“This game brings us together.”
WASHINGTON, DC – With 48 hours to go before the first pitch of the 91st annual Congressional Baseball Game, The Ripon Society and Franklin Center for Global Policy Exchange welcomed two players from opposite dugouts — Congressmen Jimmy Panetta (D-CA-19) and Blake Moore (R-UT-01) — for a discussion last night about one of Capitol Hill’s most beloved bipartisan traditions.
The philanthropic event, which The Ripon Society is a proud sponsor of, raises funds for charities serving the Washington community — including the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington and the Washington Nationals Philanthropies. In 2025, the annual game broke ticket sale and fundraising records by raising over $2.75 million for local charities.
Moore, who serves on the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee and hit an inside-the-park home run during his very first at-bat in 2021, opened the discussion by recalling the moment he realized just how seriously his colleagues take the game.
“My very first interaction with Kevin McCarthy was at a dinner,” he said, referring to an event he attended with the former House Speaker and Majority Leader when he was first running for Congress in 2020. “I said in passing to him, ‘Mr. McCarthy, I just wanted to tell you I’m really excited about the game. I may have to dust off my old pitching arm.’ And he stopped dead in his tracks, and he goes, ‘Wait, you can pitch?’
“Luckily I haven’t had to pitch yet, but that was the moment that I knew this was an important thing. … And those are some of the best memories. I’ll sneak over to the dugout and say ‘hi’ to Jimmy during the game or during warmups, or we’ll just look at each other and laugh about all this.”
Panetta, a fellow Ways & Means Committee member who serves as an Honorary Co-Chair of The Franklin Center and has a .478 average, then spoke to why the game feels especially meaningful this year.
“I think this thing is needed right now,” Panetta stated. “There’s a reason why you’re seeing ticket sales and donations through the roof. Based on the year and a half that we’ve gone through in the 119th Congress, I think people are looking forward to coming together over something that unifies us. And nothing unifies Congress like baseball and this annual game.
“Being out there in the outfield, looking up at the scoreboard, looking around Nationals Stadium and seeing all of the fans that are there, it’s absolutely exhilarating. The excitement and the fun after that first pitch, after you catch your first fly ball, and the fact that we can do it and have as much fun as we do and know that we are raising money for a good cause — well, nothing beats it.”
Panetta also touched on the game’s most sobering moment — the horrific shooting during Republican practice in 2017 — to underscore what bipartisanship can look like under pressure.
“We had a special session after the shooting and Speaker Ryan said, ‘An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.’ To me, that sums up what we need more of. We need more of that attitude of we are together on this. And that’s really what the game does. This game brings us together. As much as we want to beat them and they want to beat us and as much smack as we talk to each other, and as competitive as we’re going to be Wednesday night, it really does bring us closer.”
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.
Founded in 1978, The Franklin Center for Global Policy Exchange is a non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization committed to enhancing global understanding of important international issues. The Franklin Center brings together Members of the U.S. Congress and their international parliamentary counterparts as well as experts from the Diplomatic corps, foreign officials, senior private sector representatives, scholars, and other public policy experts. Through regular conferences and events where leading international opinion leaders share ideas, the Franklin Center promotes enlightened, balanced, and unbiased international policy discussion on major international issues.