Red Sox star Sandoval benched after 'liking' woman on Instagram during game
Technically Incorrect: The Panda couldn't stay away from the Internet while the Red Sox were tied with the Atlanta Braves.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
It's not easy being a baseball star.
When you're not sitting around, you're standing around.
The actual playing baseball part takes up around two minutes of your average three-hour game.
It's inevitable, therefore, that there will be distractions. Especially if you're a gregarious, fun-loving, energy-filled slugger like Pablo Sandoval of the Boston Red Sox.
Just like the rest of us at work, technology seems to distract him, to the point of rule-breaking. His heinous indiscretion? Liking a woman's pictures on Instagram. What was so bad about that? He was doing it during the game against the Atlanta Braves on Wednesday.
His extracurricular activity was spotted by blogger Jared Carrabis. He wondered why Sandoval had "liked" two pictures of a lady with the handle Diva_legacy at the very moment that his team was tied with the Braves.
The legacy of this behavior caused Sandoval to be benched by his team.
Sandoval is an ex-San Francisco Giant. Here (disclosure: fan) he was revered as someone with a huge heart and wonderful hands, during the playoffs especially. It's no surprise to us, therefore, that he didn't pretend he'd been hacked or had butt-dialed his liking of the diva.
Instead, as WEEI reports, he apologized to the team and explained that, like so many do, he had merely been scouring Instagram while in the bathroom.
He said: "I punched the button at the wrong time. I'm upset from the things I learned yesterday. I'll learn from it."
Major League Baseball forbids players from using gadgets from 30 minutes before game time.
Sandoval isn't the first in baseball to be caught on social media. As far back as 2011, the Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen was suspended for tweeting during a game after he'd been tossed from it.
Sandoval is having a slightly erratic season with the Red Sox, with currently only six home runs.
There is talk of him ultimately becoming the team's designated hitter. I fear for him in such a role. He might, in the process of even more sitting, become the designated tweeter.