Hardball on the Hill

Jim Roberts has produced a highly readable book dealing with the game in our cruelly deprived city from before the Civil War through his T-ball and Little League adventures in Great Falls, VA in the 1990s... Along the way, the author shows us a winning sense of humor...Mr. Roberts escorts the reader through the "mostly dismal" history of Washington's primary team, noting that the first Nationals (later known as the Senators) took the field in 1859, rather than when the American League was founded in 1901... There is a gentle chapter on one-time basball broadcaster Ronald Reagan that tells how he wrote Cleveland Indians start Bob Feller requesting an autographed ball for a boy who had been shot by his father, a mentally unstable World War II Hero Mr. Feller sent the ball. More than 30 years later, meeting with President Reagan at the White House, the Hall of Fame pitcher found that the Gipper rememembered the incident... Mr. Roberts interviews and writes movingly about two late area residents who played outside the major leagues, Lacy Ellerbe in the Negro Leagues and Claire Schillace Donahoe in the wartime All-American Girls Professional League. He relates how Mrs. Donahoe, irritated by a called strike, once hiked up her skirt and told the male umpire, "Would you please look at my knees." Said the cooperative ump: "I am - believe me I am."...Other topics include the annual Congressional baseball game (featuring suc former star athletes at Jim Bunning, Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell, Steve Largent...Mr Roberts also gives us a look at the Shenandoah Valley summer league and writes sensitively about Jimmy Trimble, who was a star pitcher at St. Albans School in the District and considered a likely major leaguer until he was killed on Iwo Jima near the end of World War II...In his introduction, Mr. Roberts describes watching the Montreal Expos play an exhibition game last spring in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, and noting a team press release in which pitcher where described as "lanceurs," catchers as "receveurs," outfielders as "voltigeurs" and coaches as "instruceurs." He adds, "What a disgrace. The capital of the United States - where baseball is the national pastime - doesn't."... Someday "this outrage" will be rectified. Until then, Mr. Roberts has given us a wonderful book that should at least partially assuage our pangs.