Twitterball

Out Clause: When I started writing this, it was meant to be a medium-length-ish Tumblr post. I had no intention of spending 2000+ words and most of my Sunday on it. But it was raining, the house was empty, and the Cubs were on WGN. So here we are. This is now WAY too long for a Tumblr dashboard, especially for a piece maybe three of you will find interesting. Plus, there’s a fuck-ton of links in here, so it's actually longer than it looks when read as intended. Hell, it's probably way too long for the Internet at all.

I considered going to the trouble of creating an abridged version, at least for Tumblr, but fuck that. If you're reading this part, it probably means you made it as far as clicking the auto-feed link on your Tumblr dashboard. So if you're already thinking of bailing, I forgive you. Or if you feel guilty, but still don't wanna sort through my egocentric bombast, feigned self-deprecation, and boring personal reflection, then just read the first few sentences and skip down to the part where I make fun of Matt Leinart. Anybody can appreciate that.

Okay, inspired by bcompton’s tumblr post about badbanana’s tweet about Coco Crisp’s Twitter page, I started digging around for more pro athlete tweeps.

Needless to say I found quite a few more than the last time I took a similar interest, which was probably several months ago, and it also goes without saying that most of them suck. But there’s still some pretty interesting finds. I don’t know how many are real or fake, but the ones I’m about to mention seem pretty legit.

Yes, I also realize you could easily Google “Athletes on Twitter” and find as many lists on this same topic as there are awkward commas in a typical @THE_REAL_SHAQ tweet. But those lists weren’t made by me. After all, we could find our animal-stacking pictures on Google too. But it’s way more special when it comes from somebody who really means it.

Quick Backstory: I became a Pittsburgh Steelers fan when I was about six-years-old, and I grew up absolutely worshiping Lynn Swann. I idolized him, I emulated him, I convinced myself I was going to be him one day. I had jerseys, posters, news clippings, and cheap signature footballs. I cried when he retired in 1982, and I spent another several years afterward honing my acrobatic dive-and-catch abilities, measuring myself against #88 in hundreds of backyard (and even a few a real) football games.

As I grew older, it became obvious that my 5’ 8”, 145 lb frame and 4.9/40-yard dash time weren’t really suited for the highest level of pro sports. Eventually I found other interests — music, weed, girls, minor vandalism, writing, the usual stuff — and Swanny soon fell off my radar almost entirely. Almost, except for when I’d occasionally reference him as my “childhood hero.” Really. That’s what I’d say. “Hero.” And I meant it, too. We’d both moved on, sure. But we’d always have this special bond, even if he had no idea who I was, and probably never would.

Then, just a few years ago, Swann made this announcement. He was running for governor of Pennsylvania. As a Republican. I couldn’t bear to research the news for further details. So I ignored it, assuming he had heroically set forth to singlehandedly restore honor and common sense to the GOP. Swann won the Republican nomination, but lost the election. A year or two later he flirted with a run at the House of Representatives, and when that didn’t work out, he promptly disappeared again. I pretended it had all been a weird dream.

Until he reappeared in 2008, this time to announce his endorsement of John McCain in the ‘08 presidential election. This time I was devastated.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this is a guy who literally helped shape who I thought I was. You know that genuine but elusive wash of emotion you get whenever you see your father? The one that’s so instant and tangible it actually makes you think, “Goddamn. This is downright biological.” It’s different for everyone, I assume. For me it’s a potent cocktail of pride, shame, love, resentment, curiosity, and any number of other contradictory feelings. But at the root of it all is a deep, deep feeling of something not unlike homesickness. Other than my dad, there’s two people who make me feel that way at first sight. One is David Letterman, and the other is Lynn Swann. I’ve always reckoned it was because those two were every bit as responsible for raising me as my father was. Probably more so.

As it stands now, I have no feelings for Lynn Swann one way or another. That’s not his fault, of course. He is who he is. I simply realized that despite spending the better part of my youth trying to be him, I never knew who “he” really was.

