Good Friday morning, I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your Politico Playbook audio briefing, sponsored by Poet.

Some quick breaking news overnight. The Russians say they have killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader.

The U.S. is not able to confirm that yet. A bit of moderately good news about Steve Scalise's condition.

The hospital says he's doing a bit better, but he's still in critical condition

and will be hospitalized for an extended period of time. Now, this is good news, but Washington

needs to be prepared. This is going to be a very long recovery for Steve Scalise. Rachel Bade and

Kyle Cheney have a nice scene piece from last night's congressional baseball game, which included

a lot of tears. Democrats won 11 to 2, a real

drubbing, which is expected that Democrats are always the better team. Congressman Mike Doyle,

the manager of the Democratic team, gave the trophy to Republican Joe Barton, the manager of the

GOP team. A quick note of caution, in the wake of tragedies like this, Republicans and Democrats

always say that partisanship is over. We are very skeptical of caution. In the wake of tragedies like this, Republicans and Democrats always say

that partisanship is over. We are very skeptical of that. Washington is a very partisan place,

and that's unlikely going to change. We hope we're wrong, but doubt we are. 24,959 tickets

were sold last night, which Tyler Kepner, the New York Times National Baseball Reporter,

who was at the game, say was a higher

attendance to games in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Minnesota, and Oakland, a very good night

for the congressional baseball game, which raised a lot of money for charities. After a campaign

partially centered on ending U.S. involvement in overseas battles, the United States is sending

another 4,000 troops to Afghanistan. Vice President Mike Pence

has hired Richard Cullen, the Richmond-based chairman of McGuire Woods, to represent him in the

scandal-tard Trump administration. That scoop coming from the Washington Post, Ashley Parker.

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