Dr. Fauci is a national treasure. He is an 79-year-old man who it often feels like is singlehandedly trying to save our nation from a global pandemic, which, we have to imagine, must amount to a full-time job. As such, he probably hasn’t gotten much time to toss a baseball in his backyard. This was more than apparent when good old Fauci took to the mound and attempted to throw the ceremonial opening pitch for the MLB Opening Night pregame between the Washington Nationals and the New York Yankees. While Dr. Fauci is great at sternly yet kindly imploring the nation to wear masks, he is decidedly less great at throwing a baseball. Fauci’s attempt at a pitch wasn’t exactly a strike, landing some 8 to 10 feet left of home plate. After the pitch, Fauci, rocking a Washington Nationals mask, threw up his arms as if to say, “Well, what are you gonna do?â€
Fauci’s opening pitch went left, in every possible way, and you know what? That’s okay. Dr. Fauci is not a baseball player. He is an American physician and immunologist who has served the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease since 1984. He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 for his work fighting HIV/AIDs in the early 1980s. He was instrumental in treating the Ebola virus outbreak. He doesn’t need to know how to throw a baseball. In fact, it makes a lot of sense that he can’t properly throw a baseball because he has spent the vast majority of his life in a laboratory trying to save all of our lives. Thank you, Dr. Fauci, for not being able to throw a baseball and giving us another salient example of social distancing re: your pitch and the plate.