Twitter Baseball

I admit it:  I am a guilty Tweeter.  I feel slightly guilty when I use Twitter.  I generally think that Twitter is a bunch of people that are sort of using the internet as a dumping ground of verbal/textual diarrhea.  Of course, one could say the same for Facebook, and I am quite a diligent Facebooker.  (But Facebook is way more about social networking, photos, videos, etc. whereas Twitter is just endless status updates of "Time to walk my dog.")

I use Twitter mainly as a way to avoid annoying my Facebook friends with my incessant rantings/gushings about the Braves.  And then I realized, "Oh my... there are baseball players on Twitter.  Lots of them."

Today, Gaby Sanchez, first baseman of the Florida Marlins, joined Twitter.  Lauren and I, by the way, LOOOOOOOOOOVE Gaby Sanchez.  I feel guilty about it, like I'm secretly cheating on the Braves.  But come on.  The guy's a beast.  Seriously.  I told him as much, too.
Update:  I also told him to be nice to his new teammates, Omar Infante and Mike Dunn.  HE ACTUALLY RESPONDED!!!  It was short.  But I don't care.  I'm taking him at his word.  He promised he would be nice to our lovvies!!  In return, I'll be nice to Dan Uggla, too.  (Not that I was mean to him since he became a Brave....)

And here's the thing.  There are SO many pro baseball players with Twitter.  SO MANY.  And I'm all like, "Dang it!!  Where are all the Braves tweeters?"  There are three known ones for the Braves.  And as much as I love J-Hey and Fweddie, and as much as I am very very amused by Moylo, their tweets are boring.  BORING.  And as much as I adore and respect DOB and Mark Bowman (*retch*  *gags self with spoon*), they're not the players!

Examples--

Fweddie:  "On my way to church."

J-Hey:  "Cereal.  [insert picture of his breakfast]"  or  "Keep the faith.  [insert link or RT to a Rev Run tweet.]  Follow my boy Fweddie and Moylo."

Moylo:  "misspellings of every kind.  grammatical errors galore.  misplaced punctuation.  not funny.  hey guys here's a blog post including all of the above, but with more funny.  [insert link].  PS I love Ski he's my boy so glad we signed him whoo."

Official Braves:  "Hey, check out J-Hey!  Oh, look, there's J-Hey!  Did we mention J-Hey???  Oh, we suppose we should also mention Fweddie and Moylo." 

Don't get me wrong.  I have no problem with you telling me that you're going to church or posting pictures of your cereal or promoting your blog.  BUT YOU'RE STILL BORING.  And occasionally, they WILL post funny things... but only occasionally.  For instance, Freddie posted about waiting in line at midnight to get the new Call of Duty game.  GEEK.  Love it.

The Blue Jays tweeters, by contrast, are AWESOME, pretty much always.  [See Ian's blog, The Blue Jay Hunter for an awesome and more superior write-up about the Jays tweet-peeps.]

Travis Snider (hitherto known as "Lunchbox" on this blog):  "MEAT!  FOOD IS AWESOME!  I will discuss the intricacies of certain foods and answer fan questions about food and ask for suggestions related to restaurants.  Then, I will go into BEAST MODE and tease my fellow Blue Jays, especially VDub."

JP Arencibia:  "I'm super cute and excited about playing next year!  See this picture of me setting a good example for my nephew?  [insert disgustingly cute picture of nephew.]  It's time to go into BEAST MODE!!  [insert picture of beast mode]  MIAMI RULES!  Sometimes, I discuss food.  CUBAN FOOD IS DELICIOUS.  Stop teasing me, fellow Blue Jays!  I can't help being the most-good-looking.  The fans ask for pictures, I'm just trying to connect with them!  I misspell many things, lolz.  When I grow up, I want to be like VDubs."

Ricky Romero:  "Son, you don't know what Cuban food is until you eat it at the Romero household!  BEAST MODE!!  Time to work out!  Excited about next season!  Bring it AL EAST.  I ain't skurred!  VDubs is slow on this Twitter thing, let's make fun of him, boys!  Hey, JP, you post too many pictures of yourself."

