© Geoff Burke | 2020 Jul 23
Poor Dr. Anthony Fauci. He’s been the country’s leading voice on the coronavirus pandemic for most of 2020, yet perhaps his most memorable public incident will be the already infamous first pitch he threw at Nationals Park on Thursday night.
Fauci, who grew up in Brooklyn playing shortstop for his Catholic Youth Organization team, the St. Bernadette’s Grasshoppers, not only didn’t make it to home plate, but saw the ball roll about a quarter way up the first base line.
Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the first pitch before the Nationals-Yankees game. pic.twitter.com/04Tbkh7Voa
— ESPN (@espn) July 23, 2020
Fauci says his error actually occurred three days prior, when he played catch for the first time in years at a D.C. elementary school with a local high-schooler.
“I completely destroyed my arm!” Fauci told the Wall Street Journal.
Fauci says he felt good initially after the throwing session, then he woke up the next morning.
“My arm was hanging down around my shoes,” he said.
Though the pain continued until Thursday, there was little Fauci could do. He wasn’t going to back out of taking the mound. So he devised a plan.
“I’ll just throw it, feel the pain for a little bit and it’ll be over,” he said.
That was before he got on the mound and looked at home plate.
“He looked like he was a mile away,” Fauci said.
So the doctor panicked, convincing himself he would need to throw some cheese to make it the whole 90 feet.
“Instead of doing my normal motion of just lobbing the ball, which would’ve been the best thing to do, I thought: Oh, baby, I better put a lot of different oomph into it,” Fauci said. “And I did. And you saw what happened.
“It went as a line drive toward first base. I was stupid,” he said. “I should’ve warmed up for 10 minutes.”
Adding insult to injury, Fauci says the already injured arm is even worse on Friday.
“Oh, it hurts like crazy,”