Monday, August 22, 2011

In tough loss, Perez owns it

Twitter is a strange animal at times.

Perez was bad tonight and he knows it.

Before I grudgingly signed up for the crazy-popular social media service I found it to be a bastion for spelling-challenged navel gazers who gleefully mix stupid hash tags with ass-hatted non-sequiturs. Now that I'm part of the six-zillion person Twitter revolution, I still find the service to be all those things as well as an undoubtedly addicting news-and amusing bullshit-gathering tool.

On rare occasions Twitter can even offer insight into someone's character. Consider the Tribe's gut-wrenching loss tonight to the lowly Mariners, a game Cleveland desperately needed to stay within hailing distance of division leading Detroit.

Fiery closer Chris Perez came in during his most important outing of the season and essentially does the pitching version of a comic pratfall. Two hit batsmen in a row - a feat I have never seen in two-plus decades of watching the sport - and an error and just like that the Indians are 5.5 games out of first with the Tigers beating Tampa Bay.

What does Perez do after this debacle? In this weird new world of oversharing where social media can make people's lives a human peepshow, Perez (@ChrisPerez54) sent this tweet out into the electronic stratosphere:
"Positives from that outing: no balks, everything else I did sucked."
Perez's message came maybe 30 minutes after the game was over. It's rare for anyone, much less a pro athlete, to own catastrophic failure. The Tribe closer's candor is refreshing, even if it's cold comfort as the 2011 Indians season slips slowly into oblivion. It's just hard to be mad at a guy who unabashedly admits to screwing the proverbial pooch at the worst possible moment.