I could go on, but I guess it’s obvious where I’m headed with this. We don’t know these people. At all. I think that’s why I find the phenomenon of pro athletes on Twitter so utterly fascinating. I’ve spent the better part of 38 years watching sports. And while I love the games themselves, it’s the players that have always interested me. The ones we like and don’t like, for whatever shallow reasons we can glean from TV broadcasts, or batting stance mechanics, or free throw shooting rituals, or the occasional guarded magazine interview. I despised Bengals’ QB Ken Anderson because of his mustache and uncool facemask. I liked Joe Montana because my grandpa liked him. Other than the odd paragraph on the back of a guy’s trading card, these few little details were all I had to go on. The number of times I’ve uttered phrases like “Man, I love me some Terry Mulholland,” or “Arrrgh, I hate Cliff Branch,” or “I dunno, I think Shawn Kemp gets a bad rap,” is unfathomable. The Swann thing helped me realize, way later than I should have, that I hadn’t just been fabricating most of my opinions about these guys. I’ve fabricated all of my opinions about them, ever since the first time I sat down in front of a live broadcast.

Now here’s Twitter. It doesn’t fix any of this. But what it does is provide us with the most real, most unpolished lens through which we’ve ever been able to view these people. I’m not saying it gives us a 100% accurate portrait of what it’s like to be, or even hang out with Steve Nash or Nick Swisher. But unlike real life, it actually seems kind of like… real life. There are no scripted sound bytes or worn out cliches. At least, not yet. It's just too new. Sure, like regular tweeps, there are tons of pro athletes who don’t know what the hell they’re doing. There are The Noobs, like the White Sox’ Chris Getz, The Wet Blankets, like the Chargers’ yawn-inducing Shawn Merriman, The Chronic Chat Roomers, like yappy San Antonio Spur Fabricio Oberto (who, incidentally, is the only one I’m aware of who has actually retweeted Guy Kawasaki), and The I’m-Just-Here-for-the-Free-Marketing types, like the Falcons’ Warrick Dunn.

But if you like the NBA at all, try telling me this tweet from the Clippers’ Baron Davis doesn’t make you raise a pleasantly surprised eyebrow, or that this one and this one don’t provide more insight into his personality than twenty locker room interviews ever could. Right down to his “Beware of the Beard!!!” bio, Davis seem like a fun guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously.

The boxscore tells me that the Raptors’ Chris Bosh can haul down 12 boards a night. I also know he has cool hair, and I suppose I might have read someplace that he has his own online video channel. But where else but Twitter can I get Bosh’s instantaneous, unedited reaction to meeting a legend at the 2009 All-Star game? Or better yet, learn that he’s the kind of dude who can’t stand to let a typo slide? In one tweet, he just endeared himself to me. Chris Bosh cares about fucking typos? “Shit. That’s all you had to say.”

In 2008, after he failed to secure the closer’s job and was relegated to middle relief, Rangers pitcher C.J. Wilson was just another a wasted pick in my fantasy baseball draft. Now, he’s a certified Twitter nerd, good for 15-20 tweets a day, the best of which have nothing to do with baseball. Wilson is also responsible for one of my favorite athlete/fan Twitter exchanges of all time. In response to this passive-aggressively smarmy question about his MLB promo photo, Wilson responded with the Twitter equivalent of a 95mph fastball in the ear.

This shit is priceless. With a few rare exceptions, the boilerplate, cookiecutter athlete-speak doesn’t exist. There’s nobody “taking it one tweet at a time.” There’s no one giving the other tweeters “all the credit in the world.” No bullshit labels like “he’s a throwback tweeter,” or “he’s the kind of tweeter you can’t watch film on.” These guys are totally open here. Why? Because no one’s making them do it. No one’s plunging a mic in their faces, or setting a tape recorder on the table, or blinding them with the lights from a TV camera, five seconds after a tough loss. It’s all unprompted, unscripted, and unrehearsed. Those precise qualities are what we love most about sports. But until now, we’ve never really gotten to see those same qualities in the athletes themselves. There’s always something between us and them. A director, a reporter, a writer, an agent.

