SD Padres change Twitter handle to @Madres for Mother's Day. Loses @Padres handle

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You ever have one of those Mother’s Days where you get Mom a gift and she says, “Aw, you shouldn’t have?” Yeah, the San Diego Padres are having one of those right now. They really, really, really shouldn’t have. Someone on the Padres’ social media team thought it would be a great idea to change the team’s Twitter handle from @Padres (meaning “fathers”) to @Madres (meaning “mothers”). Great idea! Very sweet! Very touching! Very appropriate on this Mother’s Day!

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There was just one problem. Just one tiiiiiiny little problem. See, when you change your Twitter name, that leaves your old name up for grabs, and, well, somebody grabbed this one. Some cat by the name of Ricky Padilla grabbed the username @Padres for a few hours, not long but long enough for the Padres to lose control of the name. Padilla even answered a few fans’ inquiries as the @Padres, and offered one a couple tickets that he almost surely does not have to offer.

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In the olden days of the 1990s, this kind of name-swipe was a common practice for websites, where random guys would grab the dot-coms of famous people and brands and effectively hold them for ransom until they got paid. That doesn’t appear to be the case here; the @padres handle now takes you to a “does not exist” page, presumably waiting for the @madres to reclaim it. It’s likely that Twitter itself stepped in and vetoed poor Ricky’s angle. As for our @Padres-swiper? Seems he’s out of luck:

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