Some sports tweets are better than others
The morning after his Yankees dropped yet another game to the hated Red Sox, Nick Swisher said there was no quit in his team and vowed to get the Bostonians that night.
He did so using Twitter, of course, and the 62,767 people following him surely felt better because of it.
Then Swisher went out Tuesday and struck out twice as the Yankees lost yet again. This time there was no tweet.
I could have tweeted him back to find out why, but my guess is he would be as uninterested in the mundane things I would pack into 140 characters as I am with what he has to say. That is, of course, unless he calls his shot from the dugout just before going out and facing Jonathan Papelbon.
Among athletes, we can grant an exemption to Shaq on this one because the big guy, also known as The_Real_Shaq, is undoubtedly the most creative Twitterer around. He does things such as tweet his presence at a store and promise game tickets to the first person who touches him, which is one reason why he has 906,908 followers.
“I perform random acts of Shaqness,” he proclaims.
Good for him. But do we really need Shaq telling us, as he did Wednesday, that he’s predicting Kobe against LeBron in the NBA finals? I mean, doesn’t everyone know that already? And who really wants to get a tweet from him promoting his new diet product?
No doubt, though, that it’s a Twitter world we live in. The New York Jets announced they landed Mark Sanchez via Twitter, John Calipari uses it regularly in hopes it will lead him to a recruit who will justify his $32 million contract, and San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson had to quit using it after questions were raised about his tweets from a late night out.
In the interest of full disclosure, I plead guilty to sending out a tweet the other day promoting my new book.
The basic idea is sound, unfiltered information straight from the source, all in 140 characters or less. That’s how I learned golfer Morgan Pressel likes to shop and seems to eat an awful lot, and that CC Sabathia was glad to be home last week after returning from a road trip.
And where else could we get updates from Jose Canseco on his latest charade — a mixed martial arts bout against 7-foot-2 Hong Man Choi in Tokyo.
“Training hard….ready to shock everyone on May 26th. Are you ready??!!” Canseco wrote.
The problem with most tweets is they leave us wanting more.
Take John Daly’s recent postings. Here’s a guy who must have a million sordid stories to tell, yet two of his last three posts involved him eating breakfast and then going to play golf.
Granted, the third was a swine flu joke that featured Kermit the Frog and a pig that apparently had Daly rolling on the floor in laughter. Apparently, bad humor can be done in 140 characters or less.
So can good food, which seems to be a big topic among Twittering athletes. On Wednesday swimmer Dara Torres had a healthy salad and not so healthy onion rings for lunch, while former UConn center Hasheem Thabeet was Twittering about the seafood he had the night before at Crustacean in Beverly Hills.
How about throwing us a real piece of red meat?
I can’t find any evidence Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain is tweeting, but think of what he could say about the arrest of his mother on drug charges or Joe Giradi’s decision to yank him Tuesday night in the middle of an inning after he had just struck out his eighth batter in a row.
Teammate Alex Rodriguez could send a tweet to his followers asking them not to believe everything they read, while managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner could post one offering half-priced tickets behind home plate to the first 1,000 lucky followers.
Tiger Woods never says anything to the media that might even remotely be controversial, but imagine if he were tweeting after the final round of the Masters. Actually, there’s not much to imagine because it would be unprintable.
And how about Michael Vick giving us the inside scoop from Leavenworth. He could tweet about the food and how excited he was to have Tony Dungy visit the other day until he found out that Dungy didn’t coach the Indianapolis Colts anymore.
Finally, Manny Rodriguez could tell us in real time during a game what he thinks about the goofballs who sit in the Mannywood section at Dodger Stadium wearing fake dreadlocks.
He does, after all, have experience using a phone in left field.
____
Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org
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