Obviously Tulo's been on my mind and this blog a lot in recent times but there's another reason I bring up this tweet.
BREAKING: Tulo traded to #BlueJays.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 28, 2015
This tweet has a good case to be the first ever of its kind to really dominate the earlier budding forms of MLB Twitter. That kind of insider "this just in!" type tweet about a blockbuster trade involving a superstar. That kind of tweet that gives everyone on the social media platform reading it a rush of adrenaline and awe.
While I don't think Rosenthal was the first to ever make this type of tweet (I think Woj-bombs were established by 2015), this is the first one that I can recall making shockwaves throughout a very early and budding form of MLB Twitter. Or at the very least it was the first one for me personally.
I remember where I was. I'd just gotten home, it was midnight and I was just scrolling Twitter when this dropped and the app went nuts.
I'm sure that by the time Rosenthal got the information from the source who gave him that tip a lot of the work was done, but seeing the news of a transaction of this magnitude hit our feeds with as minimal time lag as possible was big. It didn't matter that Tulo trade rumors have been a popular topic of discussion for years by that point, it also didn't matter that Tulo had already been perceived as an injury-prone superstar who couldn't stay on the field enough to show he was truly the best shortstop in the sport, a team was trying and we got to see it happen as physicals were being exchanged and Tulo was being forcibly shoved out of the backdoors of Coors before he could collect his thoughts. We didn't have to wait a whole day or for the next morning's paper to get this information.
A new era of sports fandom was here.
Even if the Tulo tweet isn't the first or last of it's kind, I'd argue that every sports fan born after 1991 has at least one tweet they associate with giving them the "PASSANBOMB!" rush of adrenaline after they witnessed it happen.
From Giphy
The context about the information it conveyed at the time is important for sure. The Blue Jays coming into 2015 were all-in, they had traded for the eventual AL MVP Josh Donaldson and had a now-or-never core with guys like Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Mark Buehrle, Russell Martin and Kevin Pillar (among others who they'd add later). As the season went on Toronto correctly saw that this was their best chance to not only win the division but also make a deep playoff run (only the New York Yankees were a threat for the division that year and all they did was lose to the Houston Astros in the Wild Card round, starting a tradition of losing that continues to this day).
This tweet signaled that then-GM Alex Anthopoulos and Rogers Telecommunications were going to continue putting their nuts on the table. It signaled to Jays fans and Jays opponents alike that reinforcements for that team were coming.
And for us, the laypeople just scrolling through a social media site, we were witnessing it in real time.
From Tenor
Humans are inherently social creatures. No matter how introverted, we are still naturally drawn to where all of the other people are, and especially if it looks like they're all excited and having a good time. And nothing draws folks in like blockbuster moves. One party is guaranteed to always be happy, maybe even two if it's a really good trade.
Throw in how a good chunk of sports Twitter primarily consists of teens and people who peaked during their teen years who find all of this very cool and it shouldn't surprise anyone one bit if a chunk of the app goes in a frenzy whenever a bomb drops.
To be clear that's not meant to be a slight. People can claim "I just want to enjoy the game of baseball" all they want, this extra stuff helps. It adds layers of intrigue and makes the overall experience a lot funner. It generates interest, it draws more eyeballs from casual observers who want to know what all of the hub-bub is about, it can be a net positive.
The WBC became one of the most-watched global sporting events by the end of the tournament because at every level of the later rounds the level of buzz around it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Your average baseball fan will remember the Shohei Ohtani vs Mike Trout at-bat far more than whoever made the last out of the 2023 World Series.
Jeff Passan (Source, himself)
And the thing is that after it happens once, folks naturally want it to happen again and again. They want that rush, they want that excitement and fervor. How much you care about the teams and people involved can vary but nevermind that, things are happening! You can practically get hyped just feeling the energy from people who actually do care.
I won't deny that the negative part of that is how it's led to how what's been a winter of MLB insiders getting a little to itchy with the trigger finger and just plainly getting things wrong in order to be first. Although the funnier dynamic that's emerged is that people usually only trusted Jeff Passan to begin with and that's only been solidified (Jon Morosi is probably never beating the "Yapper" allegations).
There's also the trend of some insiders just being blatant mouthpieces for either teams or agents like how Jon Heyman is a clear Scott Boras mouthpiece.
Anyway much has been made about how shitty the 2023-24 offseason has been as well as how the trade deadline always looks like garbage. My theory is that that's basically less of a reflection on the actual stuff that's going on, and more on how we collectively don't think there've been enough "PASSANBOMB!" moments.
As far as I can tell the two high-points of this past offseason as of the time this blogpost was being written were the landmark Shohei Ohtani signing announced by Shohei himself and a vintage Rosenthal-bomb about Corbin Burnes getting traded to the Baltimore Orioles. So it's not like it doesn't still happen. The cries for a designated transaction period is probably more about just folks wanting to force these adrenaline rushes to occur.
From YES Network via SB Nation
But like a lot of cool things that happen in baseball, you can't force these things. These things are great because enough time has been given to let things work out naturally and they just happen. Like Rob Manfred can put in more Wild Card rounds until eventually all 30 teams are automatically in the playoffs, nothing he or his successors ever do will ever be able to garner the same level of excitement that the end of the 2011 season brought to the world because that happened naturally. And that's perfectly okay, things like that were magical because they're so rare.
There will always be more Passanbombs or Rosenthalbombs or Wojbombs on the horizon. Many of them will have a greater impact than Tulowitzki going to the Jays ever did, but there'll inevitably be downtime between them. There should be. I'm just glad I get to live in a time where this happening at any given moment and we can find out like seconds after (or before!) is possible.
As always thanks for stopping by and take care.
Cool TTM and great inscription!
ReplyDeleteIt was just a throw-in scan because it was a scanned pic that fit the post.
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