A few days ago, Michelle Zauner (aka Japanese Breakfast) had the honor of throwing out the first pitch at a game between the New York Mets and her hometown Philadelphia Phillies. These moments can often live on in infamy, but fortunately for Zauner, her throw was relatively uneventful: It was wide left and it two-hopped to the catcher, but it wasn’t a superlatively awful throw that will be forever included in compilations of hilariously bad first pitches.
What did stand out, though, was Zauner’s attire, as on the field, she wore a nice Mets jersey with “Jbrekkie” on the back, right above the number 69. In a new interview with Spin, Zauner speculated that she got away with the number choice due to a funny misunderstanding.
She said, “They asked me what I wanted on my jersey and what number and so I just figured I should do ‘Jbrekkie’ and the only number that came to mind was 69 [laughs]. I was surprised they let me do it, actually. But then I also found out that the Mets won the World Series in ’69, so maybe they thought it was an homage to them. It was.”
Indeed, the Mets won the first of their two World Series titles in 1969, with their second coming in 1986. They also appeared in the championship round in 1973, 2000, and 2015. So, it’s possible that whoever is in charge of coordinating first pitches really did think Zauner was showing love to the franchise’s first title. It could also just be that they saw was Zauner was doing and let her have some fun for her big moment.
She also described her throw, “I’m obviously very much an indoor kid and I knew that I was not going to do a great job — and I didn’t get to practice very much, because we found out a week-and-a-half before or something and I was supposed to practice with [drummer and producer Craig Hendrix] and then SNL came in and all of our attention went to SNL. Then we got there at 3:00 and they said I was going to be able to have practice on the field with the baseball players or whatever, but it was raining. So I didn’t get to practice at all and when I did practice, it was not as far away as the mound was to the plate. Everyone was like, ‘You can stand as close as you want,’ but then the catcher kind of gave me sh*t, like if you don’t do it from the top of the mound, it doesn’t count. I was like, ‘I’m not doing that, no way,’ and so I was kind of trying to get him to come closer but he wasn’t having it. I blame him.”