While Major League Baseball owners and the MLBPA feverishly work to reach a new collective bargaining agreement, ESPN was feverishly working to get their premier baseball insider back online.
Thursday morning, Jeff Passan broke the news of an agreement on the international draft. Hours later, a multitude of tweets was fired off from Passan’s account, exciting baseball fans who had their notifications turned on that more good news might be on the way. But the tweets weren’t from Passan – we assume.
Around noon, Passan’s Twitter name was changed to “Jeff.eth.” His picture and bio were also changed and Passan’s account began retweeting NFT/cryptocurrency company called Skulltoons.
While there’s never a good time to get hacked, this one was particularly brutal timing for Passan and baseball fans who are eagerly awaiting good news on the prospect of having an MLB season. But don’t necessarily jump to blame SkulltoonsNFT for briefly silencing one of baseball’s premier reporters. According to the NFT account, they did not hack Passan and warned against people getting scammed on social media.
The New York Post reached out to ESPN for comment and the Worldwide Leader acknowledged “We’re in the process of addressing it.” And they moved rather swiftly. Less than two hours later, the bizarre hack appears to be over, with Passan’s Twitter account reverting back to normal and the NFT retweets being deleted. And Passan announced this in Jordan-like fashion:
https://twitter.com/BenHoffmanNYT/status/1502008214216392704?t=qDXFYBBVRp9g6Z5bm4ZlMw&s=19
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com