The Twitter world as it relates to baseball nearly shut down for approximately thirty minutes today as Japanese right handed pitching sensation Masahiro Tanaka sent out a cryptic Tweet in Japanese.
決めれん(･_･;
— 田中将大🦂/MASAHIRO TANAKA (@t_masahiro18) January 21, 2014
Beat writers scrambled to find out what the Tweet meant, and most went to Google Translate for an answer. Several reported that the Tweet translated to “It is decided.”
Mashahiro Tanaka has picked a team . . . but we don't know which one yet http://t.co/SuHWb3B6uU
— HardballTalk (@HardballTalk) January 21, 2014
"IT IS DECIDED." -- Masahiro Tanaka (via google translate) http://t.co/XpPjaRYeUS
— MLB Daily Dish (@mlbdailydish) January 21, 2014
Several minutes later it was reported that the original translation was incorrect, and that it really said “I can’t decide.”
@mlbdailydish no. He says "cannot decide."
— IchiroReport (@IchiroReport) January 21, 2014
Stand down, folks. Masahiro Tanaka's tweet says that he "cannot decide." (via @IchiroReport)
— Robert Murray (@ByRobertMurray) January 21, 2014
In the end, it was Chris Cotillo and a Texas Rangers fan from Japan (who closely follows international baseball and minor league happenings in the Rangers system), Kazuto Yamazaki who ultimately got to the bottom of everything.
So we learned a couple of things – Social Media is definitely as good as a live microphone and people will jump all over something when they’ve heard it, and Masahiro Tanaka is as indecisive as most 25-year-olds when it comes to picking out what avatar he wants for his Twitter account.
The Tanaka Decision, which has been expected to go down to the last minute until this past weekend, is Friday, January 24th at 5:00PM Eastern Standard Time.