Hunter Pence Signs

About

Hunter Pence Signs are a series of oversized posters featuring humorous insults specifically aimed at San Francisco Giants outfielder Hunter Pence. The taunting signs quickly became a trend among the fans of Major League Baseball after a a group of New York Mets fans were seen holding up the signs during their team’s games against San Francisco Giants in August 2014.

Origin

On August 1st, 2014, the San Francisco Giants played the first match in a four-game series against the New York Mets at Citi Field in Queens, New York. During the game, two fans were seen on TV holding signs which mocked Giants outfielder Hunter Pence, claiming he is the type of person who would commit the New York faux pas of putting ketchup on a hot dog and eating pizza with a fork. Later that day, the @MLBGIFs^[1] Twitter feed posted an animated GIF of the hecklers, garnering upwards of 940 favorites and 860 retweets in the first week (shown below).

Spread

On August 3rd, the @MLBFanCave^[6] Twitter feed posted several photos of other Mets fans holding signs mocking Pence (shown below). In the next four days, the tweet gained over 960 retweets and 880 favorites.

The same day, Twitter user @armigloo^[7] posted several tweets poking fun at Pence accompanied by the hashtag #hunterpencesigns (shown below). According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[8] the hashtag was tweeted over 7,000 times over the next 72 hours.

On August 5th, the Milwaukee Brewers Twitter^[5] feed posted a picture of several Brewers fans holding signs mocking Pence during the team’s game against the San Francisco Giants (shown below).

Hunter Pence Response

On August 6th, Pence posted two photographs of himself with #HunterPenceSigns captions mocking his ability to parallel park and his habit of returning library books early (shown below, left, middle).^[2]^[3] In addition, his girlfriend Alexis Cozombolidis tweeted a photograph of herself with Pence captioned with a #HunterPenceSigns joke (shown below, right).^[4]