John Feinstein kicked off The Masters — and an enthralling media brawl that would play out over public airwaves — with a simple tweet last Thursday.
Making an observation about ESPN's opening round coverage, Feinstein hinted at his apparent distaste for commentator Scott Van Pelt, airing a public pedantic grievance over Van Pelt conforming to Augusta's verbiage guidelines.
Feinstein, a regular radio guest of The Sports Junkies, divulged more about his prior history with Van Pelt the next morning on 106.7 The Fan. But not before being treated to a surprise response, allegedly sent by Van Pelt.
Sports Junkies host Jason Bishop, a technological incompetent, then read what he believed to be Van Pelt's public Twitter response to Feinstein, when in fact he was reading from a screenshot of a private direct message (added emphasis on private) sent to him purporting to show Van Pelt's "not very kind" response.
"Someone asked him, 'Why all the hate?' He responded to someone responding to your tweet," Bishop erroneously summarized the events. "He said, 'Because he will be fake nice to me. That's what I can't stand. You can dislike me all you want. Don't pretend to be friendly. Be consistent. That's easy. I don't need that fat f-ing toad to be my friend, nor do I want him to be. Talking s*** on the f-ing internet then smiling and making nice is clown behavior.'"
"What a jerk," Feinstein replied. "Let's not waste my time on this. I'll respond and let's move on, because Van Pelt's not worth more than a minute."
"There is history between us. It's not even worth going through in much detail," he said. "He literally came after me in the Augusta clubhouse, screaming and pointing his finger at me, after Duke came from 22 down to beat Maryland in the Final Four in 2001, screaming that I — I — should be ashamed of myself. How can you possibly accept a championship like that?
"I said, 'Scott. One, I had nothing to do with the outcome of that game. Zero. Two, I didn't accept any trophy on Monday night. And three, when you're up 22 and you lose by 11, you can't blame the officials. You just can't. I know Maryland fans like to do that, but you can't."
"We went and sat down," Feinstein continued. "And there were a bunch of us at the table, including Jim Nantz, and Van Pelt came up from behind me again and started yelling, 'What about the last foul on [Lonny] Baxter? That was a ridiculous call!'
"At which point Nantz turned around and said, 'Hey fella...' Nantzy never gets mad at anybody. 'Hey fella, I saw the replay of that call. Your guy Baxter hooked [Carlos] Boozer. It was a good call. Now can we please eat our lunch in peace?' At which point Van Pelt retreated."
Feinstein then recalled another incident in which he says Van Pelt was in attendance for a Maryland-Duke game and, according to Feinstein's brother Bobby (John was not there), Van Pelt was "screaming at the officials on every call, acting like... a Maryland fan."
"Bobby told me this story. It came up on the radio when I used to appear on WTEM," Feinstein continued. "And Kevin Sheehan, who as you know is Van Pelt's minion, called in and said, 'I was there. There was nothing wrong with Scott's behavior.'"
Dropping bombs on everybody, Feinstein — who, at this point, had safely surpassed his one-minute threshold for Van Pelt commentary — went on to recall a third incident involving Van Pelt.
"Van Pelt then spoke at [Bethesda golf club] Burning Tree, where he's now a member, as their member guest," Feinstein said, "and said he wanted to make sure that my brother wasn't in the audience before he started talking, because my brother would report back anything he said to me."
"My brother wasn't in the audience, but his best friend was," he noted. "And they did report back to me on Van Pelt saying that. But as far as all this crap about being fake friendly, I'm not friendly to Scott Van Pelt. I'm polite. I see Scott. I say hello. I shake his hand."
Bringing it back home to his original grievance, Feinstein went on to say — despite his apparent extensive history with Van Pelt — that his "number one beef" still is with The Masters.
The Junkies returned in the next segment deciding to let the audience in on Bishop's major oopsie.
"You may have revealed a private conversation that you interpreted as public," Junkies host Eric Bickel said. "You did it inadvertently. Because you're clueless."
"Correct," Bishop said. "Because I don't know anything about Twitter."
"You know zippy," John Auville said.
"Let me just say this," Bickel said. "You might have just screwed Scott by revealing a private conversation he had with someone, and you didn't mean to."
