It’s not unusual for dignitaries to step on the mound at Major League Baseball games to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, and these haven’t always gone so well (yes, we’re talking about you, “Howard Stern Show” producer Gary “Baba Booey” Dell’Abate).
However, there was clearly some divine intervention at work when Chicago nun Sister Mary Jo Sobieck was invited to throw out the first pitch before Saturday’s White Sox vs. Kansas City Royals game, with a pitch as close to perfection as they come.
While the crowd was impressed — especially when she warmed up by bouncing the ball off her bicep — so too were the team, as demonstrated by a tweet from the White Sox Twitter account:
“That was awesome,” Chicago’s Lucas Giolito said after the game, reports MLB.com. “She had a whole routine. She had it planned out. I was just lucky to be back there. She threw a perfect pitch.”
White Sox manager Rick Renteria agreed. “She was pretty good, actually. We talked to her a little bit but before we were talking to her, she was talking to someone and she wanted to warm up. She had a mitt and a ball. She gave him the mitt. She stepped back at about 45 feet and threw a bullet,” he said.
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“I’m like, ‘Wait a minute.’ He threw it back to her and she fielded it barehanded. I was like, ‘OK, she looks like she can play a little bit,’ so we started talking to her. I think she said, ‘I played centre and short.’ I said to her, ‘Can you play for us?’ She said, ‘Sure.'”
So how does the nun stack up to the pros? As this side-by-side comparison with L.A. Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, indicates, pretty well:
