50 Cent Threw STRIKES ... Before Disastrous First Pitch

Here it is ... PROOF ... that 50 Cent's arm isn't as terrible as it seemed during his legendarily awful first pitch at Tuesday's Mets game.

Just before he took the mound at Citi Field and threw a pitch so terrible, even Gary Dell'Abate had to laugh at it ... 50 was warming up the bullpen and displayed some pretty decent accuracy.

Check out the clip ... sure, he could use some work on his mechanics ... but it's not really that terrible.

Unfortunately, it's not really what you do in practice that counts ...