Beginner’s Guide to Following Chicago Baseball on Twitter
If you use Twitter, I assume you are on for on two reasons. To glean information and perhaps to give your own analysis/info on what you know.
If you are a Chicago Cubs or Chicago White Sox fan and on you are Twitter, there are some must-follow feeds to get the most out of the social networking tool. This is a general guide that will help you get started.
Let’s start with the basics.
The Teams
Here are the official twitter accounts for the two major league teams. Follow these if you want the latest news from the Cubs and Sox. Keep in mind that anything from here will most likely be links you will see on mlb.com or press releases. Certainly nothing too juicy.
Chicago Cubs @cubs
White Sox @whitesox
Search Hashtags
Since you all can can read the articles on mlb.com on your own, perhaps of more interest to Chicago baseball fans is search hashtags. This will allow you to follow all tweets from baseball fans having to do with say, the Cubs. Without going into a whole tutorial on Twitter (you can find a good one on hashtags here), suffice to say that any tweet with the “#” sign before the search term before it will be included in the search query and folks will see it when they follow that query.
So the ones that we’re interested in are:
Chicago Cubs #cubs
Chicago White Sox #whitesox
Keep in mind that Twitter programs (like Tweetdeck, Tweetie or Twitterific) take advantage of hashtags much better than the web version of Twitter.
MLB on Twitter
Let me throw out the general Major League Baseball Twitter links out there while I’m on the topic.
MLB on Twitter @mlb.
To follow the Major League Baseball hashtag, it’s #mlb
Other Chicago Baseball people to follow
Cubs fans will want to follow MLB Cubs beat writer Carrie Muskat (@carriemuskat). Similarly, Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) who covers the Sox for mlb.com is must for White Sox fans.
For the Cubs fans, here a few more.
Iowa Cubs @Iowa Cubs
Official Cubs Vine Line @vinelinetwitter (not too active yet)
Len Kasper and Bob Brenly’s Official Twitter @lenandbob
For the White Sox:
Charlotte Knights @KnightsBaseball
Sun Times Sox blog @CST_sox
I was thinking of throwing up some baseball blog twitter links for both teams but so there are so many I wouldn’t be doing justice to some good ones out there. Just know that most all of them out there have a twitter presence and it’s easy to follow them. Not only is it an easy way to get notified when they update their website but more importantly, you get some good insights from the bloggers in 140 characters or less.
Also, there aren’t too many active Chicago players on Twitter right now (no, the Carlos Zambrano you see is a fake). Former White Sox OF/1B Nick Swisher (@NickSwisher) has an account is quite active (and interesting). Fantasy Baseball Dugout blog has a list of current MLB players on Twitter. Keep in mind not all players with accounts are active or even post themselves.
I’ll throw one more in here for kicks just because it’s been in the news lately. Ozzie Guillen is on the Twitter thing now. And so far, he been having fun with it. So has the Twitter community because his Tweets have been quite nonsensical at times. I’ve said it before… I’m not a Sox fan but I kind of like Ozzie Guillen because I think he makes MLB a little uncomfortable. This Twitter venture on his part is just one more example. You can find Ozzie on Twitter @ozzieguillen.
I hope this help those of you baseball fans who are just starting to use Twitter. If you have other relevant Chicago baseball people to follow on Twitter, please let me know.
Kenny Williams did exactly what I wanted him to do, now let’s see if it works out, because sometimes when you ask for something, it doesn’t always workout the way you thought it would. Leadoff man Juan Pierre was traded, along with cash, to the White Sox from the Dodgers for two players to be named later. Whether this deal is a good one or not depends on which two players Chicago will have to give up to LA. It’s a no brainer, looks great, a leftfielder, a leadoff man, & cash for basically nothing (nothing, that is, until the players to be named, are indeed, named). But right now, I’m very happy with my new present from Santa, hope we didn’t have to pay to much on our credit card.
So far, the biggest trade was the three-way deal involving the Yankees, the Diamondbacks, and the Tigers. New York got All Star centerfielder Curtis Granderson, enough said, they got the best player in the deal. Arizona got starting pitchers Edwin Jackson & Ian Kennedy. While Detroit landed centerfield prospect Austin Jackson, starting pitcher Max Scherzer, and a couple of lefties for their bullpen Phil Coke & Daniel Schlereth.
The White Sox fired up the Hot Stove signing SS Omar Vizquel & Andruw Jones. Vizquel has been the best defensive shortstop of his time and will tutor Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez. Omar might be headed for Cooperstown when he finally hangs them up, his numbers stack up with Ozzie Smith, and nobody flashed a better glove at short. Speaking of excellent fielders, nobody did it better than Andruw Jones, but that was in his day. Andruw isn’t all that old, but he got old in a hurry, with very old knees. Jones will not embarrass himself in the outfield with the glove, although he won’t add to the team speed, but he was brought in here for his bat and to provide some outfield depth.
I couldn’t make it to the desert to watch any Arizona Fall League action this year, which was very disappointing. I’m a huge baseball fan, who enjoys seeing young talent more than anything, and then watching these players develop. Last Fall I enjoyed getting a chance to see The Sporting News AL Rookie of the Year Gordon Beckham of the White Sox play in the AFL for the Peoria Javelinas.
Back in the middle of September I was assigned the task of predicting who would win the rookie of the year awards. Now two months later the winners were announced, Oakland A’s reliever Andrew Bailey in the American League and Florida Marlins outfielder Chris Coghlan. I had predicted Rockies outfielder Dexter Fowler in the NL and Rangers SS Elvis Andrus in the AL.
DonS. on 
KRYSTAL on 
The Baseball Zealot on 
Podcast Feed