Late Monday afternoon, while Washington’s spending bill languished in the Republican House and the federal government drifted towards shutdown, Tim Solobay, Democrat of the Pennsylvania Senate, was in right field in the City Island stadium, doing side lunges.
He was wearing an orange Team West jersey that sorted him by chamber and district number (SOLOBAY, S-46), along with white crew socks and black-and-white Adidas trainers that looked to have been preserved intact from the 1980s.
The first-ever Capitol All-Stars softball game was slated to start at 5:30. It was 4:15.
“I got here at 4 o’clock,” Solobay said. “I was going to go to the batting cages, but they were closed.”
The game would mix members of both parties in the House and Senate in a seven-inning match in Metro Bank Park. Lynn Deary, president of Pennsylvania Legislative Services, was inspired by the Congressional Softball League, which has been organizing casual games in D.C. since 1971. Deary had partnered with the Pennsylvania Cable Network to organize the event, with proceeds benefitting Feeding Pennsylvania and Hunger-Free Pennsylvania, the state’s two largest nonprofits for hunger relief.
Mike Stack (Democrat, S-5) walked over, wearing a backwards ball cap and track pants. Stack, who serves Philadelphia, had been assigned to Team West to help keep a balanced roster. “Those guys, they look like they got their shit together,” he said. He was referring to Team East.
The senators started lobbing a softball. Mike Brubaker (Republican, S-36) approached, his jersey tucked into his blue jeans. “You guys are lookin’ good,” he said. While Solobay rolled grounders, the speakers boomed the Bangles. “Walk like—an Egyp-shun.”
In the Team West dugout, technicians for PCN set up for the broadcast. A communications triumvirate—Bob Caton, spokesman for the House Democrats, Steve Miskin, spokesman for the House Republicans, and Erik Arneson, the communications and policy director for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi—would be calling the game on live TV.
“They are three really funny people,” Corinna Wilson, PCN’s vice president of programming, had said before the game. She estimated that grouping them for the broadcast would make for lively commentary. She was correct. Late in the game, when Jim Christiana (Republican, H-15) snagged a Pileggi fly ball, Arneson remarked that it was “unfortunately the end of a promising legislative career.”
Rob Teplitz (Democrat, S-15) emerged from the locker room, his jersey tucked into knee-length khaki shorts, his phone clipped to his belt. Paul Simon’s “Call Me Al” had overtaken the stadium air. “A man walks down the street, he says, why am I soft in the middle now…”
Lawmakers and cameras begin to fill the field, in about equal proportion. The event was about hunger, of course, but it was also about the legislators. Brubaker, the co-chair of the Legislative Hunger Caucus—“He feels personally responsible that no person goes hungry in the state of Pennsylvania,” Wilson said—posed with a bat for Fox News. “This is a really exciting day for me,” he said to the lens.
Farther off, in the nearly empty stands above the Team East dugout, a group of suits waved down Christiana, who had entered the ballpark with Tommy Sankey (Republican, H-74). They wanted to talk anesthesiology. Were they lobbying? There wasn’t time to find out. “One of us has gotta be loose. We’re the dynamic duo,” Sankey said. He dashed down the staircase towards the locker rooms.
After group photos, the teams lined up on the baselines. The First Lady, Susan Corbett, said a few words. “We really love you for being here,” she said. “Good luck to all the team members. We’ll see you coming to work tomorrow—” She did a brief pantomime of a sore, stiff lawmaker. Then she headed for the stands behind home plate, where she sat a few seats in front of her security detail.
Eddie Pashinski (Democrat, H-121) took the mound for the national anthem. The crowd fell reverentially quiet for the color guard, and then Pashinski, unamplified, gestured for a mike. “Anybody can do it with a microphone,” said Larry Farnese (Democrat, S-1). As Pashinski crooned, the crowd murmured with him, their voices small and predominantly soprano.
“And the hoooome—of the—braaaave,” Pashinski sang. A pair of helicopters screamed directly over the stadium, flying north. It was so well timed, more than one spectator observed, it could not possibly have been planned by the legislature.
The first inning’s fielding was rocky. The softball, plump and white, moved slowly, but so did the lawmakers. In the second at-bat, Lisa Boscola (Democrat, S-18) chopped one over Solobay’s head. Jake Wheatley (Democrat, H-19) recovered it, but overthrew to first base, and Boscola advanced. On the next hit, Solobay stopped the ball short but, in the process, tumbled forward and rolled onto his back.
Later, the 10-year-old daughter of Sheryl Delozier (Republican, H-88) helped to explain the abundance of errors. The lawmakers hadn’t had time to practice. “They were late out of caucus,” she said.
