Re-reading the material from that era I think I embellished a little in my memory. I think there was a pull request but he didn't reopen and accept it. Sounds like he just pushed a commit that said something along the lines of "why can I commit this to master". I'm busy at work so I can't dig in but I'm sure someone will find that original PR. If not tonight I'll see if I can't find it.
EDIT: Went ahead and found it. It was an issue. https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/5228
EDIT2: It looks like DHH may have even gone so far as to delete his comments in this issue. There's folks referencing him and one side of a conversation in places. Pretty funny.
