Chapter 6

I could not remember who had been the last president to throw out the first ball at a Washington Senators' baseball game. I had to go look it up and then TV and the newspapers were full of old pictures showing Roosevelt and Kennedy and Harry Truman, who could throw with either hand, doing the job. And all of them smiling and obviously enjoying it, all the way back to Taft. I probably was trying to forget about the last guy that did it. I did remember the last game at the ballpark, the one that never ended and went in the books as a forfeit.

What used to be called D. C. Stadium might have been long past its prime but old-timers still thought of it as the new field that replaced Clark Griffith's rickety park that was way downtown next to a bakery. For opening day Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium was covered with red, white and blue bunting, and all the freshly-refinished seats were filled, including the one in the upper deck still painted white to mark the spot Frank Howard had hit a generation before. Every politician in the region must have been there plus the Marine Band, an all-service color guard of three men and two women plus a bunch of Scouts, both male and female as well as various colors, with a huge American flag. We even had a Navy jet fly-over and some rather anemic fire works during the "Star Spangled Banner."

I did not get in the game, but I certainly enjoyed watching, and the best thing was that we won, beat the Phillies six to two with three home runs, two by "the mighty McGinty," and sent most people home happy, even the Secret Service that spirited the Chief Executive away after the sixth inning.

Then, after a day off, we began a streak of losses that mounted to six in a row before we went out on our first road trip. "Escaped," one reporter called it. On the plane, I wrote my kid.