It started out as a simple, playful joke on Twitter — something seen all the time on the social media platform.

Now, days later, Texas State student Nikki Giles said she feels harassed and bullied by Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer and his followers — something that has caused her to report the incident to the Indians and Twitter.

“It has definitely ruined my last three days,” Giles told USA Today on Tuesday. “I have cried daily and called my family crying because the first 12-24 hours or so I was getting a lot of hate.”

Starting with a playful joke

Bauer — who will enter his eighth season in the league this spring — was in a conversation with Houston star Alex Bregman on Saturday.

Giles, an Astros and Bregman fan, responded to Bauer’s tweet, jokingly writing, “My new least favorite person in all of sports.” She said she hadn’t even heard of Bauer before the tweet to Bregman.

Bauer tweeted back.

Their initial conversation went on for three more tweets.

“Unfortunately I don’t think a professional athlete that tweets like a 16 year girl on her period has a fan club,” Giles replied.

“Sucks those followers can’t help you get a ring #Htown,” Giles replied.

Nothing in their initial conversation is out of the ordinary when it comes to professional athletes on Twitter. While athletes don’t usually respond to everybody, they do reach out to fans from time to time.

Tweets rapidly increase, even after blocking Bauer

Bauer, though, kept going and responded to just about anyone who jumped into the conversation — which was a lot of users.

“He went almost a year back into my Twitter to find a tweet about me drinking two months before my 21st birthday and exposed it to his followers,” Giles told USA Today.

Eventually, Giles blocked Bauer. He blamed her for “continuously tweeting him,” even though she had quit.

“I eventually unblocked him when someone brought to my attention that he had tagged me in 30 more tweets in responses,” Giles told USA Today. “And when I said I felt harassed, he continued to tweet things like this claiming that I was responding to him because ‘I like him.’ ”

He also called Giles “obsessed” with him, and tweeted out a video of him blocking her.

It wasn’t Bauers’ tweets that caused her the most trouble, though. It was others who dropped into the conversation. One user, she said, even made three new accounts to harass her when she kept blocking him.

Giles has since protected her account on Twitter.

Bauer’s agent declined to comment to USA Today, and Giles said she has not received any response from the Indians or Twitter.

Update: Trevor Bauer releases statement on Twitter

One day after the story garnered national attention, Bauer took to Twitter to release a statement that slightly resembled an apology for the incident.

Many wondered if the Indians would eventually step in and ask Bauer to apologize for his actions. Perhaps that’s what happened here, or perhaps Bauer realized he needed to do something to put this situation behind him.

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