Female lawmakers and Capitol Hill reporters gathered Wednesday night for annual friendly faceoff over the softball diamond to lift money to fight breast cancers.
But the normally low-key Congressional Women’s Softball Game, thrust into your national spotlight after last week’s congressional baseball practice shooting, was brimming with spectators jamming the bleachers, people leadership mingling while using the teams and hordes of Capitol Police keeping a control within the event.
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The press team, aptly named you cannot News Babes, beat lawmakers 2-1.
Before the adventure, attendees held a short time of silence for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and others who have been injured during last week’s shooting.
Scalise is inside hospital after the gunman trained his rifle on Scalise together with other Republican lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists as being the group practiced with the annual congressional baseball game. Scalise, near death as he achieved a medical facility a while back, was upgraded to fair condition earlier Wednesday.
Crystal Griner, the Capitol Police man shot while in the ankle while wanting to defend lawmakers with the gunman, threw out your first do my part Wednesday night’s game.
Released from your hospital hours earlier, Griner was inside a wheelchair while getting rid of the pitch.
The catcher stepped far better Griner so she could get to the throw, but Griner waved at her to go back. Disappointed together first throw, which traveled to the left of the dish, Griner threw another pitch.
David Bailey, another Capitol Police office injured within the shootout, threw out your first pitch during last week’s congressional baseball game.
Griner, associated with Scalise’s security detail, had to undergo extensive restructuring of her leg right after the bullet tore through her ankle.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.) and a few other people not playing at the tables were spotted within the crowd.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and CNN’s Dana Bash, within the game announcers, worked the microphones.
The Congressional Women’s Softball Game, while attended annually by Capitol Hill loyalists, is typically a very subdued affair versus the annual congressional baseball game, and that is played at Nationals Park.
The women’s game is played for an artificial-turf football field on Capitol Hill fashioned in to a makeshift softball field.
This is a ninth annual congressional softball game, which raises money for any Young Survival Coalition, a nonprofit group that can help younger ladies informed you have breast cancers.
The game would have been a dramatic shift from previous years, with tickets selling out earlier inside the day and security everywhere, even using a nearby elementary school roof.
Lawmakers and press corps players has a selection of fun walk-up songs, along with the "Star Wars" theme song and "Pour Some Sugar on Me."
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), walking as much as John Denver’s "Take Me Home, Country Roads," said she was playing for Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who’s coping with surgery to manage kidney cancer.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Miami-area Republican retiring following this Congress, danced towards walk-up songs from her position in right field.
Players took a short time to honor Ros-Lehtinen prior to the first pitch, saying they’d miss her trash-talking reporters within the hallway within the weeks before the video game.
