Twitter sensation gets an assist from an Eagle

Evan Mathis first began following @FanSince09 on Twitter soon after Mathis got to the Eagles.

"I saw the copious amounts of humor, satire, and parody on his time line, I had to follow," the Eagles offensive lineman said Thursday in an e-mail. "A lot of what he does is just exposing stupid people. It started with highlighting awful grammar and has evolved into catching criminals. It's art.' "

Let's stipulate that @FanSince09 knows there's nothing funny about what happened the night of Sept. 11 to a gay couple in Center City. That's why he got involved, got others involved, and quickly passed helpful information to the police with his online sleuthing. While some people have undergone questioning, no arrests have been made and the investigation was continuing.

"So listen the story isn't me and the story isn't twitter putting pieces together," @FanSince09 tweeted. "The story is an awful thing happened and enough people wouldn't tolerate and did something about it."

Also understand: One of the reasons @FanSince09 has a following, now over 10,000 on Twitter after all this publicity, is his subversive sense of humor. He began fielding so many media calls about this whole episode that he told people just to contact @EvanMathis69.

Some media did, apparently figuring this guy Mathis was some kind of press rep. And Mathis played along, telling some television people, for instance, why @FanSince09 couldn't appear if his face was shown, that he wished to stay anonymous.

Obviously, if Mathis wasn't hurt - suffering a medial collateral ligament injury in the season-opener - he wouldn't have time for all this. But he is one of those athletes who engages with Philadelphia, and gets all the jokes. On Thursday, he kept playing along, still acting the press rep. I tweeted at him asking for an interview with @FanSince09. Mathis soon e-mailed an actual cell phone number for @FanSince09.

Did Mathis laugh when @FanSince09 said Mathis was his press rep?

"I take my jobs serious, and I'm not sure my client would appreciate me laughing at his requests," Mathis said in his e-mail.

On Thursday, @FanSince09, just as deadpan, tweeted, "Can't believe @nike hasn't even offered free kicks yet smh I'm a heroic loyal customer and celebrity."

He said he purposefully didn't tell his father about any of this at first, tweeting, "I want to see my dad's reaction to most likely seeing my twitter profile on tv while out."

In fact, he said over the phone, his mother looked at the television screen, saw the words "hate crime" and her son's goofy Twitter avatar. It caught her attention. She wants to tell friends about him, but he won't let her. "Old people can't keep secrets,'' he said.

It is meaningful to @FanSince09 that the gay couple involved in the incident have told people they have seen the support on social media.

"That's very meaningful," @FanSince09 said over the phone. "I know this is a traumatic thing. I don't want them to think this is going to happen again. At least a portion of Philadelphia said this isn't acceptable."

He also jokes about "the look on serious anchors' faces" as they talk about the whole episode with his twitter handle and photo in the background. "This is what their career has come to," he said.

One reason @FanSince09 has chosen to stay anonymous, he said, is that he tweets at work a lot and wants to keep his job. Not that firing him would go over well locally. He also knows going public would disappoint longtime followers. He came up with the name to parody those Phillies fans who have lived and died with the team ever since they won the 2008 World Series.

He skewered former 76ers CEO Adam Aron so badly that Aron invited him to lunch. Most recently, he went after and retweeted people who tweeted racist and sexist comments about Taney Little League star Mo'ne Davis. "These were grown men tweeting at a child," @FanSince09 said over the phone.

He met Mathis after a game last year, first buying a mini-football in the Eagles shop at the Linc, bringing a felt pen so he, @FanSince09, could sign it before he presented it as a game ball to Mathis, who most certainly remembers that.

Before the events of this week, @FanSince09 still awarded Mathis a Twitter game ball "for the adjustments he noticed on tv and called into Chip."

"He gets the game ball today," Mathis said in his e-mail.

Mathis just wants to share the reward money, @FanSince09 said. (He's joking about wanting the reward. Some newcomers to his Twitter time line didn't get that.)

He's also back to another of his crusades since the Redskins are facing the Eagles this weekend.

"Eagles are spiritual symbols of national pride for many Native Americans," he tweeted Thursday. "Can you guess what isn't?"

@jensenoffcampus