Thanks to a poorly received Twitter prank, C.J. Wilson's first start against his old team just got a lot more interesting. Just a few months after leaving the Texas Rangers to sign a contract with Los Angeles Angels, the left-handed pitcher threw an unexpected curve ball at a former teammate on St. Patrick's Day.
In what he later described as a prank, Wilson tweeted the phone number of Rangers catcher Mike Napoli, . One of the first MLB players to embrace Twitter, Wilson (@str8edgeracer) has more than 116,000 followers. Not all of them appreciated the joke.
Miami Marlins outfielder Logan Morrison, another big league Twitter convert, retweeted Wilson's initial tweet, adding the hashtag #FAIL. Of course, by retweeting that first tweet, Morrison also shared the phone number of the Rangers' slugger with all of his followers as well. That brings the total of number of strangers who may have been able to give Napoli a call over the weekend to well over 200,000.
Although he insisted that this prank wasn't a big deal, the tweet no longer appears in Wilson's timeline. Offering a glimpse into his rationale for the prank, Wilson claimed that Napoli had been talking about hitting a few home runs off his former batterymate.
"I don't even remember saying I want to take him deep," Napoli told the Forth-Worth Star Telegram. "But as every power hitter, you're always trying to take pitchers deep. So I'll say it now, I'm going to try and take him deep."
Wilson and the Angels are scheduled to make their first trip to Arlington during the second weekend in May. Stay tuned to see if Napoli will enact his revenge. Or, if you follow Wilson or Morrison, you could perhaps just call Napoli to check.