KU coach Bill Self joins the #VoteMoose craze

photo by: Mike Yoder

KU basketball coach Bill Self, pounds his glove and takes in the All-Star atmosphere before starting at second base for the American League in the All-Star Legends & Celebrity Softball Game Sunday, July 8, 2012, at Kauffman Stadium.

July 4, as you well know, is known as Independence Day in the United State of America, but there’s a developing situation for another, lesser-known holiday a couple of days later.

Thanks to the last-chance vote for this year’s Major League Baseball All Star Game, July 6 might forever be known as Moose Day.

All morning and afternoon, Twitter has been on fire with Kansas City Royals fans — and therefore many KU basketball and football fans, as well — Tweeting #VoteMoose in an attempt to get Kansas City third baseman Mike Moustakas into this year’s All Star Game next week in Miami.

While the fun has extended to all walks of life, with people adding “#VoteMoose” to the end of Tweets that have absolutely nothing to do with sports, and others getting creative and putting out movie challenges in which you replace a word or two in a popular movie with the words Vote Moose for a good laugh, the movement officially reached KU at 2:16 p.m. Thursday afternoon, when Kansas basketball coach Bill Self joined the fun.

Self, who has more than 220,000 followers but just 261 Tweets to his name — including a whopping nine so far this year — wrote simply, “Let’s get another Royal into the All Star Game. #VoteMoose.”

As of 2:57 p.m., Self’s Tweet had 1,264 likes, 667 ReTweets and 24 replies.

Self’s Tweet will only count once in the voting, but you can bet there were a few folks out there who follow the KU program and its coach that followed suit after they saw Self fire off his Tweet.

Falling in the “Go Figure” category, Self’s Twitter picture is actually of him and his son, Tyler, at Kauffman Stadium.

Moustakas, who reached the All Star Game in 2015 via this very same path is expected to find out at a 5 p.m. announcement whether he received enough votes to make the team.