Trump backs out of Yankees opening pitch he was never even invited to. An official told The New York Times the idea emerged from jealousy of Fauci.

Authored by businessinsider.com and submitted by roku44
image for Trump backs out of Yankees opening pitch he was never even invited to. An official told The New York Times the idea emerged from jealousy of Fauci.

President Donald Trump was never actually invited to throw out the ceremonial first pitch for the Yankees on August 15, The New York Times reported.

Both the team and White House officials were said to be shocked to hear Trump's announcement that he would be appearing at the game; he later canceled.

One official told The Times that Trump was jealous of the attention Dr. Anthony Fauci was receiving for throwing the ceremonial pitch at MLB's opening day.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump was so annoyed with the attention Dr. Anthony Fauci was receiving for throwing out the ceremonial first pitch for MLB's opening day that he decided to announce he was also invited to throw out a pitch for the Yankees next month, an official told The New York Times.

Despite his announcement and later cancellation of the plans to appear at an August 15 game, Trump was apparently never actually invited to pitch on that date.

Last week, Trump said he was invited by the Yankees' president, Randy Levine, to throw out the first pitch at the game against the Boston Red Sox.

"Randy Levine is a great friend of mine from the Yankees," Trump told reporters on Thursday before Fauci's first pitch, The Times reported. "And he asked me to throw out the first pitch, and I think I'm doing that on August 15 at Yankee Stadium."

On Sunday, however, Trump said he was no longer going to be throwing the pitch because he was too busy.

According to The Times, Trump's announcement that he was appearing at the game had surprised officials from both the baseball team and the White House.

An unnamed official told The Times that Trump directed aides to call Yankees officials to arrange an appearance since Levine had previously made an open-ended offer. The official told The Times that the move was directly sparked by jealousy over Fauci's invitation by the Nationals.

After Trump's announcement, however, aides apparently went on to tell the Yankees that Trump actually had other plans on the date he mentioned, The Times reported.

While Fauci's pitch ultimately did not go so well, a baseball card with a picture of the top US infectious-disease expert mid-pitch that day was the all-time best-seller for Topps Now.

Trump has long pushed to reopen the US economy before public-health experts like Fauci have deemed it safe, putting the two at odds even without directly criticizing each other. Trump has also previously opposed wearing masks and peddled conspiracy theories about the virus.

Trump seems to have changed course on the way he speaks about the coronavirus, however, most likely because of the impact his response to the pandemic is having on his reelection chances.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, close to 4.3 million Americans are known to have been infected with the coronavirus, and more than 147,500 people have died.

MedlaShatters on July 28th, 2020 at 04:44 UTC »

Trump invited himself to throw out the first pitch and then publicly declined his own self-invitation.

Ain't that some shit?

gdex86 on July 28th, 2020 at 03:25 UTC »

Is it weird to anyone else the past 4 years we've normalized the president, a 73 year old man, who constantly engages in what you might call tween girl jealously bullshit except that would be an insult to the tween girls I know who are machavelian monsters with how they deal with their rivals who slight them.

theshoeshiner84 on July 28th, 2020 at 03:24 UTC »

I regret to inform all of Reddit, that I too, will be cancelling my first pitch at the upcoming Yankees game.

I will also unfortunately be cancelling my appearance at the super bowl half time show, and my acceptance of an Academy Award for best assistant to the background effects sound engineer.