I Tweeted for the first time yesterday, and boy, are my thumbs tired.

Is that the right verb for, “tweeted”? Is it a past participle? Or is it “Twittered”.

One of my kids and I went to the Angels-Boston game, and it was terrific fun. He’s a terrific ballplayer, my kid, and a complete lunatic for the Red Sox, so he wasn’t thrilled with the outcome (5-0, Angels) or with the funny, but unloving, things that were shouted by the Angels fans. There is, to say the least, no love lost between Boston and Anaheim.

It’s still Orange County, and a nice enough place, and nice enough people, that I knew he could wear his “colors” there without getting cold-cocked on the way to the bathroom, but there were some spirited exchanges between the odd fan or two (and the other odd fan or two).

The Red Sox have dominated the Angels in post-season play since 2004, which explains at least a few of the fistfights.

Oh, yeah.

I’ll tell you, though, folks, I’ve said this in other contexts, but sometimes I think if we all just went back to punching each other in the nose, there would be a lost less running to the trunk for the gun.

Also, it’s frankly funny to see two non-athletes swinging at each other, and I’ll be the first to admit I probably had a smile on my face each time I craned my neck and said, “Yeah? Where? Oh, yeah, those two. This one will not go the distance.”

Plus, in Anaheim Stadium, they send their ushers to break things up, and the ushers are very sweet elderly men in straw hats and blue vests over white shirts and ties, so the overall effect is like sending a barbershop quartet to stop Tyson from biting Holyfield.

We had a blast, and I must’ve Tweeted fifteen times. Here’s my favorite: “End of three: No score. Spectacular woman eight rows down: Also, no score.”

BEFORE I FORGET: There was a young man, twenty or so, who took his shirt off as soon as he got there (and was slender enough to do that — if there’s any reason to do it in the first place) and he was covered with tatoos he wanted to show off, including a big one from front to back that said, “I HATE BOSTON”.

No kidding. People were lining up to take pictures of him and that particular one (which is no doubt why he took his shirt off), but our whole section — right field near the foul pole, twenty rows up; not fancy, but fabulous seats and good people; I could’ve taken most of them in a fight, I think — was open-mouthed looking at this guy and saying, “Why would someone do that? Is it real or fake?”

I think it was absolutely real, and said to them, “If you think about it, it’s even a tiny bit dumber to hire a makeup artist to do a fake one.”

Here’s the way that fellow’s life should go: He gets the job of his life… and gets transferred to Boston. Right on the shore, and every summer all his new friends want to know why he never takes his shirt off to go swimming. Then, he meets the girl of his dreams, from Lynn or Swampscott (two places that make very cool, very pretty and VERY tough girls), and she wants to know what’s up with him not taking his shirt off when they go to bed, or ever. Then he confesses and takes it off, hoping that love will conquer all. It doesn’t, and she punches his lights out.

For those of you into the Twitter world, my nom de guerre is “level5larry”. I don’t know much about the thing, but somehow, between the internet and blogging and instant messages and Twitter, and all the others that will spring up, somehow — seriously — I think it’s a sign of us all reaching out, and sending out, and connecting more. Maybe that’s silly or fanciful, but I have to think about it more. My first feeling is that it’s all to the good in some larger, mystical way.

MLB wants me to keep Twittering just watching the games at home, and I guess I will, but the real stuff is being there. You know what? I think it still just might be our national pastime.

One more of mine from last night: “I have no use for anyone who can’t get it together to take his cap off and listen to the Star Spangled Banner — and mean it.”

REMEMBER: IF YOU WALKED OUT OF BED TODAY AND DIDN’T HAVE A GIANT TATTOO STATING YOUR HATRED OF A FINE AMERICAN CITY… FOLKS, KEEP YOUR SHIRTS ON AND DON’T PUNCH SOMEONE SITTING ONE ROW BEHIND YOU: HE’S GOT THE HIGHER GROUND.