That screenshot from Derek Jeter's last home game at Yankee Stadium on Thursday -- showing a 2-2 score with two outs in the second inning, and a 2-2 pitch count from a pitcher who had thrown 22 total pitches in legendary number two's final appearance -- was crazy, wasn't it?
It's also fake.
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The image started with Samuel Lam on Twitter. Lam posted the image with the ubiquitous #RE2PECT hashtag that Nike has promoted in Jeter's honor over the past few months.
So many 2s. So much #RE2PECT. pic.twitter.com/EptrtKJeu8— Samuel Lam (@SamuelYLam) September 25, 2014
From there, it spread.
Eighteen-thousand retweets (and a blatant misuse of the word "ironic"), here:
How ironic is this.. pic.twitter.com/S5fVbsI1jq— Baseball Tweets ⚾️⚾️ (@Baseball__Tweet) September 26, 2014
Eighteen-hundred retweets (and another irony fail), here:
How ironic is that? #RE2PECT pic.twitter.com/9xp47AZeM0— Baseball Douchebag (@BaseballDoucher) September 26, 2014
Sixteen-hundred retweets, here:
This is just weird... #FarewellCaptain #RE2PECT pic.twitter.com/etWQM28HQA— GotHeem (@BWGotheem) September 26, 2014
And so on and so forth. But hold up.
Minutes after tweeting the original image, Lam posted the following disclaimer. It got little attention, however -- just two favorites and zero retweets, compared to the hundreds and hundreds for his original post.
BTW, just so there is no confusion, that was something I photoshopped for kicks.— Samuel Lam (@SamuelYLam) September 26, 2014
The next day, Lam explained the situation further on his personal website. He wrote that the prank was meant to poke fun at the relentless slobbering over Jeter's legacy and what he stood for and how he played the game -- all encompassed by Nike's #RE2PECT hashtag -- in the run-up to the shortstop's final Yankee Stadium appearance.
"With all this talk of 2s and how everyone is praising Jeter for all the wrong reasons, I opened up my Photoshop, grabbed some screenshots from the game, then just made it myself," Lam wrote.
"I didn’t think much of it," he continued. "It was a joke. I was so sure that people watching the game would notice that it was fake since the Orioles didn’t get two runners on base in the top of the second inning. But of course, in this day and age of the Internet, people will jump to anything. And look at all those retweets and favorites. That’s a lot! Sorry if I deceived you."
No apology necessary, Samuel. But let this be a lesson to the rest of you: Not everything you see on the Internet is real.
#RE2PECT.