Nats infielder Ryan Zimmerman was on with Grant and Danny on 106.7 The Fan on Thursday. Because of his veteran status, the hosts asked him for his opinion on the Robert Griffin IIII Facebook fallout earlier this week. Here was his response in full.
(Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post)
“We deal with it with [Bryce Harper] and we try and help Harp as much as we can. You know, at the end of the day, these guys are their own people and you can’t tell them not to do something or tell them not to have Twitter or tell them not to be on Facebook because when used properly, I think Twitter and Facebook are a good way to connect with fans. And I think fans, obviously, are the most important part of every sport. I mean without them, we obviously wouldn’t have what we have.
“But at the same time, I think they need to be a little more conscious about, you know, fans are gonna say what they wanna say and they have the right to say what they want to say, and sometimes it’s best not to respond, I guess, would be the best answer. It’s hard to say that because everyone should, and can, respond and speak however they want to. But as an athlete that gets paid a lot of money to play a sport, and obviously that’s something that people get, not upset about, but they want to be in that position as well so it’s almost a lose-lose situation a lot of times for us.
“I think what I’ve told Harp and what I’ve told other young guys is, when you’re done playing, obviously people aren’t gonna remember you for how many Twitter followers you had or how many times you wrote back fans on Facebook. It’s gonna be, if you were a good player and if you were a good person, people are gonna like you. If you were a decent player and a good person, people are gonna like you. If you’re a decent player and a bad person, people probably aren’t gonna like you. And you can be the best person in the world, if you were a bad player people aren’t gonna like you anyway. You might as well just focus on baseball and try to be the best player you can. And I think the biggest thing is just to be involved in the community. This city gives us so much, and to go out and help that and do that and stay off the Twitter as much as you can and just worry about yourself. And when your career is over, hopefully everything works out the way you want it to.”
Pretty wise words from the 29-year-old.
It wasn’t all sage advice and thoughts for the young folk. Zimmerman also talked about this weekend’s NFL matchups, and revealed he has special feelings for a certain playoff quarterback.
“You guys are gonna hate me, and like we talked about before I have a beautiful wife and a kid,” Zimmerman said. “So feel I need to say this before I tell you I have a huge man-crush on Tom Brady. It’s not that I don’t like Peyton Manning, and it’s not that I love the Patriots, or even Boston sports, ’cause I really don’t enjoy them that much. I just enjoy Brady.”
He also went on to talk about his feeling about Jim Harbaugh’s “pleated khakis and terrible white sneakers.”
Audio of the chat is here.
