The Advent of @OzzieGuillen - Twitter and Baseball

Now that the news filtering out of the Phillies camp in Clearwater, FL has slowed a bit in the past two days, the biggest baseball news is that Ozzie Guillen, White Sox manager and philosopher, has a Twitter. I cannot understate the importance of this man's decision to harness social media to bypass the haters in the mainstream media. Already we've gotten these gems of tweets:

"finally I am on this twitter thing it's about time!"

"3 day of Spring Training and im already boreddddddd"

"going to eat in half hour why dye no have a job ?"

"I just finished dinner..I still got it.....BBQ."

And the reason we love him: "I love what I'm doing now,Followers, don't worry, I will be here for all of you."

Behold, the new face of baseball on Twitter

(Photo Courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times)

This is a man born to tweet, and I'm only half kidding when I say that. Does anyone doubt, with this latest move and the reality show that's due to hit TV screens this summer, that Ozzie a man completely comfortable in any setting. Sure he's uninhibited and speaks his mind enough to give the higher ups at the White Sox heart palpitations. But you have to respect him for giving it to us straight, and Twitter will only help him there.

Hopefully, @OzzieGuillen will encourage other baseball players to join Twitter. Baseball players simply aren't using twitter at the level that NFL and NBA players are, and this is a missed opportunity. What's an even greater missed opportunity is that twitter has only been around since 2006. With apologies to other people who have done this before, imagine the possibilities if it had been around for, say, the last 100 years. Suspend your disbelief and indulge me:

@TheGreatBambino: LOLZ so long beantown u r gonna regret this #redsox #yankees

@SatchelPaige: balk my ass thats a legit pitch #umpirefail

@WillieMays: yeah i just made that catch and throw no biggie #giants #indians

@RogerMaris: @TheGreatBambino just hit the 61st, what now. hof here i come!! #newrecord

@BigMac: @RogerMaris how'd that hof work out for u? 70! #newerrecord

@SammySosa: @BigMac i hit also! #almostnewerrecord

@BarryBonds: 73. thx @greganderson couldnt have done it without u #newestrecord

@RyanHoward: @BarryBonds be glad I got to the majors at 25 #recordsafefornow

Well, that could go on and on. My list might have something to do with the fact I'm currently reading this and this and that I like home runs. As an aside, I highly recommend both books. It's a shame we'll never know just what Satchel Paige really did in his long and storied career, or what Willie Mays could have done somewhere other than Candlestick Park.

But back to the task at hand. In all seriousness, Twitter should be used by more baseball players for many reasons, not the least of which being that most of the writers who cover them use it. The lives of MLB players may not be scrutinized quite as much as those of NFL or NBA players, and that's partially because baseball superstars don't hold the place they once had in American popular culture. If they fail to latch on to new social media, they'll fall further behind.

Come up with your own historic baseball tweets! Leave some comments with them and I'll post some from time to time in future entries.