Play Ball: GOP Aims to Keep Congressional Baseball Win Streak Alive
GOP team doesn't want amateur baseball player Anthony Fauci subbing in at pitcher
2024’s biggest partisan battle is just around the corner.
Forget this November’s election. This Wednesday, Republicans are looking to continue their recent run of dominance in the Congressional Baseball Game, which they decisively won 16-6 last year.
The GOP team hosted a scrimmage last week that was open to the press, where they were vanquished by a team of mostly senior citizens who have a recreational baseball team, 6-2. However, they made it clear that they are saving their best play for when it really matters. During the game, I caught up with the team’s coach, as well as current, former, and even injured players, to get their thoughts on what to expect for the big game, where 30,000 people are expected to attend and which will raise around $2 million for various charities.
WATCH: The Republicans’ opponent consistently walked Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio) in particular
Leadership in this game starts at the top, and Rep. Roger Williams (R., Texas), the team’s coach, has instilled an almost cult-like loyalty amongst his players. In contrast with the Congressional Soccer Game, where players put zero practice in, this team has been “working out here since March 1st when there was snow on the ground,” Williams noted to me. And practices are no joke. They start as early as 5:45 some mornings.
The Democrats, by contrast, don’t take the game seriously at all.
(READ: Incel Pro-Hamas Protesters Fail to Ruin GOP Win in Congressional Soccer Game)
According to one report, “practice for the Democratic team was supposed to start at 6:45 a.m. But it isn’t until 6:44 that three Democratic members mosey into the dugout. No one is stretched. No one is ready. A dog named Foxy is wandering around home plate.”
Playing in this game isn’t for the faint at heart–and it comes with varying degrees of danger. One year, a left-wing terrorist who had volunteered for Bernie Sanders showed up to a practice and attempted to assassinate the Republican Party’s team–an event that has been shockingly memory-holed.
Immediately after James Hodgkinson fired a hail of bullets at the Republicans, critically injuring Rep. Steve Scalise that year, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio) sprung into action and helped save the day. Wenstrup, a doctor by training, is also an Iraq War vet. He immediately went to work on minimizing Scalise’s blood loss in a situation that he said felt “like being back in a combat zone in Iraq.”
Seven years later, Wenstrup is in his final year in office, and the events of that day are unsurprisingly still front and center for him. “One of the coolest things for me is being able to see Steve Scalise out here, playing the game, not to be denied,” he told me. “So that’s a lot of fun for me, and to see him here.”
There are other lessons Wenstrup learned after years on the team, which go beyond how to save your colleagues from a left-wing terrorist. “Baseball is a frustrating game but it’s also a very cerebral game,” he observed. “Most people, if you don’t really know the game, you don’t always know how much thinking goes into it…that’s how Congress is supposed to be. Congress is a team thing. You’ve got to go out and reach out to your colleagues, you’ve got to work together to try and get things done.”
While he’s heading back to Ohio next year, he said that he “hope[s] to be back for the others in the future, maybe help out with the team, come by DC once in a while.” Importantly, Wenstrup has full confidence in Rep. Greg Steube (R., Fla.) at pitcher. Shortly before I caught up with the baseball game’s Most Valuable Doctor, Wenstrup had hauled another doctor, Anthony Fauci, before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. I asked him if he felt that Fauci, an amateur baseball player at best, should swap in for Steube if the team needs help.
“I’m going to go with Greg Steube. It’s not real close,” Wenstrup said.
This year, the injuries are far more routine. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.) took one too many reps in the batting cage before the scrimmage, leading to a knee injury. But, he spent part of the game scouting his team (“we’re looking really, really good actually. Good depth, good pitching. Our hitting has improved even over last year and the year prior”) and trashing the embattled chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to me.
While Huizenga is optimistic about playing this week, it’s worth noting that Tom Brady is the only athlete tied to Michigan who has thus-far been able to defeat Father Time, something Huizenga sounded resigned to. “A few of us are getting older, so the injuries kind of creep in, he lamented.”
That’s where one of the integral components to Williams’s success comes in. His PAC, called–unsurprisingly, RBI PAC–is “a way that we can put some of our resources to work and, frankly, support Republican candidates who run for Congress that can play baseball.” The results speak for themselves. His team thinks that this year’s group is even better than last year’s team.
As for the gameplay itself? The Republicans looked pretty good on the field. Williams noted that “Brad Wenstrup made some great plays on third base,” but the team’s MVP was arguably one of the few senators who showed up: Sen. Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.), who scored an inside-the-park home run. For Schmitt, the game is both fun and “motivation to get into a little better shape.”
It’s also a time for him to reflect. At one point, while he was posted up in the outfield, he said to Rep. Blake Moore (R., Utah) that “this is what I really wanted to do with my life, but somehow I ended up in the Senate.” A lot of House members have remarked over the years that the game has helped them work together with their colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but for Schmitt, the game is also an opportunity to get to know his colleagues across the Capitol.
“It’s been good to get to know a lot of the House members that I otherwise probably wouldn’t spend as much time with,” he noted. “When you’re out here at 5:45, 6:00 in the morning, you kind of share some of those experiences.”
Schmitt and his fellow Midwestern senator, Joni Ernst, are expected to be some of the GOP’s stars this week. And he practiced like he hopes to play. “The sheer fact that we made Eric Schmitt round the bases and hit an inside the park home run in a practice game tells you how much we care,” former Rep. Rodney Davis noted to me.
The game itself is so much fun that it has some congressional veterans itching to get back on the field. Davis, whose play at catcher was legendary in recent years, told me that the baseball game “is the one event that would make me think about running for Congress again. It’s hands down the best thing that I was a part of. It actually led to more bipartisan relationships than I think I ever would have had.”
The Illinois Republican waxed nostalgic about one of his favorite games, back in 2016, which was “the first game we won against Cedric Richmond in 2016[. It] was one for the record books,” with Republican Rep. Tom Rooney hitting a home run off fellow Floridian Patrick Murphy. “It was the only time we beat Cedric Richmond,” the Democrats’ legendary player who quit Congress to take a job in the Biden White House.
As is the case with all sporting events, however, all good things must come to an end. “As soon as the game is over, I don’t want to run again,” Davis said.