"My father's name was John Kinsella. It's an Irish name. He was born in North Dakota in 1896 and never saw a big city until he came back from France in 1918. He settled in Chicago where he quickly learned to live and die with the White Sox. Died a little when they lost the 1919 World Series, died a lot the following summer when 8 members of the team were accused of throwing that series. He played in the minors for a year or two but nothing ever came of it. Moved to Brooklyn in '35, married mom in '38 and was already an old man working at the naval yards when I was born in 1952. My name's Ray Kinsella. Mom died when I was three and I suppose dad did the best he could. Instead of Mother Goose, I was put to bed at night with stories of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the great "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. Dad was a Yankees fan then so, of course, I rooted for Brooklyn. But in '58 the Dodgers moved away and we had to find other things to fight about. We did. And when it came time to go to college, I picked the farthest one away from home I could find. [Ray is seen on the University of California, Berkeley campus] This of course drove him right up the wall which, I suppose, was the point. Officially my major was English but, really, it was the '60s. I marched, I smoked some grass, I tried to like sitar music, and I met Annie. The only thing we had in common was that she came from Iowa and I had once heard of Iowa. After graduation we moved to the mid-west and stayed with her family as long as we could; almost a full afternoon. Annie and I got married in June of '74. Dad died that fall. A few years later, Karen was born. She smelled weird but, we loved her anyway. Then Annie got the crazy idea that she could talk me into buying a farm. I'm 36 years old, I love my family, I love baseball and I'm about to become a farmer. But until I heard the voice, I'd never done a crazy thing in my whole life."