Phil Gingrey: “I thank Representative LaTourette and my colleagues from Ohio and Iowa, as obviously this is their native son, and to…”

“I thank Representative LaTourette and my colleagues from Ohio and Iowa, as obviously this is their native son, and to hear them talk about Bullet Bob. I, like so many of the male Members of this body in particular growing up in the early fifties had one of these invaluable collections of baseball cards and almost a complete collection for each team. Right at the top of the stack for the Cleveland Indians was, of course, Bob Feller. I, later on, many years later in fact, met my wife. We married 36 years ago. And to tell you the thrill it was when I found out that her dad, Bill Ayers, who died in 1980 of a heart attack, was also a professional baseball player, in fact, a major league baseball player. During those years I had an opportunity to pepper Bill with baseball questions. He was originally an Atlanta Cracker and had signed with the Atlanta Crackers when he was 19 years old. But listen to some of these similarities between Bullet Bob Feller and my father-in-law Bill Ayers. Of course, Bob Feller was a Hall of Fame baseball player, and my father-in-law spent, I think, a year and a half in the majors, playing for the New York Giants under Leo Durocher. They were the exact same age, almost. Bob Feller born in November of 1918; my father-in-law, August of 1918. They both served in the military; interrupted a professional career.…”