Billy Butler’s Trucking Along

Major League Baseball is well ahead of the other major sports in utilizing the internet and social media to drum up interest in their product. The Royals try to follow that lead and multiple Royals players are on Twitter today with some being quite active.

Billy Butler isn’t usually one of the more active players on the network, but today he decided to tweet.

And tweet we did. The obvious idea is to suggest some variant of Country Breakfast but the challenge became getting something relevant into just seven characters. There were multiple attempts but it seems there’s too many letters required to make the nickname have meaning. CNTRYBF was the closest to being concise but clear.

But the Royals fans on Twitter are a clever bunch, and came up with other suggestions.

References to Butler’s Home Run Derby snub were popular:

To remind you (in case you somehow had missed it),

, as captain of the American League Home Run Derby team, had said that he would put a player from the host city on the team. He didn’t. Fans in Kansas City were not kind to him about it, either.

So that was fun, right? But we’re trying to find a good choice for Butler’s license plate here, not reminisce. Butler’s been the most consistent hitter over the last five years, and some choices reflect that. Some notables were: CLEANUP, HITMAN, BBS2BHR, 2BMCHNE, WALKOFF, ALLSTAR, BAMBAM. But he’s also a bigger guy so BIGBILL was tossed out there. Some fans, poking light fun, I hope, suggested some like STN2STN (station to station), BSCLGR (baseclogger) or the most clever of these kinds:

  But it wasn’t just fans getting in on the action. Some of Billy’s teammates joined in, including Everett Teaford:

Johnny Giavotella:

And Aaron Crow:

The latter two are references to Butler’s obsession with fantasy football, though it’s not clear if the RGIII mention suggests that he has Robert Griffin on his team or, as I suspect (knowing how fantasy players are), he was being ribbed after likely losing BECAUSE of Griffin’s performance in a matchup. The best Butler suggestion was this one though:

  For those who may not know, Butler is very active in the community, and he helped found the Hit It a Ton campaign to help feed those in need in the area. His activity won him the Hutch Award in January. Of course, now that we have Butler’s license plate figured out, we couldn’t stop there, right? Danny Duffy gets one:

So does Eric Hosmer:

And Salvador Perez:

And I even came up with one for Rex Hudler:

Butler’s been criticized here and there for hitting into too many double plays or for not hitting enough homers or for not being an outward leader, but it’s clear that this city has embraced him, in part because of his performance on the field but I think also because he is more involved in some areas. He’s not perfect at all, but he can hit better than most in the majors and with his involvement in the community and, sometimes, online, when he puts out a request like this, fans will notice and join in with a gusto. That’s a good thing for a city waiting for a winner and hoping for something positive.

As of Friday night, Butler had not made mention if he’d decided on a license plate phrase or not.