(Aaron Guerrero/CQ Roll Call)
On a toasty Monday night on the National Mall, Victorious Secret came back from 18 runs down to defeat Yogi’s Hard Drivers, 31-27.
Awash with offense, both teams’ lengthy early innings at bats caused a premature, fifth-inning finish because of darkness.
The House Softball League game featured two teams near the bottom of the pack as both teams entered the fray with a combined 6-14 record. But after one inning, the game took on historical proportions.
The Hard Drivers, whose beginnings trace back to the House IT shop, came out swinging, scorching the opposition for 18 runs in the first. Every bounce went their way, as the team easily went through the batting order. The half inning alone went for nearly 35 minutes.
It was quite the offensive showing, but the magic faded, and so, too, did their lead. Full story
(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)
The smoke from the fireworks was long gone, but there was no shortage of thrills at the Washington Monument on Thursday night.
Katheryn Ellis’ walk-off single gave the Hoosier Daddies (1-6) their first win of the season, a 17-16 triumph over the Florida Orange Crush (4-4) in House Softball League action.
Fueled by a rollicking playlist and red-hot bats, the Hoosier Daddies jumped out to an early 5-2 lead on the hazy summer evening. Made up of former staffers from the office of Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), the Daddies had struggled mightily before Thursday night’s game.
“I think we’re basically all media whores, so when we heard Roll Call was here we stepped up,” Ellis joked. Full story
(Patrick Curran/CQ Roll Call)
The Consortium for Ocean Leadership softball team dominated from start to finish tonight, besting the National Committee for Quality Assurance, 12-6, at Washington Monument Field No. 6.
With oppressive heat, construction and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival keeping many teams off the Mall, the House Softball League showdown was one of the only games happening in an area usually mobbed with multicolored softball jerseys. But the action didn’t disappoint.
The softball itself wasn’t especially exciting — the COL’s Not Rocket Scientists took an early 4-0 lead and cruised from there on out. But tempers flared in the top of the fifth inning, as the two squads got into a heated argument over whether the score was 10-6 or 10-4. The NCQA’s Quality Playas eventually backed down, settling for 10-4, but not before several members of both teams had exchanged harsh words. Full story
Canon Sobay’s winning credentials are the stuff of softball legends.
The native Michigander and captain of the House Softball League’s Liberty Square Sliders moved to Washington, D.C., almost 10 years ago to work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Today, he works for Booz Allen Hamilton.
During that decade, he’s won a combined five league championships between his time in the Senate and House softball leagues.
He’s also prevailed four times in the King of the Hill game, which matches the winners of the HSL against the SSL. For three of the four, he was a member of the Senate league.
From left: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Edwards and Laura Richardson give high fives as the Members' team is introduced at Wednesday's Congressional Women's Softball Game featuring Congress vs. the media. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
A quick recap of what we learned this week out on the diamond and from behind our laptops:
What Exit?, the Garden State team in the House Softball League, had a simple Monday request: that their game with Texas Republic be voted the league’s game of the week. And for good reason. The game, set for Thursday, pits What Exit?’s 6-2 record against the 5-0 Texas Republic, who also happens to be sitting atop the league.
The HSL website has a feature every week allowing teams in the league to vote for what they think will be the top game during the seven-day span. The two teams to pull enough votes get some front page-love and a brief summary explaining why others should care about the game. Full story
The Major League Ballers (4-2) took advantage of perfect softball weather on the National Mall, cruising past the MisHits (0-3-1), 22-12, in Wednesday night’s House Softball League action.
The night didn’t start out so smoothly, though. The calm summer evening was marred by a dispute with other teams over a field, forcing the MLBs-MisHits game to be delayed until about 7:15 p.m. Full story
Randall Jefferson, starting pitcher for the Cap City Brewing Flyers, let his bat and glove lead the way tonight in his team’s 10-7 victory over Licensed to IL.
In a premiere House Softball League matchup, the Flyers, a top-five ranked team, entered the game with a 3-1 record.
Hardly a competitive slouch, Licensed to IL, a roster filled with staffers from the Illinois delegation in the House, brought its own polished 3-1 record.
