When 78-year-old Dorothy Kovalcick Roark tossed out the first pitch at an amateur baseball game last spring, the catcher expected her to one- or two-hop it to the plate. Instead, she threw him a strike.

Mighty Dottie, who grew up in Sagamore, Armstrong County Pennsylvania, learned baseball barnstorming around western Pennsylvania as the only girl on her father John "Bounce" Kovalchick's baseball team. She still has a good arm.

In the 1940s, Dot Kovalchick's baseball skills were good enough to earn her a spot on the roster of the Fort Wayne Daisies in the All American Girls Baseball League, the first professional baseball league in history for women made famous by the move, "A League of Their Own."

Her name is etched on the All American Girls Professional Baseball League's plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

Baseball came easy for Kovalchick Roark, now a resident of Monroe, Louisiana, who has recently published a book, "Uncertain Destiny," detailing her early years and experiences in the All American Girls Baseball League.

The 300-plus page book is her autobiography of eight years of playing baseball, the biography of her immigrant father from Czechoslovakia recounting his struggle and his wish to have his life's story told, and the history of Sagamore through wars, the Roaring 20s, Prohibition, and the Great Depression.

"Whenever the immigrants came, everything was uncertain," she says of the title. In the epilogue, Kovalchick Roark wrote, "Much of the greatness of America is founded upon the dreams, courage, and determination of 19th century immigrant people drawn to these shores for many different reasons."

"It is a personal account of my family among these many people for whom coal mining became a way of life."

It was Kovalchick's destiny to play first base. "I always thought I had to be on first base," she said. "It was where all the action was. It was hard playing first base the entire game but people didn't want me to come out of the game. So I would move to right field later in the game."

The attention attracted by her presence on the field didn't go unnoticed by her father. "He would tell me my playing gave the team a chance tom play in more towns and play the best of the best," she said.

A men's professional baseball team once offered Kovalchick a tryout which was quickly called off by her mother.

"She said she had one daughter, and didn't want to see me killed on a ball diamond," she wore in the book. "Thus my opportunity to make history was ended."

Playing baseball gave her confidence, pride, self-satisfaction, strength and good health through her life, she said. "Everybody wants to know they've accomplished something, and baseball did this for me."

"Uncertain Destiny" can be ordered by mail at Dorothy K. Roark, 112 Maridale Drive, West Monroe, LA 71291, or by telephone at 318-323-8756. The price is $24.95 postpaid by check or money order. An autographed baseball card of Kovalchick Roark comes with the purchase.

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