Politicians might look to sports to lift their spirits

One of the least reported stories is the intersection of sports and
politics.

Most politicians are avid sports fans, and there is a reason for this. Politicians
love the limelight but often were not big enough or fast enough to play college
or professional sports. Thus they become fans. Exceptions to this rule are
professional football players and former Reps. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) and Steve
Largent (R-Okla.) and current Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.).

Even some female politicians are big sports fans. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and I
had offices near each other in the Rayburn House Office Building at one point
and had a running bet on Dallas Cowboys-San Francisco 49ers games when the
rivalry between the two teams was really hot. Before she got too busy, she was
a regular at 49ers games.

And we all know President Barack Obama is a big sports fan. Obama’s campaign
manager David Plouffe, in his book about the Obama presidential campaign, goes
to great length to discuss how, at tense moments in the campaign, Obama would
retire to his hotel room late at night and watch sports on ESPN to relieve
tension.

So it came as no surprise when I recently met former Oriole great Cal Ripken
at a Washington social function and we wound up talking both politics and
sports.

I told Ripken a story about the night he broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-game
streak that gave him a good laugh.

I had taken over the chairmanship of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee (DCCC) in January of 1995. Democrats had just lost control of the
House for the first time in 40 years, and were all down in the dumps. No one
wanted to do anything to help the DCCC raise money.

For months I had been harassing Maryland Democratic Reps. Ben Cardin (now a
U.S. senator) and Steny Hoyer (now House majority leader) to put on a DCCC
fundraiser in Baltimore. They had multiple excuses about why it wouldn’t work,
but I did not give up.

Finally, one day in the middle of the summer, they approached me on the
floor of the House and said they had an idea. What about a fundraiser at Camden
Yards the night Ripken broke Gehrig’s record of 2,l30 consecutive games played?
The owner of the Baltimore Orioles was a big Democrat and had offered to
provide a 75-seat party box in left field for our use that night.

It was an inspired idea. So, on Sept. 6, 1995, the DCCC held a fundraiser at
Camden Yards. It was a spectacular evening. Ripken hit a home run to left field
(near our box) in the fourth inning and then did a victory lap around the
perimeter of the field (passing just under our box) at the end of the fifth
inning, when it had become an official game.

We raised $150,000 for the DCCC, and people called me the next morning to
thank me for having a fundraiser at the park that night.

This one event put a spark into House Democrats, and we then held a series
of sports-oriented fundraisers in the next year, including one at the Super
Bowl and at the Pebble Beach golf course in California. Suddenly politics was
fun again, and we picked up nine seats in the next election.

I have no idea about Cal Ripken’s politics. I don’t know if he is a
Democrat, Republican or independent. However, he got a big kick out of the fact
that he had actually played a role in the revitalization of one of the two
political parties.

Frost, who served as a Democratic member of Congress from 1979 to 2004,
is a partner in the law firm of Polsinelli, Shughart.