Throwing Shade, Not Baseballs

Beware the man who can’t throw a baseball.

This epiphany struck me while I watched Sunday morning as Fox Business News gave a promo for an upcoming segment on an American manufacturer of baseball gloves.

Outdoors, we had weather guy Adam Klotz and news guy Griff Jenkins looking like they were shooting basketballs, heaving the baseball with their palms and an upward thrust of the arm. Predictably, Jenkins whiffed on a catch.

Someone must have given the guys some quick lessons during one of those interminable commercial breaks because when we returned to them, throwing the baseball on an outdoor concrete surface, they almost looked like they knew what they were doing, successfully completing a series of throws with better arm action, and catching said throws.

Growing up, every guy in our neighborhood engaged in pickup baseball games. Most of us played Little League baseball as well. There was a huge skill gap, but even the worst sad sack exhibited proper form throwing the baseball.

This once common proficiency frequently is a no-show these days, a metaphor illustrating the real-world gap between the elites who lecture us and the hoi polloi who actually know how to do things.

I think of all the smug, self-appointed types laid blare by the ceremonial act of throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game.

But, let us begin with a success story. George W. Bush used to bleat about Islam being the religion of peace, but he did have some redeeming values, including knowing how to throw a baseball.

About a month after the 911 attacks, Bush went to the mound before a World Series game at Yankee Stadium and, despite wearing a bulletproof vest under his jacket, fired a strike. The crowd cheered and chanted USA.

Others, including comedian Jerry Seinfeld have looked good on such first-pitch moments.

Then there are the likes of Barack Hussein Obama, who took the mound prior to the 2009 All-Star Game, to a mixture of cheers and boos. Predictably a left-hander, Obama lobbed a ball that came up well short of home plate. Give him a pass, what with that Kenya background and all that.

Hussein Obama looked like a Major Leaguer compared to rapper Curtis 50 Cent Jackson, a left-hander who tossed a first-pitch attempt before a Mets game about 30 feet to the left of the plate, prompting the team’s announcers to observe that obviously he never had to choose between being a rapper, or playing for the Mets.

Michael Jordan, near the top of most lists of the greatest basketball players of all time, should have tried shooting a basketball for his first-pitch attempt before a Cubs game. Instead, Jordan used a baseball and lobbed it over the head of where a right-handed hitter would have been standing, nearly hitting the wall behind home plate.

Arguably, the all-time worst such first pitch attempt was authored by petty dictator Dr. Anthony Fauci, who kept you away from friends and family during COVID, helped shut down the economy, and generally pontificated from on high about measures such as wearing masks that were proved to have virtually no effectiveness, sort of like those rushed vaccines.

The puny Fauci strode toward the mound, windmilling his right arm once before a Nationals opener in 2020. He first went near the pitching rubber and then advanced a few steps before uncorking a throw that will live in infamy.

It’s charitable to call it a pitch. The ball veered hard left out of Fauci’s hand, quickly lost altitude and plunked the infield grass short of the first-base line, maybe 15 feet up the line from home plate.

Yes, Fauci was wearing a mask. No, it wasn’t over his eyes.

It turns out Fauci was about as good at throwing a baseball as he was dealing with COVID. I’ve come to realize this sort of linkage is not altogether irrelevant.