Yankees and Twitter

Today was opening day, and aside from the fact that it was cold and drizzling in New York it was a good day.

Jeter, Posada and Rivera set a very interesting record. No trio of players in any major US sport has spent 17 seasons together. Today marked their 17th season.

The record for oldest Yankee pitcher to record a save was at 40 years old. Mariano Rivera stepped in today at 41 and broke that record with his typically perfect ninth inning.

But it was the twitter trending that amused me most. Right after the win, at #3 and #4 trending on twitter were “Yankees Win” and “Enter Sandman”.

The funny part was that while “Yankees Win” quickly fell off the trending list, “Enter Sandman” stayed there for quite a while. Mostly due to people tweeting, “why is Enter Sandman trending?”.

For the non baseball fans, about 12 years ago Yankee management wanted theme music for when Rivera entered the game. Metallica’s Enter Sandman was chosen (not by Mariano, who is a devout Christian and not exactly into heavy metal). If you are at the Stadium for the ninth inning, you hear the first two seconds of Enter Sandman and the crowd goes crazy.

So on opening day, when Rivera comes in to close out the first game of the season, millions of Yankee fans tweeting “Enter Sandman” makes total sense.

While millions of non Yankee fans wondered why Metallica was suddenly hot…