2013By Matt Yoder on

I was first alerted to this story on Twitter yesterday before seeing it on Deadspin last night.  My thoughts now are the same as my thoughts when I first read what had happened.

There's absolutely no way this story could possibly be true.

I see it in words and tweets, all the evidence is there that it is true, but I'm still not sure something like this could actually happen in this day and age.  And, it's a story so weird and yet so captivating that it would make a great piece of fiction or some legendary, mythical tale you would hear at a bar.

The tittle of this epic yarn goes something like this… "Don't call Al Trautwig a moron on Twitter or he will hunt down your phone number and accidentally call your parents."

MSG Network host and NBC play by play man Al Trautwig is a television veteran.  He's been on national TV for the better part of 4 decades.  In that time, surely he's encountered his fair share of criticism.  It's part of the business.  Surely one person sending him one trolling tweet wouldn't set him off to the point where he began an active manhunt to track that person down in real life.  Surely he would be able to shrug it off and move on because he's a media professional.

Surely… not.

It all started when Al Trautwig misspelled Marty Biron's name on Twitter.  @Blocknesmonster had a joke at Trautwig's expense with a fairly clever line.

For 99.9% of people, this would be game over.  If this was completely over the top and contained vile language and threats I could maybe understand, but getting called a moron?  I get called a moron all the time on Twitter and in real life.  That's something that shouldn't even register for most people.

Not for Al Trautwig.  Apparently he tried to track down Mr. Blocknes like he was Samuel Gerard and ended up calling the man's parents at home because he was upset over being called a moron.  You see, Mr. Blocknes lives in Israel.   Also, Al Trautwig needs some help replying to tweets.  Here's the absurdity that ensued…

But wait, there's more!  Thanks to Mr. Blocknes blogging about the incident we have the delightful details about the phone call between Mr. Trautwig and the Blocknes family.

"I get a call from my mother that Al Trautwig just called the house to speak to me because I wrote something about him on twitter. My mother told him that I don’t live there anymore (20 years plus) and can she have his number so I can call him back. He refused to give his number to her and said to her not to worry, that he will find me.  

I still can’t believe he was/is insane enough to research my phone number and call my parent’s house, where I haven’t lived in over 20 years, at MIDNIGHT just to yell at me about a tweet.

I spoke to my father today. He said that Al’s lucky my mother answered the phone and not him."

I don't know what's more bizarre and abnormal about this entire story – veteran broadcaster Al Trautwig taking the time to doggedly track down a guy who called him a moron on Twitter, Al Trautwig calling his parents and then vowing not to give up the pursuit, or Al Trautwig calling well past the cutoff time.  Midnight?  Really?

Let this be a lesson folks – be careful who you send mean tweets to, they may just show up at your front door… or your parents, whichever they can find first.

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