Gabby Giffords Throwing the First Pitch at Congressional Women's Softball Game

By Christina Bellantoni

Posted June 18, 2014 at 9:28am

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will throw the ceremonial first pitch at the annual Congressional Women’s Softball Game Wednesday night.

Giffords left Congress in 2011, after she was shot during a gun rampage at an event in her district.

Her appearances in Washington are infrequent , and always spark emotion from lawmakers in both parties. She is close with the co-captains of the members’ team, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and she once played on the bipartisan team.

The annual game pits female members of Congress against female journalists to raise money for the Young Survival Coalition, which helps young women fighting breast cancer.

“I have played a lot of catch in my years of playing softball, but catching Gabby’s first pitch will be the best snag ever,” Wasserman Schultz told CNN .

CNN reporter and member of the Bad News Babes press team Leigh Ann Caldwell wrote that Gillibrand “will walk Giffords onto the diamond in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington before nearly 1,000 spectators.”

Giffords, who has become a prominent figurehead for the gun control movement, and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, are scheduled to speak Wednesday afternoon at a forum titled, “Protecting Women From Gun Violence” about how Congress can curb the problem.

Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC threw the first pitch at the 2013 game.