Brett Cecil:  "I love my wife.  I love my kid.  I'm going to clean the entire house now.  Then, I will go into BEAST MODE!!  Can't wait for Spring!!  My kid is cute, did I mention that?  My wife is awesome.  How cute am I?  PS I like hunting."

Jesse Litsch:  "Dude, I just ran into [insert celebrity name] at this charity dinner for [insert awesome cause].  I'm kind of starstruck.  BEAST MODE!!  Occasionally, I talk about food, too.  Toronto is awesome!  So much good food.  Our fans are the best."

Vernon Wells:  "I might be old compared to you young kids, but I ain't that old yet!  I'm still capable of BEAST MODE!!!  AL East is boasting 2 All-Star teams, eh?  THAT'S JUST MOTIVATION TO KICK MORE ASSSSSSSS!!!!  Thank God for everything I have.  Now I'm going to condition and teach these kids a thing or two.  BRING IT ON BOSTON AND NEW YORK.   WE GOT THIS."

Official Blue Jays:  "Look at our awesome players with their awesome Twitter accounts!  We will actively engage our players in Twitter-conversations!  We will also talk to the fans!  We are WAY RAD!"  

UPDATE:  So, one of my favorite Jays has signed up for Twitter now.  JP apparently went on a campaign to recruit yet another Jays player to Twitter.  [Complete with on-going negotiations, deal finalization, and Ricky's stamp of approval.]  Say hello to Jose Bautista, boys and girls.  He's ready to turn on BEAST MODE in the Dominican Republic.  :D

See the difference, y'all?  I'm sayin'.  Other tweeters to mention:

Dirk Hayhurst (aka Garfoose):  "I am a bestselling author.  I am well-spoken and insightful.  I used to play for the Blue Jays.  I am, in fact, the first Jays tweeter, and look what has happened now.  And they used to make fun of me.  By the way,  I am a wonderful writer.  Feel free to check out my blog.  Hi friends on my former team!  You guys are rad.  I have BEAST MODE, too.  I have all sorts of modes.  I can't seem to turn off Dork Mode, though."

Mike Stanton:  "I do not appear to possess spelling or grammatical skills of any sort.  But that's forgiven because I'm pretty dang cute, I'm not gonna lie.  I like food, and I'm gonna talk about it.  I like partying with mermaids.  Time to go to the beach.  I'm going to condition and work out!"

John Axford:  "I have a crazy mustache and I'm Canadian.  I am also a photographer.  Trevor Hoffman is a great man."

CJ Wilson:  "I like cars.  I am straight edge.  Occasionally I will express outrage over something.  I will also post funny things.  Wanna see some pictures?  [insert link of pictures]"

Drew Storen:  "I'm a college student.  I REALLY should be studying/writing this paper... buuuuuuuut Call of Duty keeps calling to me.  Maybe I'll play just for a little bit... WHY DO I PROCRASTINATE LIKE THIS???"

Braves PR, in case you are reading this... We demand more of this.  MORE.  Thank you.

Blue Jays Love

(with a large side of Braves Rage... but I'll get to that in a minute)

So because of things happening in Toronto, Major League Baseball had to move what would have been a homecoming for Doc Halladay at Rogers Centre SkyDome to a series in Philadelphia... where the Jays are technically the home team...

Yeah.  The home team.  In front of a sea of rabid Phillies fans (who, by the way, I don't like).
Needless to say, Doc murdered the Jays.  And I still hate seeing him in red.

But the Jays got a little of their own back the next day (yesterday).  Shaun Marcum struck out 6 guys (including Jayson Werth twice; once looking and once swinging).  And then some guys decided to tune Cole Hamels up to back up Marcum:  Yes, John Buck (2 run homer), Aaron Hill (solo homer), and Alex Gonzalez (2 run homer), I'm talking about you guys.  Final score, 1-5, Jays.  I love it.  And the best part was... I saw a good number of Jays jerseys and Jays shirts amidst the Phillies red of the stands... I love seeing Jays fans because you know they've gotta be hardcore.  :)  Even seeing Jays fans in Atlanta makes me happy.  (But I know that Atlanta would crush Toronto.  I may love the Blue Jays, but I love the Braves way more.)

