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From Kate Upton and Cy Young voting to Sean Doolittle’s girlfriend tweeting about his pee test, Twitter reveals the lives of MLB players.
MLB and Twitter have certainly made for an interesting combination. When Rick Porcello won the AL Cy Young Award in November over Justin Verlander, it brought a Twitter storm from Verlander’s fiancée, Kate Upton. In the voting, Verlander had 14 first-place votes to Porcello’s eight and Upton was angry that Porcello won the award anyway. Because this is 2016, Upton took to Twitter to question the voters, particularly two voters who didn’t have Verlander on their ballots at all.
He had the majority of 1st place votes and 2 writers didn't have him on their ballots?!! can you pick more out of touch people to vote?@MLB
— Kate Upton (@KateUpton) November 16, 2016
She added a few more tweets, one of which suggested the voters did to Justin something she thought only she was allowed to do. Her tweets buzzed around the baseball world for a couple days, until the next story came along. Upton’s Twitter outburst gave fans a little glimpse of the life of Justin Verlander and Kate Upton that we would not have if not for Twitter.
Another recent example comes from the account of Eireann Dolan. She’s the girlfriend of Oakland Athletics reliever Sean Doolittle. When the “drug test guy,” as Dolan called him, showed up at the house to collect an offseason urine sample from Doolittle, Dolan tweeted about it:
That, of course, brought some interesting comments from her followers and more play-by-play from Dolan. Jonah Keri won the thread with his punny, “MLB drug policy Doolittle to help the game, IMO.” At one point, Dolan added, “They’re still in the bathroom together. It sounds like they’re using a manual egg beater on something I can’t figure it out.”
She also let us know that the sample collector did not take his job lightly when she tweeted, “The man is very serious and will not answer my question when I asked him who is the most famous person he’s ever had to watch pee.” It’s a legitimate question. Inquiring minds want to know.
In November, we learned through Twitter that Max Scherzer’s wife threw out the jersey he wore when he threw a no-hitter and struck out 17 batters. She saw a dirty jersey and tossed it in the trash. Luckily, Scherzer found the jersey and saved it, then the couple tweeted back-and-forth about it.
Wife was cleaning up the house and threw away a "dirty" Jersey… It was the 2nd No Hitter Jersey! #ShesSleepingOnTheCouch pic.twitter.com/MJJQJytWCW
— Max Scherzer (@Max_Scherzer) October 26, 2016
There are plenty of big league players on Twitter. Pitcher Brandon McCarthy is a popular player to follow. Of course, with his injury history lately, he’s sent more tweets out to the world than pitches to home plate. If you tweet about baseball, you are likely being followed by Jose Bautista. He’s following 865,000 fellow Twitter users and has over one million followers. Retired pitcher Dan Haren has a self-deprecating Twitter account. In July of 2015, he tweeted, “Chapman’s fastball is about 15 mph harder than mine. That’s the same difference between me and Mo’ne Davis.” Mo’ne Davis was the girl who tossed a shutout in the 2014 Little League World Series.
One early Twitter user was long-retired and long-dead pitcher Old Hoss Radbourn, who regularly uses his Twitter account to humorously throw shade at Cy Young. The real Old Hoss pitched from 1881 to 1891 and won over 300 games. Those were different times, of course. Old Hoss went 59-12 in 1884. He started 73 games and pitched 678 2/3 innings that year. You can imagine what his Twitter account thinks of pitchers these days. Here’s a good example:
Speaking as an ace among aces, he's about 16 2/3 innings short of greatness. With 6 days off to boot. pic.twitter.com/PqkQfuWY7U
— Old Hoss Radbourn (@OldHossRadbourn) October 17, 2016
Twitter has only been around since 2006 so we don’t know what other players from baseball history would have posted on Twitter, but it’s fun to think about. I imagine Ty Cobb’s prickly personality would come through on Twitter with angry tweets directed at pitchers, umpires, opposing middle infielders, opposing corner infielders, other hitters in the league who dared to compete for the batting title with him, fans, fans with missing fingers on their hands, carjackers, and anyone else who got on his bad side.
Babe Ruth’s tweets would likely be more positive, with a bit of a “party at Napoli’s” vibe. He would have led the league in “sliding into DMs.” Ruth’s teammate Lou Gehrig would likely have been more subdued had Twitter existed back then.
Dizzy Dean would have been a popular Twitter user, with his interesting use of the English language. He once said, “Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say ‘isn’t’ and they ain’t eating.” His tweets may not have been grammatically correct, but would likely have been fun to read.
Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby could have tweeted about what it was like to be the first African-Americans to play baseball in the modern era in 1947. Or, given the climate of the time, perhaps not. It might have been too risky for them to let their thoughts be known on a public forum like Twitter.
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Had Twitter existed when Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Duke Snider all patrolled center field for New York teams in the 1950s, the argument over who was the better player could have spilled over into the cyber world. Who was the better tweeter? Who would have the most followers? Who could get the most re-tweets?
Then again, maybe we don’t want to know what past MLB players would have tweeted. Sometimes Twitter reveals things about a player we’d rather not know. Take Curt Schilling, for example. Schilling has caused himself some problems with his offensive tweets. He was fired by ESPN after posting an anti-transgender tweet. This came after other posts that were offensive to Muslims.
More recently, he tweeted a picture of a man in a shirt that read: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.” Schilling’s comment on the picture was: “Ok, so much awesome here…” Dan Haren hit him back with: “Ketchup. Sock. World Series. Some assembly required.”
Schilling’s tweets have been costly in other ways than just losing his job at ESPN. According to Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker, Schilling has already lost 14 Hall of Fame votes from voters who previously had him on their ballots (out of 81 ballots made public).
Despite the bad that can be revealed by Twitter, I’d still like to imagine Reggie Jackson in his heyday on Twitter. Or Rickey Henderson. Or Reggie Jackson trying to out-boast Rickey Henderson. It would be the guy who once said, “The only reason I don’t like playing in the World Series is I can’t watch myself play” versus the guy who said, “Lou Brock was a great base stealer but today I am the greatest.” They could have had some epic Twitter beefs.
