For sports fans, ESPN's hugely popular Sportscenter TV show is a roundup of the day's highlights, updates, and scores from major sporting events.  The show's "Play of the Day" segment gives viewers a chance to see video replays of entertaining, exceptional, or deciding moments from those events.

In the spirit of  Sportcenter's "Play of the Day," let's recap one of the key moments from the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.  You might have missed it the first time, you might not initially have grasped its significance, or you might just want to relive it again for sheer entertainment value.

The "Play of the Day" ensued when Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley responded to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders's September 29 letter calling for the FBI to further investigate Kavanaugh's testimony on his high school and college drinking habits (among other items) after the previously agreed to additional week's FBI investigation had already begun.

Democrats were looking for a way – any way – to run out the clock on Judge Kavanaugh until after the midterm elections, when they hoped they could end his chances for confirmation.  Senator Sanders feigned sincerity in light of his Senate "advise and consent" responsibilities of presidential nominations and wrote, "The Senate should not constrain the FBI to one week, and must allow time for a full investigation."  Never mentioned were the six previous FBI background checks containing no mention of a sexual assault.

The Kavanaugh "box score" was easy enough to read to know who won: a "1-nil," "W" in the win column for President Trump and the Senate Republicans, behind support from a 50-48 confirmation vote.  But it was Senator Grassley's colorful response to Sanders's letter laying bare Democrats' true motivations behind Senator Sanders's request that is worth the second look.

In his response, the 85-year-old Grassley delivered a sharply sarcastic rebuttal, first thanking Sanders for his concerns in the "eleventh hour" while suggesting that his inquiry must mean he would now seriously and objectively consider Kavanaugh for the high court.

The letter went on: "as you know, on July 10, 2018, you stated '[we] must mobilize the American people to defeat Judge Kavanaugh.'  This happened less than 24 hours after Judge Kavanaugh's nomination was announced."  He continued, "As you also know, all senators have had access to 307 judicial opinions Judge Kavanaugh wrote during his twelve years on the bench, over 500,000 pages of documents, over 40 hours of live testimony, and answers to more written questions than every prior Supreme Court nominee combined."  Grassley would remind Sanders that despite access to this mountain of information and materials, Sanders "made a decision on this nomination in less than 24 hours."

Grassley's blunt reference to Sanders's near instantaneous opposition to Kavanaugh was illustrative of other Senate Democrats' behavior.  In particular, New York's senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, wasted no time that very same July day to call for rejection of President Trump's Supreme Court nominee and to also abdicate their Senate responsibility to provide advice and consent on presidential appointments.  "I will oppose Judge Kavanaugh's nomination, and I hope a bipartisan majority will ultimately do the same," Schumer said on the Senate floor, hardly 12 hours after the president introduced his nominee.

From the left wing of Senate Democrats, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts further demanded that Schumer stop his confirmation, which, in their opinion, would tip the court's balance to the right for years to come.

Despite their near-instant rejection of Judge Kavanaugh's nomination, Senate Democrats further pressed for the release of documents related to his record of public service and demand unspecified amounts of time to review them.

The volume of Kavanaugh's records ultimately dwarfed those of two previously confirmed justices, Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan.  Senators reviewed about 182,000 pages of documents on Gorsuch and about 170,000 pages on Kagan.  In total, committee members ended up receiving more material from Kavanaugh's legal record than the past five Supreme Court nominees combined.  Kavanaugh himself appended more than 17,000 pages from his speeches and articles to his Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

Down the stretch, increasingly desperate Democratic attempts to delay or derail Judge Kavanaugh's appointment took further, sometimes odd, twists.  Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, himself a lawyer, insisted that Judge Kavanaugh was "responsible to prove he is innocent" and forgo our most basic legal standard of "innocent until proven guilty."  Senate Democrats embraced a further ploy to derail the nomination when more than a dozen Democrats said the Senate Judiciary Committee should delay Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings in light of Michael Cohen's guilty plea, in which the attorney implicated his former client, President Trump.  In political snits, Massachusetts's Senator Ed Markey and Hawaii's Senator Mazie Hirono canceled their meetings with Judge Kavanaugh, rationalizing that President Trump "does not deserve the courtesy" as an "unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal matter."

Senator Grassley's splendid letter laying bare Senate Democrats' true political motivations to delay, disrupt, or outright derail Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation earned him the "Play of the Day."

Colonel Chris J. Krisinger, USAF (ret.) was born and raised in the Midwest.  During his Air Force career, Colonel Krisinger served in policy advisory positions at the Pentagon and twice at the Department of State.  He was also a national defense fellow at Harvard University.