LONG BEFORE HE got into politics, Ron DeSantis already knew how it felt to be cheered by a crowd when he was on a winning streak.
As a 12-year-old in 1991, DeSantis was part of a team from Dunedin, Florida, that qualified for the Little League World Series, the global youth baseball championship event held every summer since 1947 in the hills of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “We were like local celebrities for a while,” he recalled 10 years later for an article published by the Yale Daily News. “We were the lead story in the local newspapers and on the front page of the Tampa area newspapers.”
In 1991, the Little League World Series hadn’t yet morphed into the two-week-long competition featuring 20 teams and wall-to-wall coverage on ESPN that it is today. Even so, it was newsworthy enough to lead local news coverage back home in Florida and to give young Ronald DeSantis, as he was listed on Dunedin’s roster, his first mention in an Associated Press wire report: He pitched five innings and hit a home run as Dunedin won, 23–7, against a team from Saudi Arabia in a consolation game on the tournament’s second day. Perhaps DeSantis was thinking back to that blowout victory when, a week after the 2022 midterm elections, a reporter asked the governor to respond to a forgettable barb from former President Donald Trump, and the newly reelected governor responded: “At the end of the day, I would just tell people to go check out the scoreboard from last Tuesday night.”
For Republicans across most of the country, DeSantis’ victory was a consolation prize for otherwise disappointing GOP results.
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