It was just after 7:00 a.m. The air in Alexandria, Virginia, was already getting sticky, that swampy D.C. heat starting to settle over the dirt. At Eugene Simpson Stadium Park, about two dozen Republican congressmen were doing something normal. They were practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip at the time, was at second base.
Then the popping started.
Most of the guys there thought it was a backfire. Or maybe some construction nearby. But then the screams started. James Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old from Illinois, had stepped up to the third-base fence with an SKS rifle. He wasn't there to watch. He was there to kill.
The Morning the Game Changed
The nbcnews scalise baseball shooting coverage from that day, June 14, 2017, painted a picture of pure, unadulterated chaos. You’ve got to realize, these lawmakers don’t usually have security. The only reason there were armed guards on site was because Scalise, as a member of House leadership, had a mandatory detail. Without Crystal Griner and David Bailey—the two Capitol Police officers who immediately engaged the shooter—this wouldn't have been a tragedy. It would have been a massacre.
🔗 Read more: Johnny Somali AI Deepfake: What Really Happened in South Korea
Scalise took a bullet to the hip. The round did a massive amount of damage, tearing through internal organs and shattering bone as it traveled across his pelvis. He tried to drag himself into the outfield, leaving a trail in the dirt, his body basically shutting down. It’s heavy stuff. While he was down, his colleagues were diving into dugouts or pinning themselves against the ground. Rep. Mo Brooks actually used his own belt as a tourniquet to help a staffer who’d been hit in the leg.
What the FBI Got Wrong Initially
For a long time, there was this weird friction about how the government labeled the attack. Initially, the FBI called it "suicide by cop." That really rubbed people the wrong way. Lawmakers who were actually on the field, dodging 70 rounds of ammunition, felt like that ignored the very obvious political motivation.
Hodgkinson had a history of angry, anti-Republican rhetoric. He’d even asked Rep. Jeff Duncan in the parking lot right before the shooting whether the players on the field were Republicans or Democrats.
💡 You might also like: Sweden School Shooting 2025: What Really Happened at Campus Risbergska
Honestly, it took until 2021 for the FBI to officially change the designation to "domestic violent extremism." By 2025, new reports from the House Intelligence Committee suggested the original investigation was even more botched than we realized, with claims that evidence of a "premeditated assassination attempt" was downplayed.
The Long Road Back for Scalise
Scalise’s recovery wasn’t some quick "get well soon" story. It was brutal. He was in critical condition for days at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. He went through multiple surgeries, dealt with a serious deep-tissue infection that sent him back to the ICU, and had to basically relearn how to walk.
- Surgeries: He had over half a dozen procedures just to stabilize his internal injuries.
- Rehab: He spent six weeks in the hospital and then months in intensive physical therapy.
- The Return: When he finally walked back into the House chamber on crutches months later, it was one of those rare moments where the partisan bickering actually stopped for a second.
He’s talked about how he left a "goodbye" voicemail for his wife while lying in the dirt. He really thought he was done.
📖 Related: Will Palestine Ever Be Free: What Most People Get Wrong
Why This Still Matters in 2026
We talk about "political temperature" all the time, but this event was a literal boiling point. It changed how Congress handles security. Now, you see more funding for personal protection and a lot more anxiety around public town halls.
The nbcnews scalise baseball shooting archives remind us that the line between "heated debate" and "political violence" is thinner than anyone likes to admit. It also showed some weirdly human moments. Like how the Congressional Baseball Game went on anyway the next day, with record attendance, because nobody wanted to let the shooter "win" by cancelling a charity event.
What We Can Learn from the Aftermath
If you're looking for the "so what" of this whole thing, it’s about more than just a shooting. It’s about how we handle the fallout of extremism.
- Security isn't just for the big names. The vulnerability of "rank-and-file" members of Congress is a gap that still hasn't been fully closed.
- Language has consequences. The Secret Service later noted that while Hodgkinson's rhetoric wasn't unique, the escalation in his behavior—moving from Illinois to D.C. to live in a van—was the red flag everyone missed.
- Bipartisanship usually requires a tragedy. It’s sad, but the most unified Congress has been in the last decade was the week following this attack.
Actionable Next Steps
If you're interested in the current state of congressional security or how political violence is being tracked today, you should check out the U.S. Capitol Police's annual threat assessment reports. They provide a sobering look at how many threats lawmakers receive now compared to 2017—spoiler: it's a lot more. You can also look into the Congressional Baseball Game for Charity website to see how they’ve turned that field in Alexandria into a symbol of resilience rather than just a crime scene.
Stay informed by following primary source documents like the House Intelligence Committee's 2025 report on the incident, which offers a much deeper, if more controversial, look into the FBI's handling of the case files.