Stephen A. Smith Reacts to His Awful First Pitch: ‘It Was a Choke Job’

The ESPN personality threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium on Thursday night and it did not go as planned.

ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium on Thursday night ahead of New York’s contest with Toronto.

Baseball fans have certainly seen worse first pitch attempts than the one Smith provided on Thursday night, but there have also certainly been better attempts too. 

Smith reacted to his one-bounce first pitch while visiting with the Yankees television booth on YES during the game.

“I was disgusted with myself,” Smith joked. “I said, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ There’s no excuse…it was a choke job. Stephen A. choked a little bit. I just did. It was straight. But damnit, I can do better than that!”

Smith can take solace in the fact that the Yankees are so far out of playoff contention that Yankee Stadium was not as full as it could have been for a late September contest with the regular season coming to a close.

The Yankees are not yet mathematically eliminated from the postseason, but that’s likely to occur in the next 72 hours. New York is 7 1/2 games out of a wild card spot with nine games to play.