Play Ball

An enjoyable sports story for all ages, this comic traces a high school girl’s struggle to join a boys’ baseball team. Freckle-faced Dashiell Brody was good at softball in her private girls’ school; now that she’s moved to another city with her mother and older sister and they must enroll in public school, she wants to play the real game, despite stereotypical resistance from school administrators and some jocks. Nothing that happens in DeFillippis and Weir’s script is especially surprising, and Lewis’s b&w art is just energetic enough to do the job. As the action continues, though, the characters become more richly complicated than they first appeared—for example, when Dashiell yearns for her father to rejoin the family to sit in the crowd at one of her games, or when her taciturn coach slowly begins seeing her as a real member of the team. On the whole, it’s a pleasant, feel-good performance. (Apr.)