Twitterific

Okay, I think it’s time to admit it. I finally went ahead and registered. I logged onto that cool little site with the blue clouds and birdies; all you have to do is enter a username and password and you can “Discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.” Not only that, but I can get “short timely messages” from just about any athlete I might want to stalk. That’s right, I got a Twitter.

You see, Twitter is probably the best thing a sportswriter could dream of. When I was younger, all I wanted was for my Penny Hardaway poster to talk back to me. Well now, I have instant access to thousands of professional athletes’ inner thoughts, opinions, suggestions, style tips, hairstyle advice…I could go on for hours. I did have some trouble getting past the teen surge of Justin Beiber appreciation, but after a little sight navigation, athlete stalking is as easy as typing “@.”

And hey, what more could athletes want? After they’re bombarded with grilling press conference questions about locker room tension and domestic issues, they get to go home and tweet about how they’re craving a Milky Way, or how they love that new Drake song or just the fact that they have so much swagger.

After browsing Shaq’s page, I’m beginning to think that the program was invented solely for the Big Aristotle himself. Shaqtus has been, without a doubt, the king of hilarious one-liners. As alias The_Real_Shaq, twitter gives him the chance to make people laugh even more. Check out this Shaq tweet I found:

“If you look up in the sky you can see stars, if you keep looking, you may even see pluto,but dats why pluto is pluto it can neva b a star”

Wait, what? What did the Big Daddy just say?

The more athletes I follow, the more hilarious it gets. Spurs rookie DeJuan Blair has his fair share of funny tweets. On May 2, DeJuan45 tweeted:

“Mortons steak house?? NAW!!!!!! Maybe 2 morrow! ROOM SERVICE? NAW too much 4 on thing!! Haha! I guess I'll eat dinner n the mini bar haha!”

Oh, right.

If there’s one tweeting trend to notice, it’s that these athletes have no care for grammar, or even making sense. But for us sports lovers, it’s the best chance to see into their lives, no matter how hard it is to actually comprehend.

Of course, Twitter can get athletes in trouble. These guys can be incomprehensible, but some things just shouldn’t be put out there for the world to see. The NFL is beginning to fine athletes for inappropriate tweets or tweets that are made during a game. Meanwhile, wide receiver Santonio Holmes was recently suspended, and subsequently traded from the Pittsburgh Steelers for tweeting drug related messages. Where was his head @?

Still, if athletes mind the rules and keep their cool, this Twitter thing is a dream for us sports admirers. I’d still give anything to have my Hardaway poster compliment me on my kicks, but I’ll take Twitter for now.

*Originally printed in The Dickinsonian

Did you recently join Twitter nation? Here's a link from Mondesi's House that provides all the twitter pages of Pittsburgh athletes, news sources, coaches, personalities, and pretty much anything else dealing with PGH sports.