DOUBLE VISION : Robertson Twins Would Trade Places Anywhere but on the Softball Field

Dawn and Karen Robertson, seniors at El Toro High School, always have taken advantage of the fact that they are identical twins.

Because their voices are so similar, they’ve sometimes answered the phone pretending to be the other, just long enough to get some juicy bit of gossip or information.

Once, as a gag in junior high school, the twins switched classes for an entire day, and none of their teachers knew.

But certain parts of their lives, such as their positions on the El Toro softball team, are not interchangeable.

It might be good for a few laughs on some unsuspecting umpire, but you could never get Dawn, a pitcher for the Chargers, and Karen, the team’s catcher, to switch positions.

“Everyone thinks catching is dangerous, and they wonder why you’d want to be back there catching all those fast pitches,” Karen said. “But you’re behind the batter. There’s nothing to worry about. There’s no way you’d get me to stand that close and pitch to someone with a bat in her hands.”

Dawn has the same sentiments toward catching.

“I could never catch,” she said. “No way. I wouldn’t even know how.”

The lines don’t end there. Dawn and Karen may look and sound alike, but they differ greatly in personality and interests.

Dawn is outgoing and gregarious and has a lot of friends at school. Karen likes to keep to herself. She doesn’t like big crowds. She socializes more with her teammates on the Orange County Batbusters, an American Softball Assn. team.

Dawn loves to shop. Karen hates shopping.

Dawn enjoys going out on the weekends. Karen would rather stay home with a good book.

What is Dawn’s opinion of reading?

“Ugh.”

But even with such differences, the twins have what they call an excellent relationship.

“We’re really close, but I don’t know why,” Karen said. “Twins have a certain bond. They can be complete opposites and still get along well. Maybe it’s because we were in the uterus together.”

Don’t laugh. Karen wrote a school paper on that subject and received an A.

Karen is the rock in the relationship. Dawn goes to Karen for advice a lot more than Karen goes to Dawn.

“She’s blunt,” Dawn said. “She doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, she just tells you the way it is.”

That’s the way some of their conversations are on the softball field. If Karen doesn’t think Dawn is pitching up to her capabilities, she’ll let her know.

“I say stuff to her that I’d never say to another pitcher,” Karen said. “If it was someone else, I wouldn’t get mad, because it’s part of the game. But with her, I do.”

Dawn doesn’t seem to mind. She trusts her sister’s judgment. After all, Karen has been catching her since they began playing softball together in bobby sox. They’ve started on the Chargers’ varsity team for four years.

“I could probably catch her with my eyes shut,” said Karen, who calls all the pitches. “I know the way she thinks, and she knows the way I think.”

The combination has worked well. Dawn has a 10-2 record with 128 strikeouts and an 0.33 earned-run average. She has thrown three no-hitters, two one-hitters and seven shutouts this season to help El Toro to an 8-0 record in the South Coast League (16-5 overall).

Dawn is not overpowering. She’s more of a finesse pitcher who has excellent command of the strike zone with all five of her pitches--fastball, curve, changeup, rise and drop. In 86 innings, she has walked just 13.

“She doesn’t throw the same pitch twice,” Charger Coach Jim Daugherty said. “I’ve seen so many batters with pained looks on their faces (because they can’t hit her). She’s very crafty, artistic.”

Dawn thinks Karen deserves much of the credit for her success, because she sets up the hitters and decides what pitches will be thrown. Neither of Dawn’s losses this year came when Karen was catching.

Karen missed most of the nonleague season while she recovered from shoulder surgery. She had an inflamed ligament removed in February but has returned to catch all of the league games and hit around .300 as El Toro’s cleanup batter.

She had an RBI single in the bottom of the eighth inning Friday to lift the Chargers to a 2-1 win over Laguna Hills.

Karen already has signed a national letter of intent to play softball at Texas A&M; next year, but Dawn will remain in California. She has narrowed her choices to United States International University in San Diego and San Jose State.

So, the twin pitcher-catcher team will break up, and Dawn and Karen will have to divide the huge wardrobe they’ve accumulated together over the years. Neither is looking forward to the day they must separate.

“I can’t even imagine what it will be like without Dawn around,” Karen said. “Next year is going to be really hard.”

Added Dawn: “We’ll have a huge phone bill.”