Stephen A. Smith can do a lot of things, and most of them involve yelling, but he certainly cannot throw a baseball.
The New York Yankees are in the midst of facing the Toronto Blue Jays in the finale of a three-game home-stand on Thursday night.
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith was invited to throw out the first pitch, but it went terribly wrong as he bounced his ceremonial first pitch at Yankee Stadium before the Yankees’ game against the Toronto Blue Jays Thursday night.
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While appearing on The Michael Kay Show an hour before that pitch, he responded when asked if he was nervous about throwing the first pitch.
“Hell yeah, I can’t deny it,” Smith admitted. “Do you have any idea if I mess this up, how bad this is going to be for me? It’ll be hilarious but it’ll still be bad.
“But you know, I’m a prideful New Yorker, die-hard Yankee fan, I gotta represent. The bottle line is I got to perform. I can’t be running from this kind of moment. I haven’t thrown a pitch since junior high school but I’ll have to overcome these obstacles.”
Smith said on First Take in June that he was “shocked” he hadn’t yet been invited to throw the first pitch for the Yankees.
“I’d throw a strike,” Smith said then.
He clearly did not do that.
Despite having a down year, the New York Yankees still have a slim chance of qualifying for the playoffs. Injuries and just overall bad play have led them to be in last place in the AL East for much of the second half of the season.
The team is currently 76-76 as of this writing.
