For men, there are few things as gratifying as watching successful, talented guys fail spectacularly at something that we’re all sure we can do. Say, throwing a baseball. When celebrities are invited to throw out ceremonial first pitches and make fools of themselves, it levels the playing field, if only for a moment. Most of us men might not be rich and famous, but at least we can throw a strike — we think.
Just yesterday Snoop Dogg threw out the first pitch for the Padres. A successful rapper, actor, and burgeoning bud mogul, Snoop looked like he’d been up all night drinking gin and juice when he unleashed the ball from a few steps in front of the Petco Park mound.
Bad as that was, it’s not the worst celebrity first pitch. That distinction belongs to 50 Cent, who uncorked this unthinkable excuse of a throw at a Mets game in 2014.
Don’t think rappers are the only ones who can’t hit a mitt from 60 feet. Sometimes athletes who excel at other sports find throwing a baseball an impossible feat. Olympic sprinter Carl Lewis’s second-most-embarrassing sports moment came when he threw out the first pitch at a Mariners game in 2003. (His first was his painful attempt to sing the national anthem at an NBA game a decade prior.)
The only thing worse than Dirk Nowitzki’s 2011 first pitch at a Rangers game is his unsightly shorts-and-socks game. Eww.
Remember in 1993 when Michael Jordan retired from the Bulls so he could play baseball? And remember how he quickly returned to the NBA without ever getting a sniff of the big leagues? Here’s why.
Including Gary Dell’abate on a list of “rich, famous, successful” men seems wrong, but he is all of those things! He also once threw out a first pitch that should forever be considered part of Howard Stern’s Wack Pack.
John Wall is an elite point guard who makes his living threading passes through the thicket of NBA defenses. And yet he throws a baseball like a baby T-Rex.