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As many of you who are baseball fans may have heard, the Los Angeles Dodgers aren't happy that the reigning NL MVP Clayton Kershaw wasn't selected as the final fan vote to the All Star Game. They tried - oh, how they tried - to get their star pitcher in, enlisting celebrities to tweet with the hashtag #MVPtoASG. Kershaw never had a chance - he was in third place when the hashtag voting began - but the Dodgers figured one well placed celebrity tweet would do the trick and propel him over Johnny Cueto and Carlos Martinez. It did not.
Braverman said the Dodgers reached out to a number of celebrities to rally support for Kershaw on Twitter. One, comedian George Lopez, had the most popular #MVPtoASG tweet of the day according to Topsy. Another, talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, did not heed the Dodgers’ request.
So, the most popular #MVPtoASG tweet was by George Lopez, because the multitude of celebrity Dodgers fans couldn't be bothered.
The Cardinals' pitcher, of course, wound up winning the fan vote through a massive number of tweets of the #VoteTsunami hashtag. Vladimir Tarasenko, while busy tweeting thank you messages to the Blues and the fans (you're welcome, by the way), tweeted this simple tweet:
— Vladimir Tarasenko (@tara9191) July 10, 2015
Shortly afterward, he re-tweeted this tweet from the Cardinals:
18 Reasons to #VoteTsunami in the #ASG #FinalVote: http://t.co/C9QXs1fpAZ 5. Respect for the bat pic.twitter.com/AJGMueWV6o
— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) July 10, 2015
Five hundred and sixty seven re-tweets of the original tweet may not have gotten Martinez over the hump and past Cueto as the final selection, but it certainly helped a bit. And how does he compare to the Dodgers' celebrity effort?
The most popular pro-Martinez tweet Friday belonged to St. Louis Blues defenseman Vladimir Tarasenko. That’s all the celebrity support it took to make Martinez’s official hashtag the number-one trending topic in St. Louis on Friday morning. (Cueto’s hashtag was also the top trend in Cincinnati when #MVPtoASG wasn’t among the top three in Los Angeles.)
Ladies and gentlemen, there you have it: Vladimir Tarasenko is more popular than George Lopez. Also, the Dodgers fan base is apparently lazy and their celebrities don't care. Put that in your "people are nuts to vote for Martinez over Kershaw" pipe and smoke it, ESPN.