When 50 Cent agreed to throw out the first pitch before a Mets game back in 2014, he probably thought it would put his name into the news for, like, a day or two tops. Even after the pitch went terribly awry and earned him the scorn of the internet (and eventually an award!), he still probably didn’t think it would have much staying power. But here we are, nearly four years later, and people still talk about how bad that first pitch was. I mean, just look at it!
So, so, so bad!
50 himself still can’t really explain what went wrong. But while promoting his new movie Den of Thieves this week, he spoke with Newsday about it and admitted he now regrets agreeing do it in the first place. "Listen, no one warned me," 50 said. "No one said: 'Risk versus reward!' I would have kept my [expletive] in the stands. This is never going away."
50 then talked about how big the moment got after it happened. He referenced the baseball trading card that was created to commemorate the pitch and looked back on what happened to him in the aftermath of it.
"They have baseball cards with me throwing the pitch—real baseball cards that they made! I go, 'Wait a minute: Who cleared this?' Whenever baseball comes up, there is no one worse than me as far as throwing a first pitch," 50 said. "I had no idea that throwing a bad pitch would be so big. It was coming across CNN! ESPN, CNN, I was like, whoa, not the way I wanted things out here at the moment when I’m getting ready to run music and I’m on CNN and it looks like my arm’s broken. I’m like, 'What the [expletive] happened to me?'"
50 also spoke about how, despite what people might think, he had practiced for the first pitch leading up to it. It just didn’t go as planned. "I had pitched before," he said. "I rehearsed. I practiced. I threw the ball a little bit. I was throwing like, 'Oh man, I’m about to throw a strike, 100 miles an hour.' But that [expletive] damn near killed a cameraman!"
50’s may have been the worst first pitch ever, but he suggested there may be a redemption story in his future. He said several baseball teams have reached out and asked him to throw out a first pitch for them, and while he obviously hasn’t agreed to do it just yet, he wants to do it again at some point, possibly before a World Series game or another big event.
"I have to redeem myself at some point," he said. "Maybe if I get out there and throw a really good pitch, they’ll let me go a little bit."
Unlikely. 50’s original toss was that bad. But if he’s looking to generate publicity around another project at some point in the near future, throwing another first pitch is probably going to be just about the best way for him to do it. So don’t be surprised if he ends up on the mound again sometime soon.
