@craigcalcaterra just fyi, I’m in the best shape of my life. Thought you should have the scoop. #motivated #quotes #sigh
— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) February 18, 2012
Brandon McCarthy, owner of a popular Twitter account and two excellent fastballs, wants both (a) Craig Calcaterra and (b) everyone else to know that he’s in the best shape of his you-know-what as spring training begins in Arizona.
Below these words is a giant, embedded tweet. The text of the tweet, which comes from the official Twitter account of Major League Baseball, contains an image — and that image is of the Detroit Tigers’ mascot in a giant cardboard box.
Regarding the image, I have nothing to say. Regarding the text of the aforementioned tweet, I would like to deliver a long and impassioned speech.
Would like to, I say. Lo, I am without an audience — nor are my prospects for gathering one very good. Also, I’m not wearing pants.
In lieu of the speech I would — and, America, could — have given, allow me to make only a brief comment on the suggestion that the following image exists, and was tweeted out, “for no good reason.”
As Aristotle (in his Ethics) and R. Kelly (in every song ever) both note, there are things that are valuable not as a means to another, greater end, but as an end in and of themselves. For Aristotle, that end is the pleasure one derives from wisdom; for Kelly, it is the celebration of the sex act. For still another, it is the very real fact that we live in a world where a real, human person dresses up as a tiger and then sits in a box.
A tiger like this one, in box like this one, too:
Phil Mackey covers the Twins and other Minnesota sporting clubs for 1500 ESPN Twin Cities. He also — if this recent Tweet is any indication — has another, slightly more clandestine beat, as well.
As everyone knows, Tweets — and everything else, really — are better when context is stripped away in the manner of a bodice-ripper’s ripping a bodice. So, without any context whatsoever, here is a rather delightful recent Tweet from James G:
Indeed, who does tell a child something like this? “Do you want to go to the hellscape of America’s Worst StateTM, young, beggared spawn? Perhaps to the bloodless, soul-murdering infinitude of Orlando-based theme parks? Lovely. We’ll go once you get a got-damn retweet or reply from, let’s say, the makers of Jimmy Dean processed meats. No, wait!: The Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Club. Yes, the Blue Jays. Fair enough, jackass?”
So, much like tertiary syphilis needs a chancre, I need your wisdom. Tell me: What kind of a person tells his or her child such a thing?
Observers of Twitter, home to Hot Sports Opinions, will be relieved that last night’s Jeff Passan-Old Hoss Radbourn contretemps have been resolved to the satisfaction of all vested parties. Admire the Glasnost:
The cockles, they’re heating up. Of course, one particular dry-gulcher is unimpressed:
This, a thousand times. I have long suspected that “Jeff Passan” is actually Blackguard Sinistero, that scoundrel of low breeding whose sole purpose is to steal the merchant’s jewels, the vicar’s standing and the duchess’s maidenhood.
Literally zero people have ever asked me how they, too, might one day become a superstar of the baseball blogging community.
But for anyone who has ever even wondered it — like, just for second, while peeing in a disgusting men’s bathroom somewhere — the answer is this: make a Shepard Fairey-esque print inspired by the words from Boston Globe sportswriter Peter Abraham’s most recent tweet.
Among the things that are always funny — along with taking your pants off at an area H&R Block location and then, later that same day, taking your pants off again at an area Jackson Hewitt location — is when somebody asks the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s David O’Brien about the Braves bench but misspells the word shot and then David O’Brien answers the question anyway and then a blogger notices it and takes a screen cap of it and writes a post all about it and then cries because his life is just a husk of a life.
The following images were captured from Ms. Wendy Thurm’s Twitter feed at approximately 12:30am ET, early Friday morning, and clearly document her descent into madness.*
*Note: Ms. Thurm has denied these allegations, suggesting that the following was a result merely of placing her cellular telephone in an airport security tray. To which explanation the unwashed masses respond, “Pssh! Hah! Pfft! Shwa! Therp!”
Exhibit One:
My favorite base ball-ists from my period of actual, sentient fanhood are as follows: Ozzie Smith, Albert Pujols, John Tudor, and Ray Lankford.
In light of these facts, the following bears mentioning:
I am delighted by this turn of events. Mr. Lankford was galactically underrated during his time on the diamond and the subject of misguided scorn by those inclined to misguidedly scorn. Today, though, Mr. Lankford and I are united through media sociale. And it is wonderful.
I suspect, though, that Mr. Lankford followed me out of righteous pity. After all, I’ve been following him for months, and I recently re-Tweeted one of his vanishingly rare Tweets. He might have followed the trail and discovered that my Twitter background is a mosaic of his Topps rookie card. “The poor dear,” he may have said to himself before hitting the Follow button in the manner that one gives an extra pence to the newsboy. It is my hope that he will one day muss my hair and tell me to run along.
Yes
— Peter Gammons (@pgammo) January 2, 2012
I’ve thought long and hard about just which question of mine Peter Gammons answered — with one single, solitary tweet — yesterday afternoon. Turns out, he answered them all:
Will the Toronto Blue Jays ever make the goddamn playoffs again?
Is Prince Fielder actually a real-life vegetarian?
Is the Euro ever going to collapse, or what?
Should you — should we all — pray for the Baltimore Orioles?
Is Roy Halladay a God amongst men?
Are these the best candidates the Republicans could find?
Seriously?
Is Hanley Ramirez sincere in saying he’ll actually move over to third base?
Is Bud Selig pretty please going to finally frigging retire?
Is “Swag” truly the name of Bryce Harper’s new dog?
Now that she ditched that Brand loser, I’ve got a shot with Katy Perry, right?
Will the Expos ever return?
Is everyone else as sick of the Hall of Fame debate as I am?
And, finally, is baseball closer to returning to our lives today than it was yesterday?
I’ll answer that last one myself: God, yes.
Thank you, Professor Gammons. Without you, we are nothing.
