It’s almost like it was written by some librul Hollyweird screenwriter and made into a movie by former Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin:  A way-past-his-prime politician receives a call from the local minor league baseball team in dire need of a starting pitcher, so he made his debut before a crowd of constituents and pitched a gem from the mound.

Described by Sports Illustrated (which mercifully disposed of the “politician producing from the hill” pun early in the story), that’s exactly what happened to 44-year-old Democratic Iowa state legislator J.D. Scholten, who was volunteering at a local music festival when he got the call from Sioux Falls Explorers manager Steve Montgomery.  With a bullpen exhausted from two long games, Mongomery needed someone to face the Milwaukee Milkmen after the starting pitcher fell ill.  He went through his contact list of recent releases or retired pitchers, but no one was available on Fourth of July weekend.

Enter Scholten, a former minor league player who had been played for the Explorers two decades earlier.  He returned the voicemail message Montgomery left as Scholten helped at the festival–after determining it wasn’t a joke–and within hours he was at the stadium, signed to a $1,400 per month contract, fitted with a uniform, and in the bullpen warming up.  While his new teammates joked that he’d earn their votes if he pitched a shutout, Scholten had a very respectable outing, going 6 2/3rds innings while giving up only two runs.

Scholten wasn’t exactly completely out of practice as a pitcher.  In 2023, while the Iowa legislature was on a break, he got a call from a team in a Japanese professional league that needed an emergency pitcher.  He ended with a 2-1 record with 31 strikeouts in 26 innings pitched.