I don't remember who was the first major league baseball player to really embrace the Internet and have an interactive presence. I want to say Curt Schilling. He was among the first, anyway. He had a presence. I think he still has a presence, but back in the day, he'd show up on message boards and answer questions, which was totally awesome. It's Curt Schilling! On the Internet!
Logan Morrison, Internet Troll
It’s the year 2011. Kim Jong-il is dead, we’ve achieved the first artificial organ transplant, and an outfielder for the Miami Marlins is trolling us on our computers.
As a Mariners fan, I thought it was cool that Ryan Rowland-Smith had a blog that he updated somewhat frequently. Rowland-Smith wasn't a star and wasn't headed for stardom but he was a player on the Internet, which was just the coolest thing.
Time passed. More players blogged. Twitter was created. Players tweeted. We all saw this as positive. More players on the Internet meant more direct access. More direct access meant more questions answered, and more direct access promised to give us a glimpse into what some of these players are really like. Fans love access, love getting to know players better than they can just watching them on TV.
There’s this thing, though - it turns out that athletes on the Internet act just like everybody else on the Internet. Maybe we should’ve seen it coming. Some of them are great, genuine, insightful. Some of them are funny. Some of them are less funny. Some of them can’t spell for shit. Some of them play characters. And some of them troll.
Of course some of them troll. Given a group of a certain size on the Internet, a small percentage of that group is going to troll. It shouldn't be any different with athletes than it is for regular people. And, hands down, the most effective troll is Miami's Logan Morrison.
Pretty much everybody’s already familiar with Morrison’s Twitter account. It is a very famous and popular Twitter account. Most of the messages are jokes, obviously. But Morrison also knows how to leverage his standing as a major league baseball player for purposes of trickery. At the end of November, he tweeted:
“Breaking News: Talked to my boy Pujols, he said he wont be playing with the Birds anymore...”
People flipped out. Even though it was coming from Morrison, people flipped out, because they didn’t know for sure, and, what if? What if Morrison really did a direct line to Albert Pujols? That tweet was shortly followed by:
Should’ve been more clear, my buddy Renee Pujols’ landlord is making him get rid of his beloved pet cockatoos...
Not sure who you guys thought I was referring to?? Nevertheless please join me in getting #BringBackPujolsBirds trending <3
Eyes rolled. Jokes! They were jokes! Morrison being Morrison. Everybody learned a lesson and moved on.
Except everybody didn’t learn a lesson. Fast-forward to Thursday afternoon. It’s Logan Morrison again!
Just heard from my boy that Prince to Seattle is a done deal...
Now, maybe you don't understand. Maybe you don't understand why this was such exceptional timing for a prod. Mariners fans have been driven to the edge. They've watched their team flail for multiple years. They've watched their division add Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson and Yu Darvish in a matter of weeks. They've watched their front office do little in the offseason, and they've grown frustrated with the slow pace of the Prince Fielder sweepstakes. The Mariners are supposed to be in on Fielder, see, but it's almost Christmas, and there's been no indication that things have intensified.
All Mariners fans have been talking about is Prince Fielder. Prince Fielder Prince Fielder Prince Fielder. The repetition has made people crazy, and the fans were dry kindling just waiting for a spark. Morrison’s tweet was that spark. Even though it was Logan Morrison, and even though Morrison had just played a joke with Pujols, what if? What if he was right? What if it was happening?
It was a joke, because of course it was a joke. Later on, Morrison followed with:
Purple Rain & When Doves Cry are going to sound unbelievable this summer under the lights at Century Link Field
Oh $hit, you guys thought I meant the 1B from Milwaukee. My bad. (I love all of you. Happy Holidays!)
Too late. As much as everybody knew there wasn’t any truth to it, there was just that glimmer of hope that there was some truth to it, and people went off. Speculation was all over Twitter. It was all over websites. A Seattle sports radio station talked about the tweet for literally 45 minutes. Morrison pulled the exact same trick he’d pulled before, and it worked. It worked like a damn charm.
I don’t know if Logan Morrison intended for his timing to be so perfect, but it was. The setting was such that he generated the maximum possible response, even though he was playing a card he’d already played.
Logan Morrison is a troll. He’s not always a troll, but he’s done his share of trolling, and it’s worked like gangbusters. This is not a shot at him. But take a step back and realize that a major league outfielder, a guy for whom a lot of fans want to see their team swing a trade, is trolling us on the Internet. I don’t think this is something we prepared for. It’s probably something we should’ve prepared for.
See More:
