A GOP Landslide (at RFK, No Less)
Congressional Baseball Game Is All for a Good Cause, Namely Winning
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Friday, June 24, 2005
Bless those shiny new scoreboards at RFK Stadium for enduring such a pounding Thursday night.
First inning: Rep. Melvin Watt of North Carolina stands on the mound for the Democrats. Walking to the plate is Rep. Zach Wamp, a Tennessean who founded the Congressional Fitness Caucus. He's hauling a 34-inch Copperhead -- an aluminum slugger patterned out of snakeskin.
So Wamp and Watt meet again. Remember the late-night Terri Schiavo debate on the House floor? Watt had asked where all the compassion was when he tried to rally Congress over the issue of unequal medical care for African Americans. Wamp said the Schiavo issue wasn't about politics, but "life and death."
No words are needed now. The Republican raises his bat, sways it a little.
The ump crouches behind the plate.
Watt eyes his catcher. Now the windup.
Here comes the inside pitch.
WHIFF! Wamp takes the biggest cut of his life and misses! Democrats delight!
But then the real hitting spree begins. Soon it's all over, once again, for the moderate left.
If there has been some sort of announcement over the loudspeakers during the 44th annual congressional baseball game that the whole thing is for a good cause -- that a literacy council and the Boys and Girls Club would benefit -- then nobody can hear it in partisanland. Blue-hearted Dems in the stands are too busy booing Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) as he steps to the plate. Or Republicans -- man, woman and child -- are jeering the ump when the Dems get a close call at first base, even though the GOP was up by six runs.
In hardball, the sweetest victory is one of utter demolition. Anyone who emphasizes the all-in-fun "charity" in this event is either from PR or last year's losing squad (GOP 14, Dems 7). This game is no company softball folly: MVP plaques hang in the House gymnasium. The losers (historically members of the House minority) do not get a trophy. Instead they must shuffle about the Hill, absorbing the knowledge that not only has America dissed them, but worse, they can't even field a grounder.
Players try to mitigate potential embarrassment by gathering for their last practice Wednesday morning at RFK.
