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Pepe the penguin waddled out to a roar from the White Sox crowd on World Oceans Day on June 8 as an emissary from Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. When famous guests and icons visit MLB stadiums, they’re escorted to the stadium’s most visible real estate: the pitcher’s mound.
That’s how Pepe ended up toeing the rubber for a ceremonial first pitch. (The Zoo president did the throwing, and Brookfield tells Front Office Sports that the experience was crucial “enrichment” for Pepe.) “Pepe the penguin seemed like a really cute way to help people focus on the zoo’s message of sustainability,” White Sox VP of PR Sheena Quinn tells Front Office Sports.
Originally the purview of presidents—the tradition is said to have started with President William Howard Taft in 1910—ceremonial first pitches are a way for teams to reward sponsors, connect with their community, highlight celebrity fans, manufacture feel-good moments, and maybe even create the right conditions for viral content.
“It’s the ability to bring star power into the ballpark. If you look at the NBA, you have courtside [seats], celebrity row,” says Mets VP of brand marketing and game-day operations Trisha Donlin. “I think first pitches is our version of that.”
That star power can run the gamut—zoo animals, new draft picks or athletes from other local teams, musicians or movie stars, or notably for the Mets last season: Grimace, the McDonald’s mascot-turned-Queens folk hero. His ceremonial toss coincided with the start of a season-altering winning streak—and fans took the first-pitch moment and fully ran with it, making the purple, fluffy character a totem of success.
Fan reaction may be spontaneous, but the ritual moment itself can take months of planning. White Sox director of game operations and video production Dan Mielke says the planning for first pitches starts in November. “And then all the way up to basically the day of the game. If it’s a celebrity that says, ‘Hey, we’re going to be in town tonight, is there an opening?’ We’ll try and fit them in.”
The celebrities and icons get “ceremonial” first-pitch designation, but some first-pitch experiences are earmarked for sponsors, season-ticket holders, and other partners. That means the single-pitch tradition is sometimes accompanied by a few other “honorary” tosses.
Donlin says she’s actively trying to curtail the congestion for the Mets. “It’s all about maintaining the integrity of the asset,” she says. “It is our highest-visibility opportunity. It’s a really special piece of baseball games.”
Donlin’s favorite moment so far this season was the pitch from Mets superfan John Mayer. The musical artist wrote a long heartfelt post about how much inspiration he found in the 2024 team, and Francisco Lindor in particular, after they were eliminated in the National League Championship Series last October.
“So I reached out to him, and I said, ‘Why don’t you come throw out a first pitch?’” Donlin says. “And he was like, ‘I want Lindor to invite me.’”
Lindor obliged, inviting Mayer to perform the ritual on the mound in late April. Before the big moment, they practiced playing catch. This is a key part of the first-pitch experience. Mielke used to warm up with the White Sox first-pitch honorees in the service tunnel under the concourse, parlaying a Division III college baseball career into playing catch with nervous celebrities.
“I always tell people a couple things when they’re warming up,” the White Sox’s Quinn says. “Don’t try to throw fast unless you are a former baseball player or softball player. You don’t want to be the person that’s trying to throw the heat and misses, because those are the ones that get picked up. You want to throw high.”
Mayer looked good in the warmup. “He did a lot of great practice ones,” Donlin says. He chose to throw from the grass. If people ask to go up to the top of the mound to throw off the pitching rubber, teams will oblige. But it’s farther than it looks on TV.
“I think he wishes that his actual [pitch] was better,” Donlin says. “But he was very poetic about the whole experience.”
It probably wasn’t so bad that he’ll need a mulligan—like WWE star Tiffany Stratton, whose first pitch sailed to the backstop and earned her a return invite later this season for redemption. And it wasn’t as bad as the iconically awful 50 Cent first pitch from more than a decade ago, when the ball sailed so far off the plate it nearly nicked a cameraman. (“We would be open to redemption there,” Donlin says.)
But it helps to explain why some celebrities opt to forgo the honor altogether. Not everyone is brave enough to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. “I can’t remember who exactly, but we have had [celebrities say], ‘I don’t want to be the meme of 2025,’” Donlin says. “Which is totally understandable.”
