The #Postseason: From A-Rod to #RallyZito

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

After a resounding four-game sweep, and a dramatic rain-soaked clinch in Game 7, the Detroit Tigers (@Tigers) and the San Francisco Giants (@SFGiants) will face off tonight for the first game of the World Series. Of course, nothing can beat the experience of being at the ballpark. But Twitter can bring you closer to every pitch of the Fall Classic: to date, throughout the postseason, we’ve seen well over 15 million Tweets about baseball.

Leading into tonight’s game, here are the perspectives you can only find on Twitter:

If the championship title went to the team with the most Twitter mentions, the @SFGiants would be taking home rings, besting the @Cardinals, @Tigers, and @Yankees during the race for the pennant. Throughout the postseason, the most discussed player was Derek Jeter, followed by fellow Yankee Alex Rodriguez. Tonight’s starter for Detroit, @JustinVerlander, came in third.

Starting tonight for the @SFGiants will be southpaw Barry Zito, who inspired this postseason’s biggest meme: the #RallyZito movement on Twitter. Since he was starting their elimination game on the road, fans took to Twitter to show their outpouring of support through the hashtag and changing their avatars. Zito finished the game with 5 strikeouts and over 50,000 #RallyZito Tweets. Fans continued the momentum for the subsequent pitchers, with #RallyVogey (and #RallyEnchiladas in honor of his pre-game ritual) and #RallyCain (or #RallyHorse) bringing in over 100,000 Tweets.

Other teams throughout the postseason have used their own creative hashtags to rally their fans, like #BUCKleUp for the @Orioles, #12in12 for the @Cardinals, and #NATITUDE for the @Nationals. Tonight, it’s all about the #WorldSeries!

Posted by Omid Ashtari (@omid)
Head of Sports & Entertainment