From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Today, moments before he opened fire, the gunman asked who was on the baseball field,

Democrats or Republicans, an act of political violence at a moment of extreme partisanship.

And what happens when a 400-year-old story about one of history's most infamous acts of political violence

is adapted for today?

It's Thursday, June 15th.

Michael, cheer, walk us through the scene on Wednesday morning.

It was a hot morning, a humid, typical Washington summer morning.

There's probably 15 or 20 of us out there, mostly congressmen, a couple of senators.

We get here about 615, 630 if you're familiar with the movie. Remember the Titan?

Yeah. We practice on their baseball field.

They had come there to practice for the annual Congressional Charity Baseball Game, which is scheduled for today.

But I was on deck about the hit batting practice on the third base side.

Some of the folks are in the outfield, some of them are hanging around. The dugouts are at home plate, ready to practice their hitting.

And I hear a loud bang. And shots ring out.

The first shot was kind of an isolated shot and everybody goes, kind of looks up and says, hey, what's that?

And I look around and behind third base and the third base dugout, which is center block, I see a rifle.

And then I hear another blam and I realize that there's an active shooter.

And then Bedlam people screaming, active shooter, folks sort of hitting the ground, duck and cover kind of thing.

I run around to the first base side of home plate and we have a batting cage that's got plastic wrapped around it to stop foul balls and hide behind the plastic.

You know that plastic is not really good, but the shots kept coming.

5, 10, 15 shots in a row.

...