Six Horrible Ceremonial First Pitches -- A Video Anthology

When a wookie outthrows you.....

​I preface this post, a post where I'm about to ridicule people for making awful ceremonial first pitches at professional baseball games, by saying that I would dread throwing out a first pitch at a baseball game. I would be a nervous wreck all day long leading up to it thinking about what row I'd launch the ball into.

Hell, I dropped the ceremonial first puck at an Aeros playoff game back in June and I was nervous all day, and dropping stuff is something I'm actually good at.

For the record, the closest I've come to doing a ceremonial athletic endeavor on a baseball field was my tenth-place finish in the World Kolache Eating Championships in 2007. Tenth out of ten.

So with the appropriate allotment of respect for the moment and disrespect for the wretched execution, and without further ado, I give you my Ceremonial First Pitch Hall of Shame (with a brand new first ballot entry at the end, newly enshrined yesterday):

6. Washington Wizards point guard JOHN WALL

Comment: I'm a firm believer in the old school thought process that kids should play multiple sports. I was brought up in a house where my brothers and I played soccer, baseball, basketball and football, sometimes during the same seasons. We would literally go from a soccer practice, change uniforms in the car and play in a Little League game. It's not that way anymore. In the high stakes era of AAU basketball, travel baseball and Title IX, parents who want their kids to truly compete are forced to have them choose one sport. Therefore, I feel John Wall spiking the ball into the ground like a two-year-old learning to throw for the first time is a metaphor for a bigger societal issue, and it's this -- let kids play multiple sports, parents! Or someday your Wooden Award-caliber hoops son or daughter will wrap up the blooper reel on SportsCenter.

5. Olympic gymnast SHAWN JOHNSON

Comment: Another athlete whose daily agenda was probably apportioned as follows:

Sleep: 5 hours
Homework: 2 hours
Eating: 48 seconds
Gymnastics: 16 hours, 59 minutes, 12 seconds

As a female, throwing it underhand softball-style would have been acceptable. Well, more acceptable than spiking the ball into the grass.

The good news for Johnson is that now she has a YouTube video that has supplanted her embarrassing Ortega taco commercial with the Hamm brothers.

Seriously, how do the police not show up on the set looking for the person who scripted those lines for a teenage girl?

4. Track and field gold medalist (and noted musician) CARL LEWIS

This throw was actually not all that surprising. At all.

This also officially made Carl Lewis a two-sport star when in the category of "Butchering Long Standing Pregame Traditions." Before the opening pitch, we all remember this...

Now all we need is for him to drag the infield with a bulldozer before the game and he will have officially fucked up everything before the actual first pitch would even be thrown.