The simplest data tells/inspires a story
A colleague (Ed) walked into my office today saying something about “becoming a doctor” when he came through the door. Slow on the uptake, I needed the explanation that this was a reference to Field of Dreams, specifically the scene where Burt Lancaster, playing Moonlight Graham had to leave the eternal youth of the field to save Kevin Costner’s kid who was choking on a hot dog. All of which brought to mind the tidbit I had to tell Ed: Moonlight Graham was a real player and the story was true!
I always assumed that W. P. Kinsella, the author of Shoeless Joe the novel on which the movie was based, was a baseball nerd who browsed the sadly no-longer needed Baseball Encyclopedia and found that one line of data that inspired a story.
I owned a copy of Baseball Encyclopedia and got goosebumps when it occurred to me to look up Moonlight Graham and see if he really existed. There it was. This guy got to put on a uniform, get on the official scorecard, maybe even took the field, but didn’t get to bat. Out of that line of zeroes, a string of non-data, really, Kinsella imagined a whole potential person and life story. Dig it.