Saturday, March 19, 2016

The Weird Cardinals Twitter bracket

In an era in which "St. Louis Cardinals fan" turned into a pejorative, Weird Cardinals Twitter gives Cardinals fans a sense of community which the team's widespread popularity tends to undermine. By reputation, Cardinals fans are corny and self-righteous at best and deplorable racists at worst. But Weird Cardinals Twitter adheres to no such ideology. We exist as consumers of the Cardinals, not branches of them. We are first and foremost just a big group of friends cracking jokes and not taking itself too seriously. On March 15, @roocourtstl unveiled its Cardinals Twitter bracket of 64 Cardinals related Twitter follows. It has been a tremendous success, motivating hundreds to vote for their favorites (or, as was often the case, vote against their least favorites). And in the spirit of their wonderful idea, @FWBluesFan and I are proud to announce the 1st annual Weird Cardinals Twitter bracket. The initial list of 69 candidates has been cut to 17. Difficult decisions were made and hopefully those who did not make the field are not too offended that we deemed them as having too much of a life to crack this. The seeding is semi-arbitrary and more weight is given to setting up interesting matchups than to editorializing about the worthiness of each entry. Voting on the play-in matchup between the two 16 seeds will begin later today, March 19, with the Sweet 16 to begin not long after. Methodology will be a series of Twitter polls. Here is the bracket (and no, I didn't write my own preview):

 16: @vexedtechie earned his way into the field by coining "Sabermattrics", which he used to track how Matts Carpenter, Holliday, and Adams batted in 2015. As a whole, this epitomizes the analytics-leaning WCT in its irreverence. Twitter isn't about serious statistical research or identifying significant trends to predict future outcomes. It's about stupid puns. 16. @cardsnationjnky on the surface has leanings towards mainstream Cardinals homerism, but it is in his earnest commitment to his persona that Sean defines his brand. After all, if you're going to argue Michael Wacha over Clayton Kershaw, you might as well be really freaking adamant about it. 1. @crying_birds at first glance seems to be a non sequitur machine, but make no mistake: he knows exactly what he's doing. What he's doing is supposed to have killed Twitter by now but instead, it stripped Twitter of its pretense and self-serious #hashtag-ism and now is a form of performance art on a medium forever improved by his presence. 8. @VanHicklestein is a GIF artist and he has #stlcrads (sic) in his bio and he nearly toppled the awful @Total_CardsMove, in every way the antithesis of WCT, in the Roo Court STL bracket. Also he makes good tweets sometimes.

 9. @HighSock_Sunday once asked the GOP front-runner for its 2016 presidential nomination if Joe Flacco is a elite quarterback...and he got an answer. @PFTCommenter is wildly influential on the sarcastic tone of WCT and in this instance, the latter took the former's lead and made the actual news because of it.


5. @turpin4prez combines intelligent commentary on everything from sports to sociopolitical issues with an impossible-to-deny fluency in Weird Twitter conventions. This is his embodiment: 


12. @grobot05 serves the pivotal WCT rule of whipping boy, and he deserves credit for willingly taking abuse for when he has a bad sports opinion, when he is accused of hitting on young women, and for his relatively good nature when his most earnest tweets are roundly mocked.

 4. @Apartment_2F is an outstanding complement to his law school classmate Turpin. If the former, who leans right, and the latter, who leans left, hosted a political discussion show, any good and righteous American would watch. 2F loses some points though for abandoning his "John Daly in American flag pants smoking a cigar" avatar.

 13. @prefix6 has always been good for timely Simpsons references, but it was during the all-too-brief Golden Age of Ditty that his star truly shined.
6. @FWBluesFan slowly evolved into a bizarre observer of all sports, displaying a jaded irreverence towards sports simply by reducing them to platitudes such as "(player/team) tried their best." Oh, and for asking everybody he sees if Joe Flacco is elite. 


11. @thestlcardsfan4 has recently carved a niche as a TV blogger but he remains a blunt Cardinals follow. Mainstream Cardinals Twitter says Mike Matheny is good, and a certain type of intellectual fan will explain why he might not be. At WCT, we can just SAY he sucks because what difference could it possibly make what we think? 3. @lil_scooter93 is the only woman in this bracket, and while a simplistic approach would be to say that she is "one of the boys" among WCT, this is the opposite of the case. Heather doesn't try to hide her personality. She loudly and vociferously is what she is: a passionate and intelligent fan who makes tweets and goes about the WCT grind like everybody else. 

14. @johnjf125 is a mesh of smart and witty commentary on baseball, as well as the torch-bearer of Bridge Twitter. He takes pop culture references and uses them in brilliant analogies to all sports. His WCT brand was devalued when he became an actual serious writer at Viva El Birdos.
7. @azta110790 takes time between his day job shifts counting prairie dogs for the gummint to serve as president of the Tommy Pham Club. Also, he kind of looks like his avatar in real life.

10. @elmaquino is a former Cardinals blogger who departed from the writing game in favor of good baseball observations and jokes on Twitter.


2. @2xbirds, run by @dcwoodruff, provides a unique take on baseball-meets-politics. He took Maq's "Piscotty for President" tweet and has taken it brilliantly too far. Also, Chase created this video of Drew Magary dancing to "How Soon is Now?" by The Smiths, which I think about at least three times a day. 



15. @mstreeter06 is a top-flight GIFster but also is a pronounced WCT team player. Perhaps nobody more consistently replies "nice" when somebody uses the number 69 nor as consistently will reply to mentions to Alfredo Simon how he killed a guy. Just...just check the replies to this tweet.



For those who felt marginalized in the big Cardinals Twitter tournament, I hope you enjoy our weird take on it. Matchups will be posted in the coming hours and days.
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