New York Mets Engineer Social Media Boner

It’s early in this news cycle. But there is already at least one memorable headline and an object-specific Twitter parody account. All thanks to the New York Mets social-media person who failed to notice the sex toy standing tall in the locker room space of catcher Kevin Plawecki before tweeting out a celebratory Friday post-game photo.

A second object-specific parody Twitter account has popped up alongside @TheMetsDildo. And since Friday-night game hero T.J. Rivera was shown after the game in the photo wearing the player-of-the-game crown, @TheMetsDildo has urged their modest initial group of followers to also follow @MetsCrown, an unofficial account started in April that also quickly jumped into the dildo fun.

Most if not all North American professional sports team locker rooms are tied to an endless history of practical-joke behavior. The presence of a dildo in a catcher’s locker in 2017 suggests that either #26 lost a recent bet with his teammates or that he was involved in some in-progress Tomfoolery aimed at someone else.

Either way, as a number of folks have noted, should there be an apology statement from the Mets, it will likely be (a different kind of) amazing. The original @Mets tweet (shown below) was quickly deleted and replaced with a more closely cropped video clip of Rivera speaking to reporters from the same general spot (his player stall is directly next to Plawecki’s).

Update (May 7):
New York Daily News online sports editor Nicholas Parco has noted how the Mets more cautiously photographed Saturday’s Player of the Game Jay Bruce. His lede: ‘The Mets aren’t toying around anymore.’

Meanwhile, when asked yesterday about the item, Plawecki said the object was not his and told reporters: “We’ve got some good pranksters in here, that’s for sure. I mean what can you do, just kind of laugh this one off.” Queried if there is a related sponsorship deal in his future, Plawecki replied: “I hope not.”

Finally, in the wake of Matt Harvey’s three-game suspension for violating team rules, which was just announced, ESPN baseball writer Jerry Crasnick has tweeted that he was told it has nothing to do with the Plawecki locker incident.

Previously on Fishbowl:
Matt Harvey Commits Twitter Balk

Richard Horgan

@hollywoodspin

Richard Horgan is co-editor of Fishbowl.