Ex-Rangers coach Hardy eyewitness to congressional shooting

The first shot sounded like a car backfiring, but the next two, former Texas Rangers coach Larry Hardy knew, were unmistakably from a gun.

Then, it was time to find cover as a lone gunman started spraying the field with bullets.

Hardy was one of the many of people at a baseball field in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday morning as a group of Republican congressmen practiced for their annual charity game against their Democratic counterparts. He was at the practice serving as a coach with U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, who lives in Weatherford and represents Texas’ 25th District.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot in the hip and suffered damage to some internal organs; three others were wounded. The shooter was shot at the field and later died from his injuries.

Williams, a former TCU baseball player, suffered an injury to his right ankle. Hardy said that he had some scrapes and bruises, nothing remotely as serious as what others endured, and on Thursday was processing what he experienced over the course of only three or four minutes.

“You’re saying to yourself, ‘If I can see him, he can see me,’” said Hardy, who coached with the Rangers from 1995-2001 and was a scout from 1992-94. “You have time to look back over it and understand what was really going on, time seems like it was just moving so slow and you’re wondering why nothing was going on. We knew there was security there. They were on the first-base side. If it hadn’t had been for them there, there’s no telling. There’s no telling.”

Hardy said that he was standing outside the batting cage on the first-base side when the shooting started. He and U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee hit the ground before heading to the first-base dugout, where others were taking cover.

Hardy, an avid outdoorsman, is no stranger to the sound of gunfire.

“My first instinct was that it was a backfire,” said Hardy, who serves as an umpire observer for MLB. “It was really loud, and it resonated in the trees. There was a slight two-second pause or so, and he shot at least twice. I know at that point he hit Scalise.”

Two officers in the U.S. Capitol Police took down the shooter, James Hodgkinson, as he was heading down the warning track from the third-base side of the field toward the first-base dugout. The officers, who were wounded, shot Hodgkinson near home plate.

“It happened so fast you don’t really think about what all has happened,” said Hardy, who pitched for the San Diego Padres in 1974-75 and for the Houston Astros in 1976. “Now that I’m sitting here thinking about it, I never did feel my heart racing. I guess you go into protect mode.”

Hardy said that he was planning to be at the charity game Thursday night at Nationals Park, where the Rangers swept three games from the Washington Nationals over the weekend.

This story was originally published June 15, 2017 at 11:05 AM with the headline "Ex-Rangers coach Hardy eyewitness to congressional shooting."