Scalise back for congressional game a year after shooting

Scalise wore a Capitol Police cap to honour officers who worked the shooting last year, injuring gunman James Hodgkinson, who later died. Hodgkinson’s social media posts prior to the shooting suggest he targeted the Republican baseball team because of his political views.

Giving no mention to Hodgkinson, Scalise pronounced himself “grateful for the support and prayers” Thursday and added, “Let’s play some baseball.”

The House whip’s comeback was enough to leave Francis Kelly bursting with pride in the centerfield seats. “It’s just being an American — terror should not scare us,” the 41-year-old graphic designer said, sporting a necktie emblazoned with stars and stripes.

Still, the outpouring for Scalise obscured the daily realities of a capital city still bitterly divided on nearly every major policy debate, including how to regulate the weapons like those wielded on Scalise and his fellow Republicans a year ago in Alexandria, Virginia.

Scalise and other Republican team members said leading up to the game that he’s fine with where Congress is on gun laws, including after mass school shootings that have frequented headlines since last year’s near disaster.

There also were symbols of the so-called swamp that President Donald Trump and so many of the players have promised to drain. The game is a charity fundraiser, but the spectacle still involves private, guest-list parties, sponsored by corporate behemoths in the ballpark’s exclusive corners.

On the field, any victory Scalise celebrated had to come vicariously through his long friendship with fellow Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond. The former collegiate baseball player again starred on the mound and at the plate for the Democratic team, including a three-run, inside-the-park homerun.

The 2018 midterms loomed, as well. Many of the young staffers filling the stands wore the campaign shirts of their bosses whose fates in November will determine whether Republicans maintain their House and Senate majorities.

And, in the year of the #metoo movement, when record numbers of female candidates are running for Congress, California Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragan, a Democrat, and Utah Rep. Mia Love, a Republican, reached base and patrolled second base alongside the men that still dominate a Congress that is about four-fifths male.

“I grew up playing Tee-Ball & Little League & in high school I petitioned the principal to let me play baseball with the boys,” Barragan wrote on Twitter before the game, punctuating her remarks with #YesSheCan.

The baseball matchup, first played in 1909, typically raises hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for Washington-area charities. Last year, the game raised $1.5 million.

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Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP

Bill Barrow, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Scalise back for congressional game a year after shooting

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