BRADENTON, Fla. — Pirates pitcher Joel Hanrahan often goes on-line to chat with fans, mingle with celebs and even snag some freebies from pro golfer John Daly.
A few minutes after the Pirates revealed Hanrahan's elbow injury on the first day of spring training, news of the right-hander's setback was a hot topic on Twitter. Before long, Hanrahan tweeted to assure fans he expects to be back in action before too long.
"I've had a lot of good feedback with (Twitter) from fans," Hanrahan said. "It's an easy way to communicate. You keep it nice and short, and they appreciate it when they hear something back from you."
Twitter is an Internet social networking site. Users post short (140 characters max), instant updates on what they're doing, thinking or feeling.
To see someone else's posts, you have to sign up to "follow" that person. As of yesterday morning, 1,342 people were following Hanrahan (who goes by "hanrahan4457" on Twitter).
Hanrahan is the Twitter king of the Pirates' clubhouse. He has almost as many followers as teammates Paul Maholm ( "Maholm28" ) and Daniel McCutchen ( "DanielMcCutchen" ) combined.
"Maholm just passed me this week, so I'm in third place," McCutchen said. "Hanrahan did something because he got up (over 1,000) quick."
McCutchen said he joined Twitter only to keep tabs on Hanrahan and never intended to post messages.
"But then, a couple days later, I had 500 followers, so I had to start writing something," McCutchen said.
Last week, Maholm tweeted to shamelessly beg for more followers.
"Got to get up over 1,000," he said.
There are dozens of pro and Olympic athletes with verified Twitter accounts, and many of them follow each other. Hanrahan keeps tabs on Chad Ochocinco and Daly, among others.
"I actually had a conversation with John Daly on Twitter one night," Hanrahan said. "He lives up in Clearwater, (Fla.), so I was trying to get him to come down and maybe throw out a first pitch or something. He sent me two of his (golfing) gloves."
St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa tweets to promote his animal rescue foundation. A couple of days ago, Tampa Bay Rays skipper Joe Maddon waxed philosophical in Twitter-speak: "R expectations for 20-O-10 is (sic) return 2 playoffs & get bk 2 world series a mind once stretched has a difficult time going bk 2 its orig form."
Don't expect to discover any posts by Pirates manager John Russell. " I don't know how to do it," he said.
