Brandon McCarthy is pitching well also. He has a 1.42 ERA in his first two starts.
Credit: Getty Images
Yankees starter Brandon McCarthy joined Twitter three year ago for the same reason many people do: to get news quickly.
But after he started typing his random thoughts, McCarthy’s handle, @BMcCarthy32, became one of the most prolific on the social networking site. He now has 135,000 followers, was nominated for a Shorty social media award and got invited to run Sports Illustrated’s “Hot Clicks” site last December.
“It was just, ‘I’m going to type out my stupid thoughts,’” McCarthy said. “If people like them, great, if not, that’s fine as well. It’s a place for me to mind numb.”
Since the Yankees acquired him from Arizona on July 6 to fill their depleted rotation, he has tweeted about learning swear words on the streets of New York and also quoted Cosmo Kramer’s Moviefone voice from “Seinfeld” when trying to pick out a uniform number with the Yankees. He took No. 38 after learning No. 32 was retired for Elston Howard.
“I just try and keep all of them funny,” McCarthy said. “There’s only so much serious I can take, so the more funny I can have going in and going out is better to me.”
McCarthy’s wife Amanada, @mrs_mccarthy32, tweets even more than McCarthy and got him interested in the social media site.
“I know my wife had been on it before me and she just used it to check up on news,” McCarthy said. “I kind of joined up for that same reason and more as anything not serious. Then I started randomly tweeting stuff and it just kind of picked up some steam and became its own thing. But it wasn’t something I set out to do. It just kind of happened.”
She tweeted last Saturday about being late to her husband’s first home start because of traffic on the Major Deegan.
Her tweet of, “Hi @mlbAmanda here, can you postpone the Yankees game today? I am stuck on the Deegan again. Thanks!” drew a wry response from Brandon in the postgame interview.
“If everybody isn’t appraised of what she’s doing every few minutes, God knows what would happen?”
Probably his most notable interaction came during the 2012 playoffs. McCarthy was recovering from getting hit in the head from a line drive and offered comedian Jerry Seinfeld tickets to a postseason game in Detroit.
“I was still actually super concussed and I thought about that after the fact,” McCarthy said. “It was after I got out of the hospital and I asked if he was performing in Detroit when we were there for the playoffs. I think I asked if he wanted to come to the game, I would leave him tickets. He responded. It was awesome.”
McCarthy has used the outlet to bring reserved teammates out of their shell and to get fans involved in amusing conversations, but even he knows Derek Jeter isn’t about to join in on the social media fun.
“No, I don’t see that one happening, without the mentions just being flooded and gone,” McCarthy said.
