Stephen A. Smith Talks Good Game But Flubs Ceremonial First Pitch For Yankees

Stephen A. Smith made 60 feet, 6 inches look a lot longer on Thursday, throwing the ceremonial first pitch to home plate on a bounce at Yankee Stadium.

The ESPN star commentator bowed his head in shame.

“I choked,” he said afterward.

Later he joked on social media, “It was a changeup!”

The “First Take” host looked good, though, before he let it fly.

“I’ll give the pre-pitch routine an A-plus,” Jack Curry said on the YES Network. “A lot of swagger going to the mound. ... It all looked good until the actual release of the ball.”

Smith said that at least it wasn’t as bad as 50 Cent’s throw at Citi Field in 2014. His ESPN colleague Adam Schefter, however, said it “might rival” that horrid toss.

We think Smith is still safe from comparison:

Yahoo offered one of the funnier takes on Smith’s poor throw: “We will remind you that Smith was a basketball player at Winston-Salem State University, so maybe he was attempting a bounce pass.”