Ex-pitcher's tweet rings true

Dan Meyer pitched in 311 professional baseball games, including 103 in the major leagues, but he didn't become famous until Monday, when his 83-character tweet made him the face of every clean baseball player who wonders if he was ever beaten out of a job by a dirty one.

On the day that Major League Baseball announced suspensions for 13 players caught in the Biogenesis investigation into performance-enhancing drug use, including Phillies reliever Antonio Bastardo, Meyer composed a Twitter post to express his feelings.

"I must have sent out about 200 tweets before this one, and no one has ever answered me. I mean, nobody," said Meyer, who played high school ball at Kingsway Regional in Gloucester County, and estimated he had a mere 100 Twitter followers before Monday.

Well, he got a few answers to this one, going all the way up the media-attention ladder to the desk of Bob Ley at ESPN's Outside the Lines, who, after properly cautioning the audience, became the first person to say the words "hashtag a-hole" on national television. It was quite a moment for Meyer and his friends.

"That's what people are most excited about," the 32-year-old Meyer said. "It was kind of funny."

Behind the jokes, however, there is a subject that is anything but funny, particularly for a guy like Meyer who fought most of his battles during a 10-year career along the borderline that separates triple A and the big leagues. He worked through injuries and surgeries, accepting that the outer limit of his ability meant that sticking in the major leagues would always represent a daily struggle for him.

Maybe it would have been different if he had used some additional means to come back stronger from the surgeries. Maybe if he had employed a regular regimen of PEDs, he never would have lost velocity on his pitches. Maybe a lot of things.

Chiefly, as Meyer looked at it on Monday, maybe the search to find a lefthanded reliever in Clearwater during 2011 spring training would have come out differently if Bastardo and Meyer exchanged nutrition programs.

"Hey Antonio Bastardo, remember when we competed for a job in 2011. Thx a lot. #ahole"

That was the tweet heard 'round the baseball world, and not just because it led to such a great moment in sports broadcasting. Sure, cheating is wrong and everyone agrees the bad guys shouldn't prosper, but it has been rare when those who actually might have been cheated have their say. And gain more than 1,000 Twitter followers in a matter of hours.

"This isn't what I was looking for by any means," Meyer said. "I was kind of half-joking when I sent it, and it went crazy. I figured people didn't know me well enough in the game to even care what my opinion was. I had some decent years and some bad years, but I wasn't a staple in a clubhouse somewhere. I kind of didn't think it would be that big a deal."

Meyer pitched at James Madison University after he graduated from Kingsway, and he was a first-round draft pick of the Atlanta Braves in 2002, judged by Baseball America as one of the top 50 prospects in the game.

He came through the Atlanta system and appeared in two games at the end of the 2004 season for the Braves before being packaged in an offseason trade to Oakland for Tim Hudson. Meyer suffered an arm injury that required surgery in 2005 and stayed in the A's organization until being waived in 2008. He was claimed by the Marlins and pitched 84 games for them in the next two seasons before he was signed as a free agent by the Phillies before that 2011 camp.

When he didn't beat out Bastardo - or anybody else, to be honest - he asked for his release in order to get a look from the Pirates. He was pitching in triple A for Pittsburgh when he blew out his shoulder to end that season. Meyer pitched in the independent Atlantic League last year and went to camp with the Orioles this spring, but he didn't hook on and it was time to face reality.

"I wasn't myself. I was getting people out, but I wasn't the pitcher I normally was. I had to ask myself if I should keep trying to grind it out for all the time away from my family, or is it time to grow up and become a provider?" Meyer said. "After I tweeted [on Monday], people seemed to feel it was OK to bash me because I got to the big leagues, but I struggled a bit. Every player gets to a level where it's not that easy anymore, and that was the big leagues for me. I had to fight every day to keep my head above water, and if you have a couple of bad days, it snowballs."

Through it all, he says he pitched clean, even while others around him apparently were not. Meyer said he has no malice against Bastardo or anyone else, and adds that Bastardo was much better in that 2011 camp. Of course, the operative question is: Why was he better?

"People lose sight of who gets affected. It's the guys who are fighting for a job every year," Meyer said. "It's not the kid in A ball. It's the guy who's in triple A, the fringe guy for who the opportunity of one month in the big leagues could be a life-changer."

Players make these decisions about using PEDs and lives are changed. The changes are sometimes obvious among the users, but more difficult to detect for the rest. Dan Meyer didn't think that was fair.

Maybe he didn't blow up the whole system, but he did a pretty good job on his phone.