Written by Tyler Kepner at New York Times.com
They had cleared the field and cleaned out the bleachers at Nationals Park late Thursday night, and now they were turning out the lights. Representative Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from the 11th district of Georgia, lingered above the center field stands. He had just played a ballgame and lost by nine runs to the Democrats. He didn’t care.
“We love the game. We have a really good team,” he said. “And we’re just happy to be here.”
It was not a ballplayer cliché. Not this time, not for these people. The Republicans were missing their second baseman, Steve Scalise, the majority whip of the House of Representatives, who was wounded Wednesday morning when a gunman attacked their practice in Alexandria, Va. Loudermilk had just put on his batting helmet when the rampage began. He slept only three hours that night; about the same, he said, as many of his teammates. They were all exhausted.
“We won because we’re here,” Loudermilk said. “We’re not being visited at a wake somewhere. And that was the reality of what could have happened. Fortunately only the shooter is dead. None of our folks are. There were some miracles happening on that field.”
Three others were shot in the assault, and David Bailey of the Capitol Police force was injured. Bailey threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Thursday’s congressional baseball game, taking the ball from the Hall of Famer Joe Torre.=
“I said to him on the mound: ‘You’re a hero — even though you were just trying to do your job, you really made a difference in a lot of people’s lives,’” Torre said. “He just looks you right in the eye. I’m not sure everything has sunk in with any of these people, to be honest. It happened so quickly and it’s such an emotional ride, and it came so close to being a horrific tragedy if not for those police officers.”
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