It turned out that MLB players weren’t the only ones experiencing a lockout on Thursday. One of baseball’s top newsbreakers, ESPN MLB reporter Jeff Passan, was right there with them.
As the players union and MLB owners continued negotiations into Thursday, Passan tweeted that there was an agreement on the international draft — a major roadblock that led to Wednesday’s additional canceled games. It was encouraging news, and plenty of MLB fans were watching Passan’s Twitter feed for additional updates.
Then, something unusual happened.
Passan’s Twitter account shifted from being the page of an ESPN baseball insider with 800,000-plus followers to being a page promoting weird skull NFTs. Passan had been hacked at the worst possible time. His name was changed to Jeff.eth.
oh no pic.twitter.com/KpkQl1kbiG
— Alex McDaniel (@AlexMcDaniel) March 10, 2022
Not ideal!
But order was eventually restored two hours later. And, of course, Passan had a great way of signaling his return to Twitter. He changed his header photo as a nod to Michael Jordan’s 1995 press release about his return to the NBA.
Jeff Passan's header photo 💀 pic.twitter.com/psfjImFhPg
— Andrew Joseph (@AndyJ0seph) March 10, 2022
Passan’s back. And now that we know he didn’t lose his Twitter account for good, we can enjoy all the jokes from baseball fans.
