Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Will "Rojo" Johnson Ferrell


Will Ferrell is one of the great comedians who has changed with the times and has remained relevant because of it. Because he has made so many hilarious movies, not to mention one of the best animated shows with The Oblongs, I can excuse Bewitched and Stranger Than Fiction.

In 2015 during Spring Training in Arizona he played every position on the field for 10 different teams all in one day while working with the MLB to support fighting cancer, which raised over $1 million for Stand Up To Cancer and Cancer For College. He went 0-2 at bat and threw one pitch, retiring from the game with a 0.00 ERA. The experience was documented and later shown on HBO, he was one busy dude that day.
Topps went on to include a Will Ferrell insert in the 2015 Topps Archives release and the 2015 Topps Dynasty release. As expected the variations and autographs from the Archives set and Dynasty sets are selling for big bucks.

I did pick up the 2015 Archives Mariners card but while searching about I came across a couple of other Ferrell cards that I didn’t know about. In 2015 the unlicensed company Hits Memorabilia produced a couple of Ferrell cards and while I was questionable I did some investigation and I felt comfortable with Hits Memorabilia because their website seems very transparent and documents where each uniform relic comes from and the MLB COA sticker associated with it.

While researching I found out that the uniform used for their Ferrell cards came from his game with the Mariners I knew I had to chase down whatever I could and I picked up these three cards. There is one card that includes the Mariners logo but that was well out of my budget even when I was buying cards. I do find it funny that instead of just Photoshopping the image they used to remove the Mariners logo from his hat they just whited over the whole front panel, a literal whitewashing.




Of course while searching I found out that he had more baseball cards than I had original thought. He has a couple of cards from 2010 when he made an appearance for the Round Rock Express in disguise as Venezuelan pitcher Rojo Johnson. Like the 2015 Spring Training appearance this was also to raise awareness for cancer. Not only did he appear in a Round Rock Express team set but he also appears on a card in the 2010 PCL Top Prospects release so I had picked up both of those sets at the time too.

There are a ton of custom and art cards that people made, especially after the Cubs won the World Series, but the two Round Rock cards are official Minor League cards from Round Rock Express and the Pacific Coast League.



5 comments:

  1. Didn't realize Ferrell's rookie card is back from the 2010 season. Gonna need to track down a "Rojo" Johnson card. Great stuff.

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  2. I've had my eyes on the Round Rock and PCL sets for a while. Seeing your scans