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Deciphering the Russian Twitter feed that has taken over Domonic Brown's handle

Friends, meet Oleg Igoshev. He is not Domonic Brown.

By Justin Klugh
Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

There were two times when Domonic Brown wasn't being maligned instinctively by Philadelphia: The first was in July 2010, when Brown, the sole holdover prospect through all of Ruben Amaro's acquisitions, debuted at Citizens Bank Park with an RBI double in his first at-bat, vindicating the lofty expectations of an adoring public.

He was going to be the next Jayson Werth! No, no - the next Darryl Strawberry! Yeah! And everything's gonna be fine.

Could you imagine if that ball had gone over the fence? The superhumanity with which Brown would have been credited would probably have increased the bitterness toward him in later seasons when he did not, in fact, hit an exciting home run in every at-bat LIKE HE WAS SUPPOSED TO.

The other time was May 2013, when Brown was hitting exciting home runs in every at-bat LIKE HE WAS SUPPOSED TO. His mojo finally secured, Brown felt it was safe to get on Twitter, where insane people live. Things went okay, mostly because athletes have nothing to fear from Philadelphia fans as long as they are performing at a level of unsustainable success.

The golden age soon departed, and with it went the leeway granted Brown by the Phillies fanbase. He would eventually retreat off social media after several incidents that had nothing to do with baseball, really.

For starters, he came out as a Cowboys fan, which some held against him jokingly - can you imagine if people thought that an athlete should change their sports allegiances just because of the city their job forces them to play in? Ha ha. Crazy.

It turns out that many, many people thought this, and started referring to him as "Cowboy Dom Brown" while citing his poor play, as if a player's favorite football team has any baring on their miscues, or as if clumsiness and inaccuracy are traditional traits of the American cowboy.

The following September, a rumor that Brown was headed to the Indians surfaced when he posted a picture of himself on Instagram wearing a suit in the Phillies clubhouse with the caption, "It's been great. Time to move forward. Thanks for everything." Instead, it turned out to be Brown announcing his break-up with his girlfriend.

These instances, plus Brown in general being the most common Phillie onto whom fans project their inadequacies and the ex-girlfriend in question storming onto his Instagram page to tell her side of things with many words and sarcastic clapping emoticons, led to Brown fleeing from social media as if he suddenly didn't want the unsolicited input of thousands of strangers.

On Twitter, only Dom's handle remained. @dom9brown sat uninhabited for a time as wars began and ended. Until one day...

This is Oleg Igoshev. He has inherited the @dom9brown mantel, and tweets with all the contagious enthusiasm of Philip Seymour Hoffman. He seems a staunch recognizer of the majestic dire wolf.

What he is doing with Brown's former handle remains unknown to me, a native/only English speaker, but that first Russian word in his profile looks like "Brown" with the letters rearranged. He seems a somber, melancholy lad with a poetic touch.

Thankfully we live in an age when nobody isn't fluent in every language. Let's run чириканье птиц after чириканье птиц through Google Translate and hope that this mysterious scribe's message becomes clear...

"Eternal questions require answers eternal"

"With cupids and the moon on the beach"

"We have our spell."

"Views, touch, words?"

"...and we still have time."

"Its burden is not felt, his eyes not eat smoke."

"Wisdom in the mind and not in the beard."

We may never know what Oleg is trying to tell us. Perhaps he is slowly tweeting out the cryptic, metaphorical secret to turning Brown into an effective ball player. Maybe it's Amaro in disguise, using Oleg as an outlet for the anguish he feels daily. Or maybe, somewhere in a desolate Russian landscape, a man just wanted a voice to tell the world his story, and he unwittingly chose that of an underwhelming professional athlete from America.

Or maybe it's like a sex bot or something and I've already been hacked.

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