Jesse Helms? Jim Hunt? Sam Ervin? Josephus Daniels? Thomas Wolfe? Hugh McColl? James B. Duke? Michael Jordan? Terry Sanford?

There are lots of candidates. Sorry if I left off your favorite.

My nominee would be Frank Porter Graham, the beloved president of the University of North Carolina in the 1930s and '40s.

His unsuccessful campaign in 1950 to hold his U.S. Senate seat is still a milestone that defines North Carolina political divides almost 60 years later.

On the other hand, Frank Graham's older brother, Archie, was virtually unknown outside the small Minnesota town where he was a highly respected physician.

Ironically, years after his death, Archie Graham has become better known than his famous brother.

What happened? A movie called "Field of Dreams," in which the ghosts of former baseball players get a chance to play again. One of them, Moonlight Graham, had played one inning of major league baseball before becoming a small town doctor. On the Field of Dreams he got a second chance to get a hit. But, in a memorable scene, he lost that chance when he crossed the line and used his doctor's skill to save a little girl who was in danger of dying. As a result of this memorable scene, millions of moviegoers, who never heard of Frank Graham, will never forget Moonlight.

Few people know that Moonlight was a real person or that he and Frank were brothers.

This lack of knowledge is good reason for us to celebrate a new biography of the real Doctor Archie "Moonlight" Graham, "Chasing Moonlight: The True Story of Field of Dreams Doc Graham," by Brett Friedlander and Robert Reising.

Like the Moonlight Graham character in the movie, the real Archie Graham was a small town Minnesota doctor who had played an inning or two for the New York Giants.

But there is much more to the story of Doc Graham, one that is full of facts based on the research of former UNC-Pembroke professor Reising and told with the zest of a front-page sports story, thanks to North Carolina sportswriter Friedlander.

Like Frank, Archie grew up in Fayetteville and Charlotte, where their father, Alexander Graham, was superintendent of schools in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Both boys played baseball at UNC.

Archie combined his studies and college sports with professional baseball, playing first for the Charlotte Hornets in 1902 and then every summer until 1908, including the day of June 29, 1905, when he played in the outfield against the Brooklyn team that later became known as the Dodgers.

For most of his professional career Archie was a popular star player for the minor league team in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He juggled medical training with baseball, hoping for another chance in the majors.

When it came time to practice medicine full time, why didn't Archie come back to North Carolina? According to Friedlander and Reising, the better question is why didn't he stay in Scranton, where he was well known and very popular. Archie had developed a lung condition that would cause him trouble the rest of his life. The smokestack air in Scranton was bad for his health. He needed to live where the air was clean, a place like Chishelm, Minn., where Archie settled in 1909.

The "rest of the story," how Archie won the hearts of a small town, is one that Friedlander and Reising tell with warmth and compelling detail.

D.G. Martin will talk about this column on WCHL-1360 at 8:20 a.m. with Ron Stutts. His regular program, "Who's Talking," airs at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.