Taking the Mound

JD on the mound

Look, truth be told, I'd vote for the guy even if he was (shudder!) a Republican. 

Okay, that's stretching it a bit, but not far. We've known of J D Scholten, son of a legendary Morningside baseball coach, for years already. He was, after all, the candidate who just about knocked off the legendary Steve King (R-Iowa), who didn't really say nasty things to get headlines; he did it the honest-and-true way: because he believed them. 

Old Steve King would have been a moderate in the MAGA crowd. Marjorie Taylor Green would have made him look like Rip Van Winkle; but Steve King, by and large, was the face of bigotry back in the day when Donald Trump was selling scholarships to his university. Out here in the nw corner of Iowa, we loved JD Scholten because he almost tipped over the loudmouth King. Almost. Right here in the most Republican region of the state, the guy was a hero.

When Scholten tried to run again, this time against state Rep. Randy Feenstra, he got left behind, and some--me included--just sort of assumed JD's political career had drawn, whimpering, to a close. But he went on to win a seat in the Iowa Legislature, as a Democrat no less, from Sioux City.

Long, long ago, Barbara and I attended a Democratic meet-the-candidates night in LeMars, where JD and a gaggle of others showed up. Barbara had seen the bunch before and was left thoroughly unimpressed by this immensely tall, bald guy who said his vitae included loads of stints with minor league baseball teams--and, well, that's about all. "He's kind of pathetic really," she warned me as Scholten came up to the podium. "Someone has to teach him to speak," she said.

Clearly, someone did. Maybe it was low expectations, but I thought the guy did pretty darn well. "I thought you told me he was a mistake," I said to her. 

She was aghast. "I cannot believe that was the same guy."

JD Scholten went to lose to Steve King, but he and the dying motor home he drove to every last town in the district, found a place in the hearts of the people he wanted to serve. After all, he'd done the impossible, just about toppled the King.

Here's last week's lead story. J D Scholten was at a rock concert downtown, pressing the flesh like a good pol, when he got a call from the manager of the Sioux City Explorers, a kind of minor-league baseball club. The manager called Scholten to say the Explorers were pitcher-less, given more than a few extra innings from his staff. "I need you to pitch," he told JD.

You got to love this. Scholten had never really lost his taste for the game. Still at 44, he could lose an arm by winging too many fastballs, but he must have said something akin to "no guts, no glory," and, a few warm-up tosses later, took to the stadium mound, gave up a couple of hits and a run, then got deadly serious with 87-mph fastballs, and pulled the Explorers back from sure defeat. Get this: they won, 11-2, over the Milwaukee Milkmen (or something). 11-2 with a state rep on the mound. Ought to be a tv movie.

JD was a star. 

I'm guessing that fastball got him another job in Des Moines. If it didn't, shame on Sioux City. There he was, out on the mound, to save the day.

And he's a Democrat. Best story of the weekend.