A few days ago, a USDA administrator told me why he really goes to baseball games. Not for the players, but for the groundskeepers.
He gets there an hour early, before the seats really fill up, just to watch them work diligently. They rake the infield dirt into perfect lines and mow the outfield into alternating stripes you can see from the upper deck. And then the first batter steps up, drags his back foot to dig into the box, and the whole thing is scuffed before a single pitch has even been thrown.
The groundskeepers know that their work will be disheveled, but they do the work each time anyway.
I’ve been turning that over for a few days now, because it’s the best description I’ve found for what the last five weeks have felt like, interning for the House Committee on Agriculture.
Most of what happens on a committee staff never gets seen by anyone outside the building. I watched as the incredibly talented Committee staff spend time together preparing to meet with stakeholders, perfecting background memos, and making sure that before a hearing began, nothing could go wrong. Language gets drafted, redrafted, negotiated, only for all of their hard work to get compressed into a press release or a single line in someone’s speech.
Congressmen and women on Capitol Hill receive credit for introducing the legislation or giving a great speech, but behind their presentation, it truly is the staff that act as the groundskeepers. They don’t measuring the job on whether or not the chalk lines survive the first inning, but if it’s just right when the star players walk out. The field existed to be played on, not preserved under glass.
That’s closer to how I’ve come to see committee work. My experience on Capitol Hill was truly transformative, especially being there during a time with the Ag Workforce Act being introduced and keeping an eye on the Farm Bill 2.0 in the Senate, both of which were tirelessly refined by staff.
I don’t think I’ll watch a hearing on C-SPAN, or a baseball game, quite the same way again. I think I’ll be looking past the person at the podium, wondering who in that room is watching their hard work play out and the people making sure the ground under them was ready.
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