Aside:  I don't know why I particularly like to pick on Cole Hamels... but I really really do.

Today it'll be Moyer (8-6, 4.43) vs. Cecil (7-4, 4.06).  MLB.tv?  You are my new friend.  Moyer is about location and pitch control... but as long as the Jays aren't fooled... well, they've got this old man.



In other news... the Braves.  I mentioned yesterday in my toned-down-not-as-furious-as-I-would-have-liked-to-have-sounded text post that we won.  3-4.  This time, it wasn't a run support issue, nor was it an issue with Kawakami's start.  No, no.  This time, it was the bullpen, in the ninth inning, doing their absolute damnedest to give away Kawakami's hard-earned win.

And yes, I realize that we still won.  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that we won and that we're still on top of the NL East.  But it came down to chance and luck.  We got lucky that the umpire called the last pitch that left Peter Moylan's hand a strike.  Because it was most assuredly outside.  It should have been a ball, and the game should have been tied... with the bases still loaded.  But instead, the plate umpire, who had been making strange calls all night (I'm talking calling pitches that were CLEARLY strikes balls, and pitches that were clearly outside or inside or whatever strikes... it was insane... like the strike zone was some squiggly Nickelodeon logo) happened to call a full-count pitch a strike... and by the sheer luck of this call, we got out of a nightmarish situation.  If the Tigers had managed to tie the game with another run walked home (and the bases still loaded, mind you), then Kawakami would have lost his first W (again).  Please note that if the Tigers had tied and then taken the lead from us, I have no doubt we would have still won... but it is absolutely ridiculous that we could blow a 3 run lead while loading the bases by walking 4 consecutive men with 2 outs.  And yet... we did.  I suppose I should also mention that part of the trouble was also a homerun... sigh.


A few other less rageful Braves-related items:
Chipper Jones had himself a big night.  First, he made a nice snag of a pop up in foul territory.  (And did you see Johnny Damon over there, helping Chip out?  Adorable.  I love it when players are nice to each other.)  And then, in order to back up Kawakami, he launched a 100 mph pitch into the stands to give us a 1-3 lead.  Did I ever say I wasn't a fan?  Well, I lied.  [Also, please note the giant smile on KK's face (about 47 seconds in).  There will be no loss for him!  A no-decision, possible, but a loss?  Get out of here.]  Also worth mentioning, that was a one-hundred mile per hour fastball, by Zumaya, who hasn't given up a home run this year... until he met Larry Wayne Jones, Jr., resident Braves badass.

Melky Cabrera.  He's totally underrated.  So his April sucked.  And then suddenly, he came out of nowhere and started destroying his at-bats.  And he makes great catches.  He runs the bases as hard as he can (looks like he's ready to bowl you over if you don't get out of the way even if he's going BMac-speed).  He's got a good throwing arm.  AND he's nice to the fans.  He will often throw it into the stands if he catches a fly out (obviously if it's the third out).  So as far as I'm concerned, I know why Melky's got a loyal fanbase in New York.  And I think he should start getting some fans here.  He's a good player.

Check this out.  If Ross is put on the DL, and BMac is out for a game, then we can use Brooksy or Yunel as catcher!  My only question is:  Why did we remove Clint from the 40 man roster?  And why did we designate him for assignment, where he cleared waivers... so that we could make room for Diory Hernandez?  As far as infielders go, we've got the aforementioned Brooks Conrad (2B & 3B), Omar Infante (2B, SS, 3B), and Eric Hinske (1B & 3B), who have got all the positions infield covered.  I suppose we want to make sure... in case both Yunel and Omar go down, we'd have a SS?  I guess we'll see.  Too bad about Clint... he's adorable.

Max Scherzer of the Tigers is a good pitcher, but I really really REALLY do not approve of you hitting MY GUYS, Max.  Nailing Troy Glaus in the hip really infuriated me, and I had to try really hard not to shout at the television in front of my customers.

IN SUMMARY:  Braves rule.  Jays = Love.  And we'll both win this afternoon.  Tommy's on the mound for Atlanta and Cecil for Toronto.  :)  PS--I called KK's win last night.  Just look at item 5.