Lately, I’ve switched to Twitter as one of my main feed of baseball news. Most sports news sources have a Twitter feed and Twitter while chaotic, is more convenient than Google Reader.
Anyway, here are two people of interest I’ve found on Twitter that readers here might also find useful, relevant or fun. I wouldn’t put these two under the category of hard news but they do make the day more interesting.
@michael_schlact
How many of you have heard of minor leaguer Michael Schlact? Yeah, me either till today.
But apparently, 1,089 other people have heard of him. That’s how many people are following Schlact on Twitter. Schlact has utilized the medium of Twitter to connect with his fans and quite frankly, to make new ones.
Schlact is a pitcher in the Texas organization (he ended up at the AA level last year). He’s a devout Christian and obviously familiar with new technology. Some athletes create online personas on Twitter or Facebook only to see them die on the vine or have others ghost-write for them. Schlact, however, is a pro at not just using social networking tools like Twitter but knowing how to interact with fans.
Schlact has been answering all kinds of questions from fans (he prefers creamy peanut butter and his baseball pitch-back was his favorite childhood toy). But he also asks questions of his Twitter fans too.
No doubt, it takes more than popularity and fan recognition to make it to the bigs. He’ll have to learn to pitch a mean curve ball too (if you’re interested here a decent scouting report from a year and half ago). But I have to like the way this kid is getting to know his fans because if and when he makes it to the majors, he’ll have a hell of a following.
@si_vault
I’m a sucker for old sports photos, especially baseball photos. And Andy Gray seems to be the go-to guy for some really good ones. According to Gray, he runs the Sports Illustrated Vault. Andy’s mission on Twitter is to provide us with links to “old photos of athletes”.
I’m enjoying them as he posts them. There are some wonderful ones like this one of Mike Schmidt wearing some weird kind of wig.
So follow Andy if you want more of that.
And yeah, if you want, you can follow me @BaseballZealot.