KENNETH AUTHOR

Last week, the Twitter Account of the FF was unlikely funny-man @KenJennings.  What business does this Jeopardy contestant have putting out the best tweets on a constant basis?

The same goes for athletes.  I first got onto Twitter just to follow athletes and get news.  So I went around and followed a bunch of them.  A bunch of baseball players and football players so that I could finally find out what’s going on behind the scenes for these superstars and heroes.  As it turns out, there’s not much going on.

Athletes are typically some of the worst follows on Twitter, giving you more information on their favorite potato chips or “what women be doing” instead of insight into a game or season.  If I want news, follow Adam Schefter or Buster Olney.  He’ll tweet the only information you need, as well as other journalists.  Follow them, and leave the athletes out of it.

@JoeMande, famous for making fun of moronic celebrities on Twitter, said that the only people that should really tweet are journalists and comedians.  They can provide something of value in 140 characters, or links to things of value.  If you want to share with your friends or the world “OMG THIS BURRITO IS SO GOOD!” then do it on Facebook.  Nobody on Twitter gives a shit.

So athletes, typically, are not worth following unless you are just obsessive with keeping up in their day-to-day lives like a pseudo-paparazzo.  Brandon McCarthy is one of the rare exceptions, using it as his platform for comedy rather than “ugh I HATE plane rides!”

This is a picture of Brandon McCarthy, pitcher for the Oakland A’s:

Normal looking dude, just exactly what you would expect for an athletes Twitter account, or something equally unoriginal or uncreative.

Here’s Brandon McCarthy’s Twitter picture:

The genius of this photo is that it shows that McCarthy is self-aware about how he was perceived going into the 2011 season, and he wasn’t afraid to make fun of it.  The A’s had a strong staff that included four young pitchers with different levels of ace potential.

Oh, and they also had Brandon McCarthy.  He didn’t pitch in the majors in 2010 and he had never posted an ERA under 4.00 over parts of five major league seasons.  He was the forgotten man in the rotation, but he wasn’t afraid to scribble himself in there and say “HI YOU GUYS!”

McCarthy doesn’t disappoint with his tweets, even though he set the standard so high right off of the bat with that picture/drawing.  On Thanksgiving Day, during Nickelback’s halftime show, he gave this perfect observation:

Simple and to the point.  During a time when thousands of people were trying to make fun of Nickelback at the same time, McCarthy buried them all.

But will an athlete, a public figure like McCarthy, that not only has to represent himself but has to represent the A’s and MLB, be  willing to tweet about himself in a way that is both funny and edgy?  I mean, is he going to censor himself or not be willing to make fun of himself?  I think the real key to any comedian is that they make fun of themselves first.  Can he do that?

Bravo Brandon.

Most comics grow up using comedy as a self-defense mechanism and are able to harness that creative energy into being a “funny person” later in life.  Typically, this doesn’t seem to happen with the jocks, cheerleaders, or guys in a band.  (Please note the important use of the letter “a” being that a guy is in A band not in THE band.)

Why would Brandon possibly need to defend himself?

“Hey, nice FASTBALL dork!”

“Way to be a top baseball player LAME-O!”

“Your brother Denny would have been drafted in the first round if he had made it back from ‘Nam” – Brandon’s father

What happened during the 2011 season was actually quite ironic (I think. It did not involve spoons or rainy wedding days) in that McCarthy kind of became the staff ace.  The forgotten man had stepped up and become the most reliable, consistent pitcher on the staff while two of the rotation members went down with injury and the other two were just recently traded.

I’m sorry that your friends are gone Mr. McCarthy, but you have plenty more on Twitter that will always be there for you!

For more hilarity, be sure to follow his wife @Mrs_McCarthy32 and his buddy @BrettAnderson49