Sean Murphy wanted to put his neighborhood on the map. ‘Fishtown’s Ace’ was on his way before tragedy struck.

The grass field at Shissler Recreation Center in Fishtown has been reclaimed for the fall for daily use by no fewer than 21 noisy youth soccer teams. But the backdrop is still a mural that serves as a memorial to a baseball player from the old neighborhood who died far too young.

Sean Murphy, a big and gregarious right-handed pitcher in the Oakland Athletics minor league system, was known as “Fishtown’s Ace.” He died in April 2016 at the age of 27, found unresponsive in his car, parked at a fast food restaurant in Phoenix. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

Medical examiners in Maricopa County, Ariz., determined that he died of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or a thickening of the ventricles of the heart, with few, if any, symptoms. The autopsy was not released until four months later, however, fanning speculation that he had a drug problem.

“He had a heart problem, and never knew it,” said his father, Ray.

That was ironic, in a sense, because Sean was known throughout Fishtown as a guy with a good heart. His father was a carpenter; his mother, Lorraine, worked in the deli at the grocery store. The pitcher himself was a real throwback to Fishtown’s days as a working class River Wards community of immigrants — far from the hipster, artsy area it has recently become.

“We’re all dying off, the old Fishtowners,” said Ray, 72.

Murphy’s ancestors moved to Fishtown in 1860. When Murphy grew up, the field at Shissler, once known as “Newt’s Lot,” was all cinders, no grass, and those who dove for grounders paid a price. He was a local celebrity because he was good and tough — a bulldog.

Plus, Murphy made it clear from the start of his pro career that he was really pitching for Fishtown, telling the Daily News when he was drafted, “I want to put Fishtown on the map. I’m not the only good player from there. There are tons of others. They just need a chance.”

Had Murphy made the big leagues, he would have been a heck of a Philly story: He bounced around four colleges, was drafted very late, missed a full season after Tommy John surgery, and was suspended 50 games in 2016 for marijuana use. The mural is all that remains.

The mural is on the right field wall of the diamond at Shissler. “Sean Murphy” is in Old English lettering, with dates of his birth and death along with “Fishtown’s Ace,” and “Field of Dreams.” There are images of Murphy as a boy, a minor league pitcher and a player at North Catholic High School, which closed a month after Murphy was drafted in the 33rd round by the Athletics in 2010.

He was a Fishtowner. He was very determined. He was going to make it.

“He was very, very thankful he had grown up where he did,” Lorraine said of Murphy, the youngest of three children. “He loved his neighborhood. He was a Fishtowner. He was very determined. He was going to make it.”

The diamond is still used between March and July, though only about two-thirds the number of kids play baseball and softball as soccer. Weeds grow in the dirt infield in the fall to protect the knees of tumbling soccer players. Baseball is in second place, probably forever.

“I played baseball here until I was 18,” said Dave Dougherty, 39, who coaches baseball and works at Shissler, which was named in 1994 after a beloved Fishtown soccer coach. “Now it seems like sports has become more centralized, on one task. The concept of a multi-sport athlete is dying off.”

Dougherty and his longtime friend Billy Gorey organized a fall classic for youth players at the field in October 2016 after the mural was completed. Ray threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Phillies game on Sept. 15, 2017, against the A’s at Citizens Bank Park, with 500 friends attending. Many Athletics visited the mural in Fishtown during that series.

Then, the enthusiasm faded. A Sean Murphy Field of Dreams Foundation page, with about 1,700 members, is still on Facebook, but there has been little activity related to “Fishtown’s Ace” in the last four years. Ray, now retired, considered building a bench or bleachers at the field dedicated to his son, but, “I don’t want to promise anything.”

At the time of his death, Murphy was in Arizona for extended spring training. He made a break for himself late in spring training in 2014, when he held the Texas Rangers to one hit in a surprise start. He was promoted to triple-A Sacramento that year and made seven starts. Murphy posted a 32-32 record and a 4.26 ERA in 105 games, including 81 starts, in six minor league seasons.

His family and friends are certain he would have pitched in the major leagues in 2016. His older brother, 44-year-old Pat, who played baseball and soccer at Temple, has a short video of Sean preparing to pitch by throwing rocks against a tree. On the day he died, Sean told his mother how excited he would be — finally — to pitch again from a real mound that day.

Gil Patterson, who was the A’s minor league pitching coordinator then and is still in the same role, said Murphy “took the steps, on and off the field, that were needed to become a solid major league pitcher. Who doesn’t have a kind of a roller-coaster career?”

Patterson said Murphy was “stubborn — at times he thought he knew it all,” but Patterson laughed when he added, “You know, we thought about what he was saying, and we thought, ‘He might be right.’ We, as an organization, encourage people to stand up and question things sometimes.”

Patterson, who keeps a baseball card of Murphy in his A’s spring training office, really did think he would succeed because of the adversity he faced.

“[The suspension] was an issue. But it was handled,” Patterson said. “He’d handled it and moved on.”

While pitching for the A’s class-A affiliate in Stockton, Calif., he met Araseli Montano and eventually they got engaged. They had a dog. During A’s spring training, he was a volunteer coach at a high school in Phoenix. His teammates loved him.

“Sean was a competitor, a guy who wanted to pitch, wanted the ball in his hand,” Stephen Vogt, who caught Murphy in Sacramento, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2016. “So much tenacity, he always gave you everything he had, and he was a fun guy in the clubhouse, always happy, always smiling, always in a good mood.”

Even in 2016, though, Fishtown hardly had the concentration of coffee shops and boutiques as it has now. It was a town, not a burg. So whispers arose after his death about the circumstances. Murphy had already been suspended for using marijuana, after all.

“It gave a bad look to the neighborhood,” Pat said. “People just assumed it was way worse than marijuana.”

Pat said it did not help that his brother’s autopsy was not released until mid-September 2016. He said Murphy was a good kid, “like my shadow growing up. Anywhere I went, I could turn around and I’d just see him staring at me.”

Rumors of death caused by drugs were tough to deal with for Pat.

“I’d be lying if it didn’t cross my mind. It was the worst four to six months of my life,” Pat said. “He was 6-6, 230, a big, healthy guy. That was kind of a relief when we finally heard from the coroner.”

In that way, Murphy was vindicated. Ray said his own brother died of the same ailment. Pat, who lives in Bucks County, takes his children to the doctor yearly for electrocardiograms that may detect heart problems.

Murphy never made it to the top, but his memory endures. One of the Fishtown Athletic Club’s youth baseball teams is named after him. And then there is the mural that Dougherty said still draws attention, especially from contingents of traveling youth baseball teams that visit the diamond.

“One of the coaches recognized Sean right away,” Dougherty said. “One parent here and there will ask about him. Once you say the name, people will say, ‘Oh, yeah. I do remember when that happened.’ "