

When they reach the farm, Ray finds that his twin brother Richard has come to pay him a visit. Ray has not seen his twin brother for over twenty years. Richard works as a barker for a carnival that is passing through Iowa City. Annie tells Ray that Mark has been getting more and more aggressive about buying the farm. At night, Ray finally meets Richard, who tells him that he is seeing a woman named Gypsy. Ray takes his other friends for a tour of the baseball field at the farm. He knows he will only be able to give the answers to their questions about the baseball field and Shoeless Joe, when the magic at the baseball farm unfolds once more.

In the meantime, he receives a call from his brother-in-law, Mark, who tells him that he has the legal right to foreclose on the farm if Ray does not make his mortgage payments. Mark and his business partner, Bluestein, are planning to buy the farms in the area and modernize them by using computers. Ray can visualize what they want to do, as “farmlands will roll the barbed wire up on giant wooden spools, the staples crying like shot animals as they are wrenched from the wood” (165).

When the magic on the baseball field finally happens again, there is a new player on the field, among the others. The new player is the catcher for the White Sox. His name is Johnny Kinsella, and is Ray's father. However, Ray cannot gather the strength to face his father. On the field, Moonlight Graham finally gets his wish with Ray watching and feeling, “as if there is a hot-water bottle pushed against my heart as I watch Moonlight Graham take his seat in the dugout” (174).

Salinger offers financial help to Ray to help him retain his farm, but Ray refuses. Later, when the game is going on, Mark and Bluestein pay a visit to Ray. Mark tells Ray that Eddie has been lying about playing for the Chicago Cubs. Mark ridicules Eddie in front of everyone, much to Eddie’s embarrassment. However, Ray has known this fact for a long time. He tells Ray that, “Worse men than Eddie have been forgiven by better men than me” (187). Not long after this, Eddie gets his wish fulfilled when he pitches for the Chicago Cubs on Ray's magical field, even though he does not perform well. Eddie tells Ray to gather the courage to speak to his father, Johnny Kinsella. Shortly after, Eddie passes away and is buried at Ray’s baseball field—his last wish.

 Mark and Bluestein arrive at the farm and claim that they have legal temporary custody of the acreage. Ray tries to drive them off the farm at gunpoint, but the confrontation ends abruptly when Karin, Ray's young daughter, takes a nasty fall and is knocked unconscious. While everyone is at a loss about how to deal with this medical emergency, young Moonlight Grahammorphs into older Doc Graham and saves Karin’s life.

Salinger tells Ray that Ray can pay off his debts and keep the farm by making the baseball field an attraction for tourists. Just as he is suggesting this plan to Ray, cars filled with visitors begin to arrive at the farm. That night, Ray finds the courage to speak to his father: “I feel like a schoolchild commanded to an audience with the principal”(203). Richard, Ray’s twin brother, who has been unable to see what the others could see until then, speaks to his father as well.