Tonight in front of a crowd of tens of thousands of spectators, the late Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) was posthumously inducted into the Congressional Baseball Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame’s 33rd inductee, Pascrell was a longtime player and coach of the Democratic Team before passing away in August 2024. 

At the game, the Democratic Team also announced they were dedicating the 2025 game to their late teammate and coach. Pascrell’s family, as well as many former staffers, were on hand for the ceremony.

Bill Pascrell participated in every game during his 28 summers in Washington, excluding the contest cancelled during the pandemic. He actively played for almost two decades, then served as first base and batting coach under Manager Mike Doyle (D-PA), and finally as batting coach under Manager Linda Sanchez (D-CA). His passion and enthusiasm at first base were a constant source of inspiration and entertainment. From his first year as a player in 1997, through his last year in 2024, Pascrell was consistently the oldest participant in the game.

During his first congressional years, Pascrell wore the orange and black jersey of local constituent college William Paterson University, before making the switch to wear the maroon and white baseball jersey of his beloved alma mater, Fordham University.

Pascrell’s first interview about the game was broadcast on C-Span in 1997. In a 2016 interview with Roll Call about the annual contest, Pascrell stated, “Baseball’s my favorite sport and I played it all my life. I became the hitting coach eight years ago. The fact that we won seven games in a row, I want to bring that to your attention. I wanted to be a baseball player. I wanted to play in the Major Leagues. It took me getting to Congress to play in Nationals Stadium. I looked around and said, ‘I finally made the Major Leagues.’”

Pascrell loved the game of baseball and played little league, high school, as well as semi-pro baseball. As a congressman, he highlighted baseball often. He wrote a law in 2015 adding Hinchliffe Stadium, one of the few remaining Negro League Stadiums, to the Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park. Specifically he sought to promote the historical and social achievements of Patersonian Larry Doby, the first Black-American to play professionally in the American League. Pascrell went to Cooperstown, New York to watch his friend Larry Doby be inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997. He authored legislation to rename the Paterson Post Office after Doby, had the USPS put his likeness on a postage stamp, and wrote the law to present Doby with a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal. Pascrell also led congressional efforts to have President Obama present Montclair resident Yogi Berra with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he did, again posthumously, in 2015. And in 2019 he authored a list of All-New Jersey baseball players.

The Congressional Baseball Game was first played in 1909, and has occurred annually every summer since 1962 (except its cancellation due to COVID-19 in 2020). The newspaper Roll Call created a Hall of Fame for the game in 1993. In 2023, the Hall of Fame added former Congressmen Doyle and Kevin Brady (R-TX) as the 31st and 32nd inductees.