St. Louis Cardinals: The day I became Twitter Enemy #1

The St. Louis Cardinals have the best fans in baseball and this is never more true than when someone with a blog writes something in error; I learned this lesson well on Saturday, August 19.

The St. Louis Cardinals have been busy of late with player moves thanks to Adam Wainwright and Trevor Rosenthal going on the disabled list. In the early hours of Saturday, August 19, I pulled together my suppositions related to several tweets that I had read and penned a piece displaying the worst-case scenario should Wainwright’s season/career come to an end.

Let me stop here with the strongest pressure on the brakes imaginable. I need to admit a few wrong-doings in the article. First, I was not terribly clear that my piece was speculation. Second, I failed to identify the correct year of Wainwright’s Tommy John surgery without fact checking.

Thanks to my errors, Wainwright himself tweeted at me and at our site pointing out that his career was not, indeed, finished- that he would simply be out a few weeks- and that I had erred on the year of his TJ. Wainwright was appropriately upset but (to me at least) didn’t seem to be on the attack.

What makes things great is that his countless number of fans showed up in full force. These fans showed their support by responding to him and giving him words of encouragement. Some in the mix, however, took their displeasure and aimed it directly at me and directly at this site.

Let me once again press firmly on the brakes. The errors mentioned above were mine and mine alone. I have, and I know I speak for the other writers here too, no problem with fans or MLB players letting me know when I am wrong.

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In fact, I think that’s what makes us great here at Redbird Rants. Let me do my best to be 100 percent clear here: FanSided and Redbird Rants is by fans (not media) and for fans. We would fail this moniker should we shy away from fan engagement. On the contrary, I welcome it, we welcome it, and we want to make corrections when we are wrong (we are human after all).

Here’s the thing, though, I don’t want to sully the name of Redbird Rants or my fellow writers for MY mistakes. I owned them and immediately corrected them. I am a gigantic St. Louis Cardinals fan and would never do anything to tarnish this fandom either.

I owe a huge amount of thanks to Adam Wainwright for pointing out my mistake and to the other members of Twitter who engaged me and allowed me to be what I am– a fan who is writing from his heart. I also owe massive thanks to my fellow writers here at Redbird Rants who came out in my defense.

These guys here are the tops and they deserve for fans to continue to read them whether fans decide to never read my material again (which I hope will not be the case).

I am a teacher and believe in my students’ abilities to learn from their mistakes. I hope that I model this positive human trait each and every day. Today, I saw a parable posted on Facebook by a fellow teacher friend of mine and it resonated with me. See it here:

I hope that this one erred article by me doesn’t over-shadow the numerous other great St. Louis Cardinals articles housed on Redbird Rants. I hope that Wainwright stays strong and rises above my speculations (thankfully they were wrong) and I shall stay strong too and continue writing.

I will say again: I love the St. Louis Cardinals and I’m positive the same can be said for each of the writers here.

Redbird Rants desires that each of our readers communicate with us. If we’ve goofed, let us know and we’ll make the corrections. If we are crazy, let us know that too. At the end of the day, however, let us all root on the St. Louis Cardinals as the “Best Fans in Baseball.”

Next: Replace Matheny?

One final thing: we would love to have passionate St. Louis Cardinals fans join our ranks and share their voices. Could this be you? Click the link above and join our great group!