CURVEBALL

Trump’s Pitch Announcement Was News to the Yankees, Report Says

White House staff had yet to schedule the opening pitch when Trump announced he’d be throwing it on Aug. 15.

President Trump’s announcement last week that he’d be throwing the opening pitch at a Yankees game on Aug. 15 shocked his own staffers and the New York team—because it hadn’t actually been scheduled, The New York Times reports. Trump was reportedly so annoyed by Dr. Anthony Fauci’s first pitch at the Washington Nationals season opener that he told staff to call up Yankees President Randy Levine, who’d offered to let him pitch at a game. But they hadn’t agreed on a date when Trump announced at the White House last week—shortly before Fauci made his comically awful pitch—that Levine “asked me to throw out the first pitch, and I think I’m doing that on Aug. 15 at Yankee Stadium.”

The unexpected announcement forced Trump’s staffers to reach out to the Yankees and tell the team he actually couldn’t make the Aug. 15 game. Trump’s team hasn’t revealed what the conflict that conflict is, but the president tweeted over the weekend that he wouldn’t be throwing the pitch “because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else.”