Last night, Sam and I had the pleasure of joining a Tigers “Suiteup” with some cool Detroit folks. Before entering the suite for the game, we were honored and privileged to witness batting practice. It was cool and surreal to actually stand on the field, yards from Tigers smashing balls into the massive Comerica Park outfield. Thank you, Andy Hetzel!
Discussion in suite, pre-game, appropriately wandered into topics such as sports, fans, and Twitter. I walked back into the suite, after checking out our seats, to hear comments about my balanced approach to sports tweeting. Apparently I’m a sports Twitter friend that our host, Andy, can stand. Although his comments were appreciated and quite nice, he’s obviously missed some of my Sunday afternoon angry Lions fan tweets. Those aren’t pretty! Or, as Jim Leyland would say, those rants are “another story for another day.”
In the last couple years, however, I have noticed that Twitter has actually calmed my outbursts in some ways, because I’m able to watch hundreds of irrational and momentary responses, and realize I have allowed myself to equally fall off the rails.
Now, some of my frustration with team results has often been superseded by Twitter frustrations; it’s a war zone out there during and after games. Wear protective gear, at all costs!
What Twitter, and the combination of sports and Twitter, has made me realize is that many people think that just because they have a forum to speak (Twitter, Facebook, Message Boards, etc) that they know what they are talking about. Most of the time, most of us don’t really have a clue. And though I love sports and I applaud the passion of sports fans, most really don’t know what they are talking about. Most are really just venting, tweet after tweet….
When it comes to baseball, in particular, it’s evident that our fast paced world with instant opinions desiring instant gratification doesn’t mirror the flavor of the sport. Baseball is a long and grueling endeavor. It’s a day to day battle, with numerous ups and downs, that doesn’t always play well to an hour by hour examination.
And yes, most sports fans have their opinions. I have mine. It’s the same with opinions on politics, the economy, religion, and social issues. But they are all opinions. They aren’t fact, they aren’t gospel, and often, they are more emotional discharges than they are calm and rational discourse.
Lately with sports fans, especially many online, it seems people would rather put their stake in the ground, owning an opinion….and they won’t budge from it, seemingly hoping it true more than wanting to see team success. It is odd to me…
In the end, I love the twitter forum, really more than I ever thought I could. It allows me to not only share views, but keep abreast of what others are thinking and what’s happening out there around our globe. More than all of that, however, twitter has allowed me to meet so many great people that I would have otherwise never known, and it’s brought me some very cool experiences.
Many folks continue to encourage me to increase my sports blogging, so I’m going to “get on that.” After all, “they” say to write about what you know and what you love…. And for me, that is sports…as much as any of us can really “know” about sports. Play ball!
