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Ryan Babel, former Liverpool and Ajax winger, tweeted something rather close to home today.
"Salt Lake City." That's all.
Salt Lake City
— Ryan Babel (@Ryanbabel) April 4, 2016
The obvious rumor is that he's signing for Real Salt Lake, but the word from RSL Communications is that general manager Craig Waibel doesn't know anything about Ryan Babel being in our fair city.
Which brings us to wonder: Why is Babel tweeting about us? Well, we have some ideas.
8. Genealogy. Salt Lake City is home to one of the biggest family history efforts in the world. Maybe Ryan Babel is simply interested in learning more about his heritage.
7. Spiral Jetty. One of the greatest art installations in nature, the Spiral Jetty is something you have to see to believe. (I have yet to see it.)
6. The Great Salt Lake. Maybe Babel just wants to see one of nature's great landmarks, the Great Salt Lake. Who could blame him? (Me. It smells awful.)
5. Sundance. He wanted to be here for the great film festival — you know, the one that's really important but not quite Cannes — and was here way too early. Or slightly less way too late. (Alternately, he just missed LDS General Conference.)
4. Skiing. He's without a contract, which means he's also without contract provisions stating he can't ski. Where else would he go than the state which has the "Best snow on Earth"? Ski Utah, Ryan Babel. Ski Utah.
3. He's moving to Utah. Everyone says Utah is a great place to raise a family, and being raised in this state, I guess I have no room to disagree. If Ryan Babel wants to raise a family without being bothered by people who know he once played in Liverpool, Utah is his place.
2. Layover. The Salt Lake International Airport is a Delta hub. Sometimes, international flights stop over here. That seems like a pretty innocuous reason, but some European transfer expert is probably searching flight paths right now to see why Babel would be landing here.
1. Random city tweeter. Let's watch Babel's tweets for the next few weeks to see what other cities he tweets. "St. Louis"? "San Francisco"? "Springfield"? Who knows.