Dr. Anthony Fauci says his comically bad first pitch at the Washington Nationals game on Thursday night was the result of him practicing his throw days beforehand—and “destroying” his arm in the process. The 79-year-old infectious diseases expert told The Wall Street Journal he spent about 30 minutes throwing a ball around with a high schooler on Tuesday in preparation for Thursday night’s first pitch. But the next morning, he said, “my arm was hanging down around my shoes.” He said he was still in pain when he took to the mound to throw on Thursday night but decided to just endure “the pain a little bit and it’ll be over.”

“Instead of doing my normal motion of just lobbing the ball, which would’ve been the best thing to do, I thought: Oh, baby, I better put a lot of different oomph into it,” he said. “And I did. And you saw what happened,” he said, admitting that his calculations about how to throw the ball were a “mistake.” The ball fell short and went so far to the right that the catcher had to walk off to retrieve it, sparking a flurry of jokes on social media about Fauci setting an example by “socially distancing” the pitch from the plate. He said his arm “still hurts like crazy” but appeared to take the incident in stride, opening up to the Journal about playing shortstop while growing up and devoting entire weekends to baseball: “Those were the days, man.”