By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As partisan standoffs in the U.S. Congress risk a government shutdown and debt default, lawmakers take a timeout on Wednesday for one of Washington’s few remaining bipartisan traditions: their annual baseball game.
The 2021 contest between the Democrats and Republicans, an event that typically raises over $1 million for charity, will be played at the stadium normally used by Major League Baseball’s Washington Nationals.
In 1909, Democrats and Republicans began the tradition of donning gloves and playing each other once a year. Last year’s game was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which also delayed this year’s game until near the end of baseball season.
“This builds relationships, and creates a timeout from some of the harshest, I think, partisanship atmospheres I’ve seen in Congress. So I think in fact it’s probably needed now more than ever,” Republican Representative Kevin Brady said ahead of the game on Wednesday.
Brady, 66, said he will be playing second base and batting second, “which at my age is really exciting”.
The two sides are tied for past wins. The Democrats won’t have former Morehouse College pitcher Cedric Richmond on the mound as in recent years. He has left his old job as a Louisiana congressman to work at President Joe Biden’s White House.
The Democrats’ pitcher this year, Representative Pete Aguilar, tried to lower expectations ahead of the game. “The last time I started on the mound I was 8 years old,” he said in an email.
The lead batter for the Republicans will be House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, who nearly died in 2017 after he was shot at a baseball practice for the game that year.
But there will also be some new players on both sides, including Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. Ossoff could be a good addition for the Democrats, as he is just 34 years old, got rave reviews for his ultimate Frisbee performance in high school and played third base for the South London Pirates in the British Baseball Federation while he attended the London School of Economics.
A new player on the Republican side is Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a firebrand ally of former President Donald Trump and fan of the CrossFit training regimen who has sported a “Trump won” mask around Capitol Hill.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, who will take the field on Wednesday evening, was asked whether playing against people who don’t believe Biden won the presidential election would make it difficult to have a bipartisan moment.
He said he would keep the focus on the fact that the game was raising money for charity. “Hopefully people will leave the politics under the Capitol dome,” he said.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Scott Malone and Cynthia Osterman)
