When it’s not clogged with protestors or full of summer concertgoers, the National Mall in Washington, D.C. is often overrun by softball players. Every year, staffers from dozens of congressional offices and nonprofit organizations field teams to compete in the annual summer league. As you might expect, there are some great rivalries—it’s rumored that elected officials regularly bet on the outcome of some high profile matchups. Like the institutions they represent, the softball teams are buttressed by the influx of thousands of interns that flock to Washington every summer.

When I first arrived in Washington for my internship with a small liberal policy organization, I toyed with the idea of organizing liberal students to challenge conservative interns to a friendly pickup game. I figured that this project would be a good way to build a community of progressive interns and also to have a little fun. It never got off the ground, but I did talk with a lot of interns from acro...

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