Team East fared no better. In the first inning, a double error along the third baseline gave up a run. In the second, John Yudichak (Democrat, S-14) fell to a questionable third-strike call. (“No way,” Brubaker keened from the sidelines. “Nooo way.”) Daylin Leach (Democrat, S-17), who had spent the entire inning on deck, test-swinging two bats, also failed to deliver. “Daylin, you’re due,” Farnese said. “You’re due.” Leach popped an infield fly for an easy out.
On an upper level, behind the glass wall of the press box, John Baer and Carmen Finestra announced the game over the stadium loudspeakers. Baer, a veteran political reporter with the Philadelphia Daily News, is known for his caustic take on the statehouse. (His blog is titled “Baer Growls.”) He and Finestra, a writer and producer for the ‘90s sitcom “Home Improvement,” have been friends since childhood. They peppered their game-calling with good-natured jabs. (“Due to the pending bill to reduce the size of the state legislature, it has been decided that any representative that does not get a hit tonight will have their seat eliminated.”)
Behind home plate—just about everyone was behind home plate—sat Lori Hoffmaster, the executive director of Channels Food Rescue, a hunger-relief nonprofit on N. 6th Street, in Uptown Harrisburg. Channels, Hoffmaster explained, is “kind of non-traditional.” Rather than store food in a warehouse, they collect food nearing or at expiration and deliver it on the same day. They also run a culinary school for “people who need a second chance,” which Hoffmaster described as the “largest commercial kitchen on the eastern seaboard.”
By the bottom of the fourth, Team East was trailing, 8-1. Errors had persisted, particularly around first base. “It makes me not feel so bad about when I played softball,” Hoffmaster said. Did Channels have a favorite? “We’re Central PA, so we’re rooting for everyone,” said Megan Coble, Channels’ development coordinator.
By the sixth, the Team West dugout, drunk on their lead and, perhaps, on the beer donated by Dick Yuengling, had started chanting. As Jerry Stern (Republican, H-80), the tourism chair, stepped up, Jeff Pyle (Republican, H-60) gave a yeasty rendition of the “Charge!” organ theme: “Na na na nah, na nahhh! Chair!”
Christiana, who had come wearing eye black, spit sunflower seeds into the dirt.
It came time for Team West’s captain, Speaker of the House Sam Smith (Republican, H-66), to slug. “Sam bats right, throws right and votes right,” Baer observed. Smith’s roster stuck out of the back pocket of his jeans. He had not come to run. “Patience, patience,” Christiana advised. Smith tapped the ball into the pitcher’s glove, tipped his hat to the crowd, took the roster out of his pocket and starting calling out positions for the seventh.
“Sam, was that a bunt or what?” someone in the crowd called.
Smith smiled, hands on his hips. “I’ve been busy.”
The game concluded in the seventh, after a diving catch from Christiana (“That was a trap!” someone in the crowd yelled. “Booo!”) and a last, uneventful at-bat from Team East. Greg Vitali (Democrat, H-166) ended the game on deck, his jersey tails dangling, as they had all game, past the ends of his rather suggestively cut shorts. “Someone tell Vitali to put some pants on,” Pyle said. It was the last comment this reporter heard before the final out.
On the field after the game, Deary handed out monogrammed bats to the team captains and the Hunger Caucus co-chairs. “Most importantly, we raised funds for the folks who need our help,” said Jay Costa (Democrat, S-43). Deary thanked everyone again and turned off the mike. “You don’t have to go home, but you have to get off my grass,” barked one of the stadium managers.
“Not having food is such a basic—I can’t imagine, you know?” Deary said later. “I never realized, thinking about how really important it is, to not have food for your family.” The event had raised more than $50,000 before it even started, mainly through corporate sponsorships, and a preliminary estimate was that the raffle, food and ticket sales at the game had raised another $10,000. “This’ll buy a lot of food, hopefully!” Deary said.
Is it bad sportsmanship to point out that the final tally is short of the nearly $7 million shortfall in the state’s food purchase program, which the legislature has consistently trimmed? In a press release this past July, Hunger-Free Pennsylvania noted that if funding “simply kept pace with food prices, the program would need $23.8 million to break even.” The 2013-2014 budget allocates $17.4 million—an increase of $100,000 over the previous year’s total, and the first boost to the fund since 2006.
At any rate, Deary, by gathering the lawmakers for a ballgame, may have found a way to circumvent partisan congestion.
Caryn Long, the executive director of Feeding Pennsylvania, said that she had spoken with one of the players on Team East. “He was saying that, you know, he’s a freshman member, and there’s so many things that are dinners, but everything is also partisan, too. And he said this is the first event that he’s gotten to take part in that was not only fun but a bipartisan event.”
Deary agreed. “One of the sponsors, and I won’t mention which one of them, said, ‘We are willing to donate some amount of money if you will have a Capitol March Madness. And I thought, ‘That’s kind of clever!’ I don’t think I could handle it til next year, but it is a good idea. Wouldn’t it be fun to do a Capitol March Madness?”
