50 Cent: Great Businessman. Terrible Baseball Thrower

<!– –>

<!–

–>

50 Cent’s hip hop bona fides and business acumen is indisputable. His athletic ability, apparently, less so.

The rapper was invited to throw out the first ball Tuesday night at Citi Field, where the New York Mets were hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates. 50, clad in a Mets jersey the team would subsequently rather he not wear, strode out to the field, confident and smiling. His goal, like so many others before him, was to throw a baseball 60 feet, six inches in a straight line from the pitcher’s mound to Mets catcher Anthony Recker.

Then this happened:

By comparison — for non-sports fans — this is 3-year-old Christian Haupt, on his first day of preschool, doing the same thing.

How merciless was the mocking and derision? Twitter and Facebook had their predictable jokes, but ESPN, that venerated bastion of athletics, added a klezmer circus soundtrack to the clip with the headline “50 Cent’s Street Cred Is All Gone.” In the ESPN clip, a herd of Mets fans, photographers and concerned parents expressed shock, bemusement and disappointment at the throw; no doubt worried their impressionable children saw something they can no longer unsee.

But like most criticism he’s endured in recent years, the entrepreneur laughed the incident off, writing on Instagram, “I’m a hustler not a Damn ball player. LMAO” and “The shit almost hit the cameraman damn, if you look close you can see them moving the plate. Lol.” But somewhere, deep down, this had to be at least a little embarrassing, right, Curtis?

50 Cent: Great Businessman. Terrible Baseball Thrower