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So, if you haven’t been staring at Twitter all day just begging for something to happen, you may not know that ESPN’s Jim Bowden done goofed. Here’s what happened: A false trade was reported by a fake account for another writer, Joel Sherman. A quick glance at the account that tweeted the original trade shows that it’s not real (number of tweets, followers, etc. are dead giveaways). Sure, fans and people who are staring at twitter all day hoping Ruben will do something may be fooled, but an ESPN baseball insider like Jim Bowden knows better. Or not. Jim Bowden didn’t know better. And then he panicked.

The original tweet said that Marlon Byrd has been traded to the Yankees for a player who does not actually exist in their farm system. Bowden saw this, and without crediting or retweeting, took the info (curiously dropped the Yankee prospect’s name), and reported it as fact. Others credited Bowden’s on the report (not naming names, Kyle). Of course, it wasn’t true, or even real. Sherman quickly denied the fake report. As we waited to see if Bowden would delete the tweet (reasonable) or just apologize for being wrong (more reasonable), he changed his avatar to one of those blank eggs. Then he changed his handle from @JimBowdenESPNxm to @JimBowdiv (taking all his followers with him) in a fit of what I can only assume was shaky-hands panic-typing. He still did not delete the tweet. Some enterprising troll then hopped on @JimBowdenESPNxm and, with only two Tweets, has already amassed nearly 500 followers. And now, Bowden has disappeared after briefly changing his name to Ralph:

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Screen grab: Deadspin

He’s successfully done the internet equivalent of slinking from room to room, evading capture. He’s now as incommunicado as Ruben has been all day, so our fun is over again. And I know it’s all online, but I’d really find it hard to believe if you told me Bowden wasn’t hiding under his desk right now. In one hour, he went from active trade deadline reporter to a guy with two non-existent Twitter accounts. That’s impressive.