There is a game in Washington this week that nobody is allowed to talk about in the tone that would apply to everything else happening in Washington this week, and that is precisely why it is the most important thing on the calendar. The Congressional Women’s Softball Game is, again, on, at Audi Field, and the fact that it is on is, in a year that has been described by at least one credible source as “a very hard year for women in Congress,” the entire point.

Roll Call ran the story under the heading that the game is, in effect, still on, which is a headline that only makes sense if you understand what the alternative would have been. The alternative is a year in which the thing that has, since 2009, been the one bipartisan, un-satirizable, un-outrageable event in the capital is quietly cancelled because the women of the capital have had, this year, an objectively worse set of circumstances than last year. The game is not on because the circumstances improved. The game is on because the game is the one thing the circumstances do not get to cancel.

"The softball game is not a response to a hard year. The softball game is the year's only fixed point, the one coordinate in the map that does not move when you move the government around it."

The roster this year includes the full set of names the game has always had — bipartisan women members, playing, as they have every year, the women of the D.C. press corps, a team the event has, with a dignity that is almost unbearable, decided to call the Bad News Babes. That name is not a dig. That name is a treaty. The press corps, which has spent the year writing the “very hard” copy, is, in the game, the other team, and the other team gets to be named with a degree of affection that the rest of the capital has, this year, run out of.

The money, as it has every year, goes to the Young Survival Coalition, the organization for young adults diagnosed with breast cancer. That is the part the game does not let you skip, the part that means the slide into home plate is, in the accounting, a donation, and the home run is, in the accounting, a bigger donation, and the whole thing is, in the accounting, the one line item in a very hard year that is, without exception, a good one.

THE GAME, BY THE BOOK

  • First organized: 2009
  • Teams: the women of Congress vs. the D.C. press corps
  • Press corps nickname: the Bad News Babes
  • Beneficiary: the Young Survival Coalition
  • Stadium, this year: Audi Field
  • Year described by at least one outlet as "very hard": this one
  • Game on, anyway: yes

You can have a very hard year and still play softball. That is not a contradiction. That is the whole design. The game is not a celebration of the year. The game is the one thing the year is not allowed to be — a cancellation. The women of the capital will, this week, slide into home plate at Audi Field, and the press corps will, as it has every year, be the other team, and the money will, as it has every year, go where it goes, and the heading will, as it has every year, be “still on.”

At press time, the game was, by every reliable account, still on.