Politicians hope ballgame could inch nation closer
WASHINGTON — Members of Congress played baseball at Nationals Park on Thursday with their minds on a wounded colleague and the hope that a few innings, played by Republicans and Democrats who usually revel in bare-knuckle politics, could possibly play even a small part in healing a bitterly divided nation.
Democrats won 11-2. But the players were vying for something bigger. Maybe, ventured Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, the Republican team’s third base coach, Americans will “look back in history and say that day as bad as it was, we began to build our country back and people are talking like people, finally.”
Williams, sporting a purple cast that matched his Texas Christian University baseball jersey, was back on the field hitting grounders to his Republican teammates a day after a gunman opened fire on a field of Republican lawmakers shagging fly balls during an early-morning practice in Alexandria, Va.
Thursday, they and fellow lawmakers vowed the game, played for charity, would go on.
“This baseball game is one of the few bipartisan events that still exists and I don’t know of one Republican or one Democrat who isn’t anxious to get out there and compete,” said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who was uninjured after diving into the home dugout for cover under a hail of gunfire on Wednesday. “People need to know that Congress is not always the fighting you see on cable.”
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., remained in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the hip. Some members of Congress said they had mixed feelings about the country’s ability to mourn and move on, a reaction borne out of repeated acts of gun violence. Hours after the shooting in Virginia, three victims and a gunman were killed at a shooting at a UPS facility in San Francisco.
“I’m glad we are showing resiliency after the shooting, but I also wonder what it says about us that we’re able to move on from a mass shooting like this so easily,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, DConn., who plays on the Democratic team and who championed gun control legislation in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. “We’ve become normalized to it.”