Kitty Cohen, 101, throws first pitch at Mother’s Day Blue Jays game

On Sunday afternoon, 101-year-old Kitty Cohen threw the first pitch at the Blue Jays' Mother's Day game, making her the oldest Canadian to ever do so.

"I want to meet them and shake their hands and even be lifted up by the whole crowd," Cohen told CP24 the day before her big pitch.

Twenty-five of her family and friends — and even her dentist — were in attendance to watch Cohen, wearing a pink Jays hat, jog to the mound and lob "a perfectly respectable throw."

"I told my legs, don't let me fall. I've got to walk like a young woman," the former legal secretary told the Toronto Star.

Cohen said that she practiced throwing the baseball for a month — and was disappointed she wasn't allowed to run the bases.

She followed up her pitch with a lively rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and later called the experience "an exciting, amazing day."

Cohen, who has outlived her husband by 40 years, claims her secret to longevity "is to keep moving" and "moderation."

She walks every day, attends dance classes, reads as much as she can, plays Scrabble, is active in cancer-research fundraising, and takes annual 2-months trips to a Jamaican resort run by her son.

"Why do I walk? Ain't no mystery," Cohen told Global News. "Doctor told me the walking was great! Helps them blood cells circulate! Great for the lungs, great for the ticker! Can’t nothing get you in better shape quicker!"

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Cohen's mother also lived to see her 100th birthday.

"She has a fabulous attitude," said Cohen's 71-year-old daughter, Bernie Riley.

"Nothing stands in her way. Nothing stops her from walking. She doesn’t say a bad word about people. She only thinks positively."

This September, the energetic centenarian plans to walk 30 kilometres in the annual Weekend to End Women's Cancers. It will be her seventh time crossing the finish line. So far, she's raised more than $20,000 for cancer research.

"I'm running for cancer," she told Metro Toronto. "We're trying hard to raise money for research so we can kill cancer, which is killing many, many people, men and women — so in my lifetime, we can get rid of cancer. I'm pretty sure we're able to do it."