TORN FROM TODAY'S TICKET HEADLINES -- Who's the Twit Here?

[NOTE:  This post was re-edited 12-11-20 AM to cut out excess verbiage and unnecessary material.  All opinions, even the ludicrous ones, remain intact from original composition.]

First, a gigantic thanks to the incomparable AP for providing Your Plainsman with today's audio and some of the Twitter traffic on the C.J. Wilson contretemps. By the way, AP, that tweet about the other CJ looking at his phone waiting for a call was a real sweet stroke.

I don’t have any better theories about “what happened” than AP himself – I assume AP is a male – which he was kind enough to offer as a comment to my prior post. He writes:

“My take is that Junior was perhaps quick to burn the bridge between KTCK and CJ Wilson with his tweet, and that the fault probably lies with a handler situated between MLB.com and Fernando:

“CJ <-> Agent <-> Handler 1 <-> MLB.com <-> Handler 2 <-> Fernando <-> Musers

“I'm assuming that Handlers 1 and 2 are under the employ of MLB.com, and a game of 'broken telephone' ensued, leading to the accusations of lying by both parties.”

Yeah, almost had to be something like that. Personally, I would not have been so quick to assume that Wilson was being culpably untruthful here. He may have realized right off that there was a screwup and even though he knew he was going to be doing calls that day, he tried to smooth it over by saying that he wasn’t scheduled to do radio that day. Covering for the various intermediaries AP identifies above. But he didn’t think fast enough, because that questionable attempt at diplomacy was quickly punctured when it emerged (via his own tweet) that he was going to do another Dallas show, Ben & Skin.

By the way – I haven’t heard whether he did do Ben & Skin later on. Anybody know?

Has Wilson ever been on the Musers? Does he have a past relationship with any other Ticket showgram?

So what are we to make of this dust-up? . A couple of thoughts.

(1) Fernando/Craig/Gordon May Have Overreacted Even if They’re Right that Wilson Was Being Mendacious. Quite aside from the right/wrong of this episode, was it prudent to make an enemy of Wilson so promptly and on the air? Without any further investigation?  Who is going to win when a local radio station, even one as popular as The Ticket, cheeses off a superstar for a team on the rise, a team where he has lots of pals who The Ticket would like to interview?

And this is taking place against a backdrop of intensified competition from at least one of the local competitors who would only be too happy to call up Rangers PR and say "You know, no one at this station has ever called one of your players a liar on the air."

Look:  I'm all in favor of integrity.  And, as noted elsewhere, we like it that our boys our fearless when dealing with the big shots, including their own bosses.  I'm only musing (!) that sometimes there is a price to pay for fearlessness, and maybe our lads will pay it here.

(2) Maybe There’s Something Else Going on Here.  Maybe this isn’t a Wilson/Ticket issue. Maybe Wilson is having issues with MLB. Or with Rangers PR. And this is his way of gigging that entity.

Or maybe there’s a long-simmering problem between Wilson and The Ticket not directly related to today’s FUBAR. Somebody knows. Somebody will disclose it to Your Ticket Confession, perhaps in confidence.

Or maybe he heard something on the station between the time he agreed to do the interview and this morning that didn’t sit well with him.

Or how about this? (Ooo, this is delicious:)  This was orchestrated between Wilson and Ben & Skin.   As noted, he’s appeared with them frequently, maybe they’re pals. Maybe this was a way to pwn The Ticket (former home of BS) and promote BS.  As Gordon has noted:  in the absence of evidence, the conspiracy explanation must be the correct one.  I was retracing Gordon's LHO Trail of Tears just the other day and I could have sworn I saw Greggo behind the fence at the top of that grassy knoll.

(3) How Important Is The Ticket?  Can you imagine any other outlet being stood up like that and doing anything other than smoothing it over, saying there’d been a mixup or technical problem, and they’d reschedule, and no one would be the wiser? Of course, the fact that The Ticket does not do things this way is one of the reasons we love it so much. And I’m glad they blew up – it’s fun for listeners and website journalists. But there was more than a touch of hubris in today’s proceedings. They called the Rangers’ (current) number 1 starter a liar because they think they can.

(4) How Much of What Happened Today Is the Result of Inter-Showgram Competition?  As you know, Your Plainsman enjoys the sport of listening between the words to figure out what goes on at The Ticket other than broadcast greatness.  It results in wild guesses and probably many wrong ones -- I've had certain people in the know tell me I'm right about a third of the time, and others tell me that I'm amazingly accurate, so who knows; all I can tell you is that I'm guessing.  Here's my guess about this one:

The Musers could not have been happy about being pwn’d by a big-time interviewee which would unquestionably carry with it the prospect of BaD and The Hardline snickering behind their backs. They had to call it out and deal with it right then and there in a way that gave them a victory of sorts.  They had to acknowledge it -- they had to turn disaster into broadcast gold, which they did, which is why Ticket connoisseurs like AP got in touch with me, and I'm writing a big article about it, and P1 Steven and Christy and Scott and Douglas and several flavors of Anonymous are going to comment on it, and take that, BaD and Hardline snickerboys.

I also have a feeling that the brunt of the natural (and healthy) friction between these big-time showgrams is frequently borne by the producers. Which accounts for Fernando feeling particularly abused by these circumstances.

One thing is bloody sure --

(5) We Haven’t Heard the End of This. So let’s get started. Comments open . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . now.