21st Century Trash Talking

Shortly after midnight last night, I logged onto my facebook account to check messages and get caught up on what my friends had been up to yesterday. Upon logging on, the first, oh say, 25 posts or so were all related to the Yankees-Red Sox game that had just finished. Facebook postings ranging from "How sweep it is" to "largest division lead in baseball" to "What a perfect weekend watching my Yankees sweep the BoSux" to even this one "Glad you guys figured out how to beat us, 4-8 this year now. Congrats" and even my personal favorite "Somewhere in NYC, there is an 8 year old boy walking around depressed, wondering if the Yankees will ever win a World Series in his lifetime".

My how far we've come as a society. Back in the "good ole days" of say 1995, trash talking was a water cooler event. Bragging to your friends about how good your team was and how much their team stunk. Maybe you were so bold as to call your friends and talk trash, but that was the extent of it. Then email went mainstream (the word email doesn't even come up as a misspelled word on Microsoft applications anymore) and trash talking was taken to a new level. Mass email blasts ragging on your friends with accompanying pictures became common. More sports websites began popping up than Erin Andrews downloads. Statistics were now readily available to support that trash talking.

And now, thanks to social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, trash talking amongst fans has taken on an art form. Who can update their status to talk trash faster and more creatively? How fast and creative can you come up with a response to said trash talking? People even trash tweet (which just sounds dirty). Social networking sites have become forums for endless sports banter. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, per se, it's just a fact of sports "fandom" in 2009.

But where will it end? Chad Johnson "Ochocinco" has said he will use twitter during games. But what will he be tweeting exactly? The weather? What Carson Palmer had for breakfast? Maybe how he just burned Chris McAllister for a long TD. Of course, if he tweets some trash talk, which is highly likely, and McAllister sees it, there is a good likelihood that McAllister will tweet, "Ochocinco pushed off on his TD. What a &%$*#@$ punk". Trash talking between players will become an art form, too. Instead of bulletin board material, you'll hear sports anchors saying that Player X just gave Team B twitter material.

I like the trash talking between fans. It is, for the most part, a harmless way to beat your chest (unless you are an English Soccer fan, then all bets are off). I even like a little bit of trash talking between athletes. It reminds us fans that they care when they are out there. That they have pride in what they do and want to win always. But, and I'm just spit balling here, allowing players to tweet during games, could become a major distraction. Leave the in-game tweets and facebook updates to the fans. If the players want to trash talk, do it the old fashioned way, a nice old fashioned Icky Shuffle or sharpie in the sock always works.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go update my facebook status to tell Marlins and Rockies fans they have no chance of winning the NL Wild Card over my Giants.