We all know Tim Tagaris as, to use Matt Stoller’s famous description, a "brilliant organizer, a dedicated progressive and a fantastic blogger and visionary." An FDL partner-in-crime who earned his stripes battling Rick Santorum and in the trenches for Ned Lamont, none can doubt his heart and his dedication. But I’m going to criticize.

See, I follow Tim on Twitter. And last night I was at Best Buy trying to sort out some final appliance purchases for the new apartment. That store keeps you waiting forever for customer service — I’m talking about the one in the Columbia Heights mall — so I kept playing with my iPhone out of boredom. Then I saw it. From @ttagaris. About 12 hours ago. From TweetDeck."For the jinx … Andy Petite perfect through 6 against the O’s." A line had been crossed.

Yes, the internet is changing the rules of etiquette for social interactions. And Tim, as I replied at the time, misspelled Andy’s name, so technically Tim and the universe couldn’t ruin the perfect game; that would fall to Jerry Hairston Jr. Not only that, Tim testified before the twitterverse that he wanted to see perfection. So I take the man at his word. 

But all I’m saying is this. If a pitcher is putting up zeroes, the internet or the twitterverse does not need to know about it, except for in serious and creative codewords or after ESPN interrupts whatever it is you’re watching to take you to the game. There’s an irony here: I have no TV yet and my internet hasn’t been installed, so I would not have known to even object to Tim’s tweet had it not been for the problematic tweet itself. I accept that. But let’s make a rule, going forward: all we need to say to alert our people to the fact of the matter is "Everyone should turn on the Shirts playing the Hats right now." Deal?