Day Tweeting and Thinking of You: The Barry Zito Story

As I tweeted it out over dinner last night—successfully avoiding all direct human interaction (if you want to communicate with me, you can go tweet yourself)—I came to a realization: If done with care, honesty, and a splash of narcissism, tweeting could turn the sports world on its head.

To tweet is to care—It's about empathy. There is a little tweet inside all of us. How long can you ignore yours?

Let’s ingest a couple of tweets here. Don’t fight it, just let it happen.

We have Barry Zito, who twittered “feeling recharged after a day in LA. I love how the city buzzes with creativity and the courage to follow ‘unrealistic dreams.’”

Typical Barry: insightful, brave, real.

And of course, the infamous Charlie Villanueva tweet, “In da locker room, snuck to post my twit. We're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up.”

Somewhat less insightful, but at least Charlie didn’t let his tweet fester. A festering tweet is dangerous and can cause your heart to bleed all over the place.

A released tweet—a tweet given freely, like the kind Zito serves up—can shower all with grace and humility.

That is what Barry Zito does: He takes showers with a 126 million bucks worth of twittered humility.

Yet, there is more. Tweets on tweets can wrap around you like a warm, silky cocoon. 

What we so desperately need is a full on tweet-fest, something that brings fans and athletes together.

A little tweet here, another over there. If we all twitter, and twitter well (remember, a good tweet is all about rhythm, hard and fast), we can twittter ourselves back into a tweet.

This is a tweet-fest.

It shouldn’t be too difficult. Our professional athletes have taken it upon themselves to lead us into the tweet decade. If the Big Agave, Shaquille O'Neal—the most imposing physical force on the planet—twitters, then we all do.

Pray for a world of twittering goaltenders: “He shoots…SAVE by the keeper! Oh my Lord…he’s definitely twittering that one.”

Or tweeting designated hitters: “See this lipper right here?”

“Yeah…gonna twitter it?”

“You know it.”

Or maybe—this most certainly requires an appeal to more than one deity—twittering mascots.

Imagine the Phoenix Suns gorilla—whose official title is C.G.O., or Chief Gorilla Officer—taking off on a bicycle, flying through the flaming hoop, and as he takes the pass off the backboard (from the VP of Gorilla), he twitters it.

Pretty awesome stuff.

Can you see it? Can you see the future? Is this registering?

Twittering is about evolving, taking the next step in our relationships with our athletes. We need our athletes in the cocoon with us. You cannot control evolution, so just sit back and take it.

We need their silk.

Zito knows this better than anyone on earth.

Why else would any sane human being let this little pearl go from their brain to the Internet: “Is the better way to see our own light and help illuminate as we can, or just be ourselves and let others reflect it back?”

They wouldn’t.