Don’s first pitch as bad as 50 Cent?

Rapper 50 Cent is getting plenty of grief for one of the ugliest ceremonial first pitches in recent memory at Tuesday night’s New York Mets game. Turns out KIRO Radio’s Don O’Neill of the Ron and Don Show can relate.

Back in the late 90s, Ron and Don were hosts of a sports talk show in Oakland. The Oakland A’s were looking for a couple of celebrities to throw out a first pitch, and when they came up short, they called on Ron and Don. Suffice it to say, it’s a good thing they didn’t have YouTube and Twitter back then.

First came Ron’s shot at glory in front of the several thousand brave souls in attendance. He took the mound with purpose and a plan.

“Nobody knows who you are, they’re going to give you the ball and the only way to salvage it is you find the most pathetic looking human being in the stadium,” he says. While you couldn’t call it a fastball, at least Ron managed to deliver a relative strike.

“You get the golf clap because nobody knows who you are, then they give you the ball. You immediately go straight to the pathetic human being, you give them the ball, people cannot not clap for you.”

Then came Don’s turn. There would be no clapping, polite or otherwise.

In typical Don style, he assumed the stretch position, started digging in and messing up the mound.

“So I’m digging in on the rubber and then from the stretch I look over at the catcher and I’m waving the catcher off. He’s giving me signals, I’m waving him off,” Don recounts.

That went over well, especially in Oakland, where fans have no reservations about expressing their feelings far less lovingly than their baseball brethren across the bay.

“Now the crowd is on me, they’re booing. I step off the rubber. I think I balked so then I get back on the rubber and then I make the move to first base.”

“Now everyone is just out and out booing you,” Ron recalls.

After what must have seemed like hours to the few hardy souls in attendance, Don finally reared back and unleashed a pitch with everything his muscular arm could muster.

“I threw that ball as hard as I could. I think they clocked it at 39 miles per hour.”

It may not have been fast, but it went far – far over the catcher’s head high into the backstop beyond. Somehow, the guy turned and caught it off the netting. He calmly brought the ball over to Don, who wisely gave it to Ron to employ his aforementioned strategy of quickly giving the ball to someone more pathetic than them.

So how did it all play with their hosts?

“We were never asked back to throw the ball out again,” Don laughs. But at least the guys can say they have something in common with 50 Cent.