The Finger Wag – Athletes using Twitter and Social Media to their Disadvantage

Here’s what we do at The Finger Wag…  We make fun of athletes.  They usual don’t deserve it.  Though sometimes they do.

We certainly add no value to the world.  We just leach of their fame and try to get a few page views with a snarky comment.

Then we get fodder like this…

JoseCanseco

(Jose Canseco)

Why do you guys hate me so much cause I told the truth and fixed the game and probably saved someone life like your kids or brother or frien On 4:25 PM May 26th 2010 from TweetCaster

That’s Wagging Gold!!

Or so I thought.  Within a few minutes I thought to myself, “Why do we actually hate Jose Canseco?”

It’s true.  He performed what was truly a valuable service. Everything he said ended up being true.  It basically beat Bud Selig into cleaning up the game.

And truth be told, he’s probably going to keep a few kids of steroids.  And that’s a good thing.

So I decided to highlight Jose’s tweet as true.   And ask the question to you, why do we hate him?

But I didn’t get further than the background on his Twitter page until I realized exactly why people hate him.

Here’s the background…

Then it all came flooding back to me…

The celebrity boxing.

This unfortunate scene from the Surreal Life.
Baseball promos like this (though it probably wasn’t totally his fault.  Managers and PR people can get celebrities to do the strangest things).

His odd fashion sense.

And finally his circus-MMA fight against novelty fighter Choi Hong-man.

I think he was on the Celebrity Apprentice too, but no one watches that anymore.

So I’m not trying to pile on Jose here.  Because here is the important thing…

He actually did, in his own way, a helluva lot of good for baseball and sports.  People like to think that cleaning up steroids in the game is one of those things “that would have happened eventually.”

I disagree.  You needed a whistleblower.  And you needed one with some credibility.

It’s true.  Jose probably did it to sell some books.  That motive is as clear as his finest sheer movie-premiere attire.

But sportswriters could scream until they were blue in the face.  Until a player, in those clubhouses–who was there while players used steriods– came forward, nothing was going to change.

So I, for one, thank Jose for his bravery and capitalism.

Now we just need a test for HGH and a colorful NFL character to clean up that sport.  My pick: Steelers kicker Jeff Reed.