But on Twitter, it’s totally different. They choose the words. They choose the pictures. They’re the writers, the art directors and the editors. Just like us. It’s amazing. Reading those Coco Crisp tweets made me positively giddy. It’s like a fog lifting between us and them. I just hope it lasts. I suspect there’s already a team of rabid publicists and PR people working around the clock, trying to figure out how best to fuck it up. But for now, I can’t get enough. And I can’t help but wonder how different things would’ve been if Lynn Swann had had a Twitter account thirty years ago, and whether I would’ve followed @richardnixon just because he did. Or whether I would have ended up being a huge Ken Anderson fan.

Anyway, here are three of my favorite athlete tweeps, one from each of the big three sports. As you’ll see, I like them each for very different reasons, and each to the point that I’ve added them to my Following list. (Well, two of them. The other one is interesting more in a car crash kind of way. But I’ll be checking back in on him.)

Matt Leinart, Quarterback, NFL Arizona Cardinals, @MattLeinart
The former 10th overall draft pick and would-be star lost his job when Kurt Warner returned from the grave to lead the Cards to the Super Bowl in 2008-09. For his part, Leinart seemed all “just happy to be here, brah” when he started tweeting this past January in the week leading up to the big game. But as kickoff approached, his tweets took a decidedly disturbing turn. One football game and one mysterious cliffhanger later, Leinart was gone. Although he hung around less than a week and posted only 13 times, his brief stay in the Twitterverse did yield this 1 2 3 punch of comedy gold.

Brian Cardinal, Forward, NBA Minnesota Timberwolves, @Cardinal_Brian
On its surface, The Custodian’s Twitter stream is about as impressive as his career PPG average. But I don’t care. Even before his stint with my hometown Memphis Grizz, I was a huge B.C. fan. What’s not to love about a prematurely balding white guy with bad knees and an 8-inch vertical leap, whose only discernible natural talent is his ability to withstand multiple third-degree floorburns? In fact, I’ve had a man crush on him since I saw his Purdue Boilermakers play this game in person, back in the 1997 NCAA Tourney. And you have to love the guy’s humility. Check out how this dick tries to get a rise out of him. Then watch how Cardinal, who could have pointed out his multimillion-dollar contact, linked to a wiki entry about his 10+ year NBA career, or simply ignored the guy, instead issues a beautifully restrained, self-deprecating, yet subtle point-making response. Clearly, this is a guy who doesn’t hold any illusions about his modest role as a basketball player. Reading posts like this, you almost get the sense that even he has to occasionally resist the urge to make an easy Brian Cardinal joke. In all, his whole Twitter existence is like a microcosm of his hoops career. It doesn’t look like much in the boxscore, but if you really watch what he’s doing out there, it all serves a purpose. And if all that isn’t enough to make you a fan, check this out. That’s right. His avatar shot is from Wrigley Field.

Barry Zito, Pitcher, MLB San Francisco Giants, @BarryZito
Famous as much for his colorful personality as his curveball, the former Cy Young winner, current overpaid San Francisco Giant, and amateur acoustic rocker/Zen Master drops eclectic musical references like @fakeweiler drops lady-trou. Just a few clicks on the More button reveal the dude’s into T-Rex, Al Jarreau, The Beatles, Wynton Marsalis, Wilco, Pat Matheny, Stevie Wonder and at least a dozen more surprisingly respectable artists. Go down even further and you’ll find fewer @ replies and more classic California-dude gems, as Barry meditates on spirituality, puzzles over big relationship questions, contemplates the mystical forces of Twitter addiction and dispenses pure, Favrd-worthy snark. For all his awesomeness, the most interesting thing I find is that, despite his reputation as an idiosyncratic goofball, Zito just seems like a smart, interesting, relatively normal creative-type who’s into music, can form and communicate coherent thoughts, and isn’t a fucking meathead. I guess in a major league clubhouse, that’s more than enough to get you labeled a freak. Here on Twitter, it’s enough to get me to follow you. Provided you tweet about baseball every now and then.