The game lived up to the hype. Full story
(Aaron Guerrero/CQ Roll Call)
Monday’s night’s House Softball League matchup between the Great Lakers, a team primarily made up of staffers from the Michigan delegation, and the Hired Guns, a team from lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates, almost didn’t happen.
The Great Lakers began the evening short-handed, though reinforcements would come later.
Unfortunately, the bats of the Hired Guns were just too much, topping their counterparts, 18-10.
Heading into the fourth inning, the game was close, with the Hired Guns maintaining a slim one-run lead, 4-3. But in the fourth inning, the bats came alive. Led by their colorful shortstop, Rocky Fox, and his three-run homer, the team scored seven runs and never looked back.
“[This is] definitely not the team we went to the playoffs with,” Great Lakers team captain Mike Klotz said, referring to last year’s run.
(Aaron Guerrero/CQ Roll Call)
Under the bright May sun, Deep Space 9 got scorched.
The House Softball League game pitted the NASA team against the 24:Sixers, a hard-hitting, fundamentally sound team from Capital City Church. From the outset, the rout was on.
The 24:Sixers scored 11 runs in the first inning and had another monster inning in the third, when they lit up the scoreboard for 13 more. By the time the last out was recorded, they had put up a 35 spot, only surrendering seven runs to their opponents.
Unlike most teams that play in the trio of leagues, the team hailing from Capital City Church are not bound by their professional careers. Rather, it’s their faith and the desire for fellowship that brings them out to the diamond week in and week out. Full story
Along with the rest of us, the overwhelming majority of softball junkies in Washington, D.C., took a pause Monday to honor the fallen on Memorial Day.
Under the “games” section of its website, the House Softball League indicates that no matchups were played Monday.
The Colorado Cutthroats lived up to their pre-game smack talk Thursday night, taking it to the EditOrioles, CQ Roll Call’s softball team, 23-7.
We had noted earlier this week that the Cuttthroats had been in absentia from the land of Twitter, only to return with some hard-hitting dialogue about what they had in store for their opponents. Full story
(Aaron Guerrero/CQ Roll Call)
On an overcast Monday night, the Whiskey Caucus, a House Softball League team, fell 15-13 to the Three Amigos, a team primarily made up of staffers from the Texas delegation.
But for the Whiskey Caucus, softball isn’t just a game of wins and losses. It’s a way to preserve the memory of a departed teammate.
As Ben Brockschmidt, a staffer in the office of Rep. Timothy Johnson (R-Ill.), told Roll Call that Eric Fatla was a driving force in forming the Whiskey Caucus softball team more than two years ago.
In the early part of 2010, Fatla, a Hill staffer turned George Washington University law student, along with Brockschmidt and others made the collective decision to splinter away from Licensed to IL, another House Softball League team. The decision took the Whisky Caucus from pure social club to scrappy softball team.
The Whiskey Caucus is solving Washington’s partisan woes one drink and softball game at a time.
A member of the House Softball League, the Whiskey Caucus was started in 2008 by Capitol Hill staffers as a means of social gathering, and the team began playing softball in 2010. At the time of its creation, the club had six members. Today it has more than 100.
For some off-the-field mingling, the club meets every Friday (sans holidays) for a drink, though the location is not disclosed on its website. Full story
The House Softball League, unlike the Congressional and Senate leagues, doesn’t rely only on wins and losses to determine its standings. Instead, it uses a “ratings power index” that takes into account a team’s winning percentage, its opponents’ winning percentage and its opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage.
After the Congressional Budget Office scored the numbers this week, Texas Republic (2-0, .775 RPI) rose to the top of the standings, edging slightly ahead of WAM! (1-0, .767). There are a few teams with three wins and no losses, including the Republic’s next opponent: the sixth-ranked Mastadons, based out of the office of Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio).
Meanwhile, the Bada Bings’ victory last week over Pew’s Your Daddy made it the only 4-0 team in the Congressional league. The gang from Microsoft will seek to pad its record when it takes the field against the Energy Department’s Big League Chu (0-2).
There aren’t any meaningful standings to report from the Senate League, where the results of only three games have been posted across the eight divisions.
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Aaron Guerrero is a former intern at Roll Call and a graduate student at Georgetown. Pat Curran is a government major at Georgetown and serves on the campus newspaper's board of directors. @cqrcsoftball
