Sean Murphy's Butt

About

Sean Murphy's Butt refers to a viral video of baseball player Sean Murphy, the catcher for the MLB team Oakland Athletics, getting hit in the rear-end by a pitch. The clip quickly spread among baseball fans on Twitter in mid-April 2022 due to the way Murphy's butt looks in the video, drawing comparisons to Ned Flanders in the Stupid Sexy Flanders meme, as well as being used as an exploitable in memes and other jokes about Murphy's butt.

Origin

On April 11th, 2022, Oakland A catcher Sean Murphy was hit in the butt by a pitch from the Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Chris Mazza. That evening, Twitter user @PadresGeekster^[1] reposted the footage from the televised broadcast of the incident, showing the ball hitting Murphy's butt in slow motion. The tweet gained over 71,000 retweets, 20,000 quote-tweets and 400,000 likes in roughly 48 hours (shown below).

Spread

People quickly commented on the shapeliness of Murphy's butt as the video spread on Twitter. For example, on April 11th, 2022, Twitter user @fergoe^[2] jokingly referred to him as "Thickey Henderson," a play on former baseball player Rickey Henderson's name (shown below, left). Murphy's teammate Tony Kemp^[3] joked, "Murph got cake," using two cake emojis, gaining over 200 retweets and 2,700 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Others posted photoshops about the incident. In particular, many posted a comparison between Murphy's butt and the Stupid Sexy Flanders meme. User @ParkerMolloy^[4] tweeted such a comparison, gaining over 200 retweets and 1,900 likes in one day (shown below, left). Twitter user @jessespector^[5] also posted a similar comparison, gaining over 40 likes in one day (shown below, right).

On April 12th, 2022, TikToker @oksurewaitwhat posted an edit of the video featuring a bell sound when the ball hits Murphy's butt, gaining over 12,000 likes in one day when he reposted it to Twitter (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References