ST. LOUIS — The extent of the fence-mending between St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and Twitter.com was clear to see Friday night, when a co-founder of the social networking site was invited to throw out a first pitch.

It’s a far cry from earlier in the season, when the manager filed a lawsuit after an unauthorized page using his name made light of his DUI charge and the deaths of two Cardinals pitchers in recent years. The lawsuit was dropped in late June, not long after La Russa said Twitter agreed to consider donating to his Animal Rescue Foundation.
Jack Dorsey, a left-hander wearing a vintage game-worn Bob Gibson jersey, floated a pitch in the general direction of Cardinals infielder Joe Thurston before the NL Central leaders played the Chicago Cubs.
The 32-year-old Dorsey, who grew up in the city, was honored as person of the year at suburban Webster University earlier Friday. He received a key to the city along with a proclamation that adhered to Twitter’s guidelines of no more than 140 characters at an event that was billed as a “tweetup.”
Dorsey was impressed that the proclamation even included three statements beginning with whereas, and a fourth beginning with therefore. He was perhaps more impressed with the advice he got from La Russa before striding to the mound before being honored with one of four “first pitches.”
“The first thing he said to me was ’Don’t throw it in the dirt,”’ Dorsey said.
Dorsey said Biz Stone, the other co-founder of Twitter, and another co-worker toured the facility recently and added, “They loved it.” Dorsey got a promise from La Russa to take him out to dinner in the San Francisco bay area.
“We resolved it,” Dorsey said. “He was great.”
The lawsuit was the first encountered by Twitter, and resulted from what Dorsey called a misunderstanding related to the site’s terms of service. The lawsuit prompted Twitter to tweak those terms.
The Animal Rescue Foundation, or ARF, tweets. Not La Russa, who claims to know little about computers.
“I don’t even know where to find it, I really don’t,” La Russa said. “Do you just Google Twitter?”
Dorsey said he’d love to tutor the manager.
“It would be awesome to get him on Twitter officially,” Dorsey said. “That would be fantastic. I’ll work on it.”