Carson Foster had himself a week. The day after he got married in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, he threw out the first pitch for the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park on Saturday.
Sporting sunglasses and black Reds jersey with “Foster” and the number 24 on the back, representative of his first Olympic Team in 2024.
The pitch was a bit high, but the catcher managed to reel it in.
Foster’s pitch was the highlight of Saturday’s game for the Reds as they lost a lopsided 13-1 game to the Kansas City Royals the day after losing 7-1 and the day before losing 8-1. The 28-3 drubbing in the series belied the Reds’ .500 record heading into the weekend.
Swimmers do not have a great track record of being good luck for teams that bring them in for first pitches. Michael Phelps, for example, threw out the first pitch of a 3-2 loss in the 2023 NLCS for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Foster, 22, competed in his first Olympic Games in Paris, winning silver as a finals swimmers on the 800 free relay and bronze in the 400 IM.
With the retirement of his coach Eddie Reese at the University of Texas, Foster will now be on the hunt for a new mentor heading toward the Paris 2028 Olympics. While he has not given any indication of who that might be, he could find it without leaving Austin – Bob Bowman is the new head coach at Texas and coached the man who won the 400 IM ahead of Foster at the Olympics, Leon Marchand.
Showing some power and at least directionally correct. That is a win for a swimmer!
Directionally-ish
Clearly his club team doesn’t play a lot of water polo. Are they more of an Ultimate Frisbee team? Or maybe they just stick to good old fashioned hard work.
Foster’s said in interviews that he played baseball at a fairly high level prior to going all-in on swimming.
Carson set a NAG as a 10 yo and made trials as a 14year old. I’m curious what a high level is compared to his exploits as a swimmer.
But nonetheless, if he’s a baseball guy I’m sure that was a pretty special honor for him in multiple ways!