Porn photo pops up in ‘compromised’ Cubs tweet from 2012

Many Cubs fans scrolling through Twitter Tuesday afternoon were left scratching their heads when they came across a particularly raunchy tweet that appeared to have been posted to the team’s official account more than six years ago.

The tweet, which was from July 2012, referenced that night’s 7th inning stretch: “#Cubs Hall of Fame of Famer Billy Williams sang tonight’s 7th inning stretch with his two grandsons.” But the attached photo depicted a hardcore sex act.

The tweet had garnered 715 likes and 922 retweets by Tuesday afternoon before the post was deleted from Twitter. All that’s left behind now is an error page and the reactions from the aghast and amused folks who stumbled across the not-safe-for-work snapshot.

So what exactly happened?

A Twitter spokesman blamed a technical glitch and said the problem was an “internal issue” that’s causing certain images to be switched with others. The spokesman did not say how many accounts were affected.

“We believe this only affects some images shared in 2012,” the spokesman said. “We are working on a fix to correct these images and ID issues.”

Cubs spokesman Julian Green said Tuesday evening that the account was “compromised.”

“We didn’t send that out,” Green said. “We are currently working with Major League Baseball and Twitter to investigate where this originated from.”

Green noted that other teams had also been affected by similar issues.

While the Cubs appear to be the only organization that had x-rated content blasted out to its followers, NFL teams — including the Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants and Detroit Lions, among others — had peculiar photos populate old tweets from 2012.

“It’s bizarre,” Green said. “We were horrified when we saw that, as well.”