A Guide to Telling the Difference Between Tampa Bay Rays Pitcher Tyler Glasnow and ‘Oppenheimer’ Star Cillian Murphy

How fast do you think noted thespian Cillian Murphy could throw a baseball? Conversely, do you think Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow was a theater kid? Until we can finally get them in the same room—insert your “Has anyone ever actually seen them in the same room?” joke here—these questions will remain unanswered.

What we can help you with is learning how to tell these two men apart. Because while there are a few major differences—Murphy is Irish and A-list actor famous, Glasnow is from Southern California and mostly unknown to non-baseball fans—there are also more similarities than you might expect. Both men are enjoying big summers. Murphy is the main character in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Glasnow and his Rays are sitting atop the American League standings, poised to make their fifth straight playoff appearance. With both Murphy and Glasnow finding themselves extremely relevant in their respective fields, people have begun to take notice of how eerily similar they look to each other. The best example of their resemblance is probably the photo below, taken from an angle that really makes Glasnow look like Murphy, but also might be photoshopped? Again, the resemblance is so strong that it’s really hard to tell.

That’s why we’re here to help. Should you find yourself watching a Tampa Bay Rays game and asking, “Is that Cillian Murphy?” it is not. That’s Tyler Glasnow. If you’re flipping channels and happen to catch Inception or The Dark Knight, that’s going to be Murphy on your screen. But let’s say you stumble into a situation where the two are standing next to each other. You’re going to need to know how to tell them apart or risk major embarrassment, and we can’t have that.

Glasnow is six-foot-eight and Murphy is five-foot-seven

This one will be the most helpful. Until Murphy gets cast in a movie playing Glasnow—which, can’t rule it out?—and opts for leg-lengthening surgery to really nail the look, there will always be nearly a foot of difference between them.

Glasnow’s height helps him average nearly 97 miles per hour on his fastball. Long limbs generate a lot of power, after all. Murphy’s height works to his advantage as well. If you weren’t aware of the industry’s dirty little secret, a lot of leading men are quite short, as to avoid visually disorienting height differences with their scene partners. We’d imagine it’d also be hard to find a sheer shirt for a six-foot-eight frame, so if you see pictures of this look making the rounds, that’s Murphy.

Murphy does not have the same type of luscious brown locks as Glasnow

We should note here that Murphy is 47 years old and Glasnow is 29, which has presumably had an impact on both of their scalps. Murphy has aged gracefully into his silver fox period, which can help differentiate him from his baseball doppelganger. Glasnow has a glorious head of shiny brown hair, somehow powered only with bottles of two-for-one shampoo and conditioner stocked in locker rooms, and a product he found on Amazon by googling “hair lotion.”

Admittedly, when Murphy was a younger man, he did look alarmingly like current day Glasnow.

The accents

If you can secure an invite to this hypothetical party that both Murphy and Glasnow are attending, and you’re still struggling to find out who is who, a little eavesdropping will help. Murphy, a native of Cork, Ireland who spent the first two decades of his life on the Emerald Isle, still has the sing-songy Irish lilt in his voice. You really hear it in the vowel sounds.

Glasnow, meanwhile, is extremely bro-coded. There’s a lot of “like” and “for sure.” You can take the boy out of Los Angeles County, but you can’t take the Los Angeles County out of the boy.

We are willing to bet Murphy has never been to Tampa Bay

While we can’t prove this, it’s a safe assumption that a man whose American experience revolves around Hollywood probably skips Tampa Bay. So if you do find yourself in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area and you see someone who fits the Murphy-Glasnow description, that’s going to be Glasnow.

We’re not sure if Glasnow has visited Ireland—though he is a documented traveler, having spent part of his most recent offseason in Istanbul and Thailand.

Murphy does not have a Boosie-inspired lip tattoo

Anyone know if Murphy ever bumps “Wipe Me Down” or “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” between takes? Perhaps the best differentiator between the two men—one that really highlights the cultural, generational, and musical gaps between them—is also probably the funniest. In 2017, an ESPN story revealed that Glasnow got “No Juice,” the title of a Boosie song, tattooed on his lower lip. The same story reported that he also got Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s face inked on the bottom of his foot. Lip tattoos are known to fade over time, so it’s possible that his No Juice days are over, but if you need to make a quick identification, it wouldn’t hurt to ask if you can see his lip. Something tells us Murphy is wildly unfamiliar with both Boosie and ODB—does he even have a favorite Wu-Tang member?—so if you spark up a hip-hop conversation and get a blank stare, you’re talking to Murphy.