Before the baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals last night, a White Sox employee was tasked with tossing the ceremonial first pitch. She threw the ball in the wrong direction, striking a photographer in the lens with what's being called the "worst first pitch ever."
The ceremonial first pitch at a Boston Red Sox baseball game went horribly (and comically) wrong yesterday, and a sports photographer behind the plate found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was captured on broadcast TV in the 50-second clip above.
The first ceremonial first pitch ever thrown was tossed by former Japanese Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu at a baseball game in Koshien, Japan, back in 1908. Two years later, US President William Howard Taft started the tradition in the United States, tossing a pitch (shown above) in Washington DC on the opening day of the Washington Senators' season. Since then, every US president has thrown at least one ceremonial first pitch, and they have all been documented in photographs.
Here's a look at some historical photos of US presidents throwing their ceremonial pitches.