When Magic Johnson swooped in to save the Los Angeles Dodgers from the toxic Frank McCourt ownership, it was pretty close to the most awesome thing to happen to the Dodgers or baseball. I don’t know about you, but I got this whole warm and fuzzy feeling because of the unity symbolized in Magic’s purchase–he’s an LA kinda guy who dominated the basketball court for so long there, and now here he was trying to help resurrect another one of the city’s storied franchises. It just oozed with perfection. And things have been going relatively well in Hollywood where, despite a slow start, the Dodgers find themselves give games up on the Arizona Diamondbacks and in possession of one of the hottest young players in the game in Yasiel Puig.
But for as well as things are going out west, its a complete 180 in terms of the action of Magic’s Twitter account. I can’t pinpoint the exact time or place where things started to go south, here, but I hadn’t noticed until recently just how bad things are. There’s so much that can be said, but to help you see what I’m talking about, here’s a look at the stream of tweets from last night as the Dodgers were busy rocking the St. Louis Cardinals 13-4:
Dodger Nation: I'm watching our @Dodgers who are up 9-3 in the 6th on the Cardinals. The team is hitting well led by Schumaker's 3 RBI's!—
Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) August 08, 2013
Dodger Nation: It's nice to see Dee Gordon back with the team and hitting an RBI!—
Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) August 08, 2013
Dodger Nation: Get well soon to @TheRealMattKemp and @HanleyRamirez!—
Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) August 08, 2013
Dodger Nation: Skip Schumaker, Nick Punto and Jerry Hairston Jr. have been playing awesome baseball on this road trip and all season long!—
Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) August 08, 2013
This @Dodgers team is exciting and very fun to watch!—
Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) August 08, 2013
Dodger Nation: Crawford, Ethier, Federowicz, Schumaker, Puig and Nolasco helped lead our @Dodgers in the 13-4 win over the Cardinals!—
Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) August 08, 2013
Dodger Nation: It's always fun watching our @Dodgers when they are hitting the ball well like they did tonight!—
Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) August 08, 2013
Bleh, tongue-down-throat… A few observations from that extraordinarily small sample of sad sad tweets.
First, it’s quite possible that Magic Johnson is the fakest baseball fan in the history of there being baseball fans. It seems to me like he’s saying the simplest things that are just complex enough to make it seem like he cares, or is paying attention. And I’m glad he felt the need to inform us all that, hey!, he’s watching! In all reality it probably went down like this: Magic was probably sitting at home on his giant ass sofa watching reruns of the ’92 Olympics when he realized (oh shit!) the Dodgers game is on, so he flipped to it quick to check-in, see how they were doing, found a quick stat, tweeted it out to the world and all of his followers naive enough to believe him (and believe that he understands the game of baseball), before flipping back to that gold medal game against Croatia. Phew, face saved. How else would you explain his burst of tweets over a 15 minute period before taking a 2 hour break before returning again to give a final score?
Observation numero dos, Magic is under the impression that baseball fans in LA are so uneducated that he decided that he needs to speak, or tweet, down at them. I mean, just look at those tweets. They read as if you were tweeting, writing, talking, whatever, at a third grader. He’s either speaking down or attempting to reach out to and connect with his followers that aren’t too well versed on America’s pastime and get them to jump on the Dodger bandwaggon–either way it’s insulting.
Third, calling out to “Dodger Nation” with each tweet, in my opinion, does the exact opposite of reach out. It’s almost like a cue for the rest of your followers that this tweet is going to be about baseball–which probably about 97 percent of his followers could give two shits about–so you don’t have to pay attention anymore. Also, sticking with the idea that he’s trying to get more people to support his new ball club and get them to interact more, one @ mention in that series isn’t going to cut it. Why the abritary “@Dodger” on the tweet that doesn’t start with Dodger Nation? How about throwing that @ symbol in front of each of those tweets? If you’re trying to get those tweets to sync to a Facebook account, just throw the period out in front. In short, get versed on Twitter, Magic.
I’d much rather he just keep quiet about his $2 billion asset and stick to making Bill Simmons look like an idiot on TV. Pretending to be the biggest Dodgers fan isn’t working out so well and really just makes him look like an ass.
Filed under: MLB, NBA
