Pic of the Week

Rev. Patrick J. Conroy, chaplain of the U.S. House
of Representatives leads both teams in prayer before
Thursday's annual congressional baseball game, 

It's quite possible that until this week you didn't know that there was such a thing as an annual congressional baseball game.

I was aware of it back in the early 1970s for some reason -- aware, among other things, that the Republicans at the time had a pretty good winning streak going on in large part because Rep. Wilmer Mizell, R-N.C., was better known as "Vinegar Bend" Mizell, who pitched nine years in the majors and was the No. 3 starter on the 1960 World Series champion Pirates. Ol' Vinegar Bend wasn't up to major league standards a decade or so later, but he still had too much for the Democrats to hit.

Thursday's game followed the Wednesday atrocity on a ball field in the Washington suburbs in which a prominent congressman and others were shot. It is well and good that the game was played as scheduled, even with heavy hearts.

And it is worth noticing that the crowd at Nationals Park, home yard of the capital city's major league squad, beat the audiences at a number of major league games that day -- including the game at Target Field.

Of course, nobody went to the Washington game to see a high level of baseball skill.