"What do you mean screwed Scott?" Bishop pushed back. "What, is ESPN gonna fire him?"
"No, of course not," Bickel said. "But if I call someone a 'fat f-ing toad' on a private DM, I'm probably doing that because I don't want to put it out there on Twitter. And by the way, Scott's professional on Twitter. He's not gonna put 'he's a fat f-ing toad' on Twitter."
"I didn't know," Bishop said. "I had no idea."
"So you clearly violated — you didn't know, though, because you're a donk," Bickel said. "And then John's now pissed because he thinks that Scott publicly called him a 'fat f-ing toad,' but he didn't. You did! You revealed a private conversation because you're a donk and didn't realize it was private."
"I didn't know. I had no clue," insisted Bishop, who doesn't own a Twitter account. "I don't know how to read Twitter. So, it's out there now... What are you gonna do?"
"Yeah, I mean it's out there," Bickel said. "But I think you should say in Scott's defense, because we like Scott. Scott used to come on this show all the time."
"Yes. In Scott's defense, he did not put that out publicly," Bishop said. "Yes. Correct."
"And, we did a whole segment on a fake premise," Bickel added.
"I like how John said, 'This is not worth even a minute, but I'll talk about it,'" Auville chimed in. "And then he talked about it for eight minutes."
The true irony here is that Bishop has abstained from joining Twitter for over a decade, because he knows he can't control himself and it would only lead to bad situations.
Despite going out of their way to clarify the situation, as it turns out, the ball had already gotten away from them. Feinstein was already back on Twitter blasting Van Pelt again, imploring fans of the ESPN host to unfollow him because "I won't be responding to ANYTHING on him from here on in."
"This is the LAST thing I'm going to say about Van Pelt," Feinstein wrote. "Jason just read me his tweet on me. Sensitive boy! For the record I was NEVER 'fake friendly,' to him; I was polite. Big difference. As for his name-calling--WOW--reminded me of being in the PS87 schoolyard in fifth grade."
"Those of you who are fans of his, PLEASE just un-follow me and move on with your lives because I won't be responding to ANYTHING on him from here on in," he continued. "He's not worth any more time beyond what's already been wasted."
In the coincidence of all coincidences, around this same time, Van Pelt was in the middle of a phoner with Sheehan on The Team 980. Sheehan, brought abreast of the developing situation via text bombardment, decided to fill Van Pelt in, too.
"Apparently, according to one of the most miserable people on the planet, and certainly in sports media in this town, I'm a 'minion' of yours," Sheehan informed Van Pelt. "Please, whatever I can get you, whatever it is you require, I'm at your service here."
"The most self-absorbed person in sports media I've ever had direct experience with," Sheehan said of Feinstein.
"Please, don't do it. Don't do it," Van Pelt responded, pleading with Sheehan to stay above the fray. "There's nothing to say here."
"But he's an insecure, back-stabbing S.O.B.," Sheehan said, blowing through SVP's stop sign. "That's what he is. And then it's funny, because when you have conversations with him, he's so cordial, and there's this tone, like, 'No, that's not what I really meant.' Just a total phony."
"And that's fine," Van Pelt said. "I have jokes with my friends about how I say... I joked with them that when I see him, I'm gonna physically confront him, meaning I want to get in his face and hoot and holler. It's all jokes about that, because any time I've ever seen him, he's always been kind. I don't understand why he speaks about me the way he speaks about me. I have no idea why that's what he would choose to say, but any time I've ever seen him, he's always been nothing but kind to me."
"Well he's the biggest P in person," Sheehan said.
"Enough. Enough. Enough," said Van Pelt, making one last attempt to quash the issue.
"You're right. We'd be walking together by him and he'd act like he was our best friend," Sheehan plowed right on through anyway.
"There's no need for any of this," Van Pelt said.
Sheehan joined The Junkies in the next hour to share his perspective.
And thus concludes the story of how a comedy of errors, centered around one radio host's buffoonish misunderstanding of social media, led to two longtime media staples from the D.C. area beefing publicly and sharing way more than they ever intended.
You can watch it from start to finish below.
