Press corps snatches back softball trophy from lawmakers 

The press corps scored a resounding win over lawmakers Wednesday night in the 15th edition of the Congressional Women’s Softball Game, snatching back the trophy after members of Congress broke a five-year losing streak last year. 

CNN Politics’s managing editor Mikayla Bouchard said the win was “especially sweet” for the Bad News Babes given it will be her last year playing.

“It’s been an amazing run, and to take the diamond one more time with these players has been a real joy and privilege,” Bouchard told The Hill. “I’m really proud of the hitting that the Babes had tonight and thrilled with how the score ended up showing a lot of hard work.”

Bouchard’s CNN colleague Katie Lobosco, a politics writer, was the first player to bat and also scored the first run for the press corps. 

While the lawmakers were playing catch-up from the first inning, the game was interrupted by climate activists, who stormed center field. 

With linked arms, Climate Defense protestors formed a circle and did not budge for approximately 15 minutes while Capitol Police and several members of Team Congress tried to engage with them. 

When the Capitol Police finally escorted the group off the field, the press corps got back to business, racking up 12 runs by the top of the 6th inning — with the lawmakers unable to put a run on the board. 

But just as a shutout seemed possible, Congress made their comeback. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the 6th, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) drove in Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) and Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) for the team’s first runs. 

The lawmakers ultimately tallied nine runs, with Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) crossing the plate for the team’s final time in the seventh inning before Chavez-DeRemer was tagged out at home to end the game. 

The outcome put the all-time record at 9-4 in favor of the Bad News Babes, who tend to be quite a bit younger than their congressional competition. 

“I always like to know how many grandmas we have on our team,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has been emceeing the game since 2011, told The Hill. 

“But we tend to have an older roster and the fact we beat the press 4 times out of 12 is still quite phenomenal,” she added. 

The first year of the event pitted lawmakers vs. staff, while the event was held without a game during the pandemic. 

The game — launched in 2009 by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and then-Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) after Wasserman Schultz went public about her battle with breast cancer —  has raised millions of dollars for breast cancer over the years. 

This year’s edition raised $588,000 for Young Survival Coalition (YSC), a national organization focused on supporting, educating and providing a community for young adults with breast cancer.

“We have the largest conference that exists in the world for young adults affected by breast cancer so the majority of (the funding) goes to that,” YSC CEO Jennifer Merschdorf told The Hill.

“For a lot of young adults who’ve been diagnosed, they’ve never met another young adult, so we created an environment where there’s thousands of them all together at the same time and that’s life changing.”

Each player Wednesday picked a “survivor connection”: women who have experience with cancer and a personal relationship with a player.

Scholten represented Renee and Amirah Vosburgh on the field, a mother and daughter who were both diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022. 

“It’s going to be just an honor to be out there fighting for them the way that they have fought together and individually against cancer,” Scholten told The Hill.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) played for Dr. Vandlyn Wright, a Black woman who was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer last year. 

“There are a lot of disparities when it comes to health care, and breast cancer diagnosis and treatment is no exception,” Castor said to The Hill. 

Black women overall face a higher rate of cancer diagnoses than average, and the breast cancer rate for Black women younger than 35 is twice as high as the rate for their white counterparts, according to YSC. 

Members of the congressional team also hope the game will help drive forward legislation — related to breast cancer and on other issues. 

“​​It’s really hard to get into a knock down drag out debate with someone in committee when you have built a personal relationship with them,” Castor told The Hill. 

“There are a lot of members that have been able to file bipartisan legislation and talk about issues that matter across the aisle and across the Capitol. That simply would not happen without the Congressional Women’s Softball team.”

One such piece of legislation was the Protecting Access to Lifesaving Screenings (PALS) Act, co-sponsored by Wasserman Schultz and former Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.).

The act, which was incorporated into a 2015 omnibus spending package, opened up mammograms to women as young as 40 years old who were previously denied such access. 

Wasserman Schultz added that bipartisan collaboration has extended beyond breast cancer.

“I’ve passed human trafficking legislation with women that I played softball with that I would never have before,” she told The Hill. “It’s opening the door to a relationship … not as adversaries but as friends and as women fighting for the same cause.”

Despite these efforts, members said there’s plenty of work to be done on legislation surrounding breast cancer. 

Castor referenced her Metastatic Breast Cancer Access to Care Act, which she said came “very close” to passage last year.

“You just try to build support along the way for all of these endeavors, and you just can’t give up,” Castor said. “Our survivors don’t give up, their health care providers don’t give up, and they give us inspiration to keep pressing.”