After deleting his Twitter account Saturday, Cubs starting pitcher Randy Wells somehow managed to have more followers than when the account was active.
Tribune Cubs beat reporter Paul Sullivan reported that Wells claims his account was hacked and thus the deletion of it. Wells asked that people ignore the final tweet from the account which read “All you hatred slash bloggers go to bed. Jim Hendry is a great man! That’s all he should be judged on!”
The message appeared at 2 AM Saturday, but Wells took down the entire @rwells36bsi account hours later.
More puzzling than who may have hacked the account was that by deleting it Wells’ number of followers went from -42 to zero.
“It’s very rare for such a thing to happen,” said Twitter spokesperson Kyle Medlin, “but it has happened before, whether a person’s career dies metaphorically or literally.”
Medlin pointed to singer Amy Winehouse’s number of followers spiking after she passed away.
“Imagine if Wells had overdosed on drugs,” said Medlin. “He would probably actually have followers, you know?”
