Chicago White Sox

Ozzie Guillen Could Be Busted for His In-Game Tweets

By abaseballnut on | From baseballticketsonline.org

“This one is going to cost me a lot of money this is patetic [sic].”

You’re right, Ozzie, this is kind of “patetic.”

Who would have thought that Major League Baseball would take it upon themselves to discipline their employees for tweeting. But then again, how many major league coaches (or players) do you know who tweet during games.

After Chicago White Sox manage Ozzie Guillen was ejected in the first inning of Wednesday’s game against the New York Yankees, Guillen got off the aforementioned Twitter message before play had even resumed in the bottom of the first inning. The cause for Guillen’s ejection was once he became belligerent after arguing a called third strike on White Sox cleanup hitter Paul Konerko.

But apparently Guillen has bigger things to worry about now.

Senior vice president of baseball operations Peter Woodfork confirmed Thursday that MLB has not had to deal with a player, coach or manager sending out social media messages while a game was still in play, and there is no standard policy on how to discipline the action. However, some form of discipline is expected.

MLB’s rules state that all social media messages—Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.—must stop 30 minutes prior to the first pitch (who knew?) Messages can resume after the game at the individual club’s discretion. Getting ejected from a game does not exempt an individual from those rules.

Ozzie in no stranger to Twitter. Just look at at his 126,497 followers. And who wouldn’t want to follow Z with tweets complaining about the cable company: “Waiting for comcast people to show up in my house godddddd please take a little longer is not free [sic].”

Whatever Ozzie’s punishment is, I hope it doesn’t squelch his desire to keep tweeting. In fact, MLB should lift the rule just for Ozzie. The rule should be that Ozzie gets fined a certain amount of money for every inning that he doesn’t have a tweet.

Twitter and Ozzie = a match made in social media heaven.

photo credit: SD Dirk