Aw Crap: I May Have Pissed Off Matt Garza (UPDATE: Hooray! I Didn’t)
Ever see the movie ‘Big Fan‘? It’s a pretty awesome indy flick starring Patton Oswalt about, among other things, a guy who finally gets to meet his favorite player, pisses that player off, and then gets beat up by said favorite player. That would suck.
I woke up this morning to an unsolicited message from Matt Garza on Twitter. Hooray, right? I’m not so sure …
@BleacherNation thanks for the update on how my rehab is going… Funny how stuff being reported is either false or clearly off.. Alls good
— Matt garza (@Gdeuceswild) November 15, 2012
I really can’t tell if Garza – can I call him Matt? – is being sarcastic there, or if he’s just being playful, and using the tweet as an opportunity to reiterate that all is going well. I tend to think, unfortunately, that it’s the former (and based on some responses on Twitter, other folks read it that way, too). (UPDATE – see the update below from Matt.)
The update to which Matt refers is a really innocuous one, about him getting a scan this week on his elbow, in which I tell folks the scan was a planned one, and probably not reason for concern. The source of this information, linked in the post, is an ESPNChicago article. I concluded the post with “Hopefully the scan turns up clean.”
I thought it was, on the balance, a perfectly nice (boring, even) update on where things stand with one of the Cubs’ most important players. I didn’t draw any certain conclusions or offer anything other than reasoned speculation about his recovery process, gleaned from hours and hours of reading about this stuff. Even that stuff is pretty clearly caveated in words like “probably” and “likely.”
I don’t know where I went wrong …
But it’s a bummer, dude. I’ve made no secret that I’m a huge Matt Garza fan (a site search for cat’s pajamas, the term introduced into the site lexicon by Garza, turns up a shocking number of posts). If I thought for a second that Matt would actually correspond with me, I’d trip over myself to speak to him personally about his recovery. I am, after all, not a journalist – and there’s an expectation that players and management generally don’t speak with fan bloggers about actual news.
I hope the corresponding-with-Matt ship hasn’t yet sailed. (I responded to Matt that I’d be happy to include any additional information he’d like to share, but I’ll understand if he doesn’t respond. I’ll continue to think he’s the cat’s pajamas.)
If I pissed you off, Matt, I’m sorry. If I spoke out of turn or inaccurately, I’m sorry about that, too. That’s all I can offer, though, because I truly don’t know where I goofed.
Now, a piece of this about which I’ve got to be candid and fair: I’ve written at length about Matt Garza as a possible trade piece. Frequently, when talking about his elbow injury, or his role with the Cubs last offseason, I talk about those things within the context of how they affect his trade value. I am, first, a Cubs fan, so I do care about things like Garza’s trade value, as unsavory as that is when you’re, like, actually talking about a human being. That said, with respect to Garza specifically, I also repeatedly said that I was equally open to the idea of an extension with Garza, or a trade. (Another example: “As for the future of Garza, I remain open to either an extension or a trade. I could see either approach being good for the Cubs long-term, depending on the dollars/years in the extension, or the prospects/players in the trade.”)
And now I’ll just try to get over the thought that Matt Garza briefly, vaguely heard about Bleacher Nation for 10 seconds, decided I’d said something inaccurate, and now hates me – if he remembers me at all…
UPDATE, from the man, himself:
I know @BleacherNation has good intentions.. Never has he written anything bad on twitter.. Justpassing info..alls well
— Matt garza (@Gdeuceswild) November 15, 2012
Whew. Thanks to Matt for passing along the health update, and clearing my terrified little conscience. You may resume your morning, and I can unclench.
