Steve Scalise back on diamond for congressional baseball game year after being shot

Tom Gatto

Steve Scalise back on diamond for congressional baseball game year after being shot image

U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise made the first, and most celebrated, play in Thursday's congressional baseball game at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.

Scalise, R-La., cleanly fielded a ground ball and retired the game's first batter. He was back on the diamond exactly one year after he was wounded in an assassination attempt at a Republican team practice in Virginia. The effects of his injuries were evident as he struggled to reach for the ball and make a throw.

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Scalise's colleagues briefly stopped the game to give him hugs and handshakes.

Before the game, Scalise told reporters that being able to return to the field was "an incredible feeling."

Scalise, 52, was one of four people wounded by a man who fired onto a field being used by the GOP squad. Scalise was critically injured in the attack. Capitol police killed the gunman at the scene.

The congressional game the next day turned into a bipartisan show of support for the victims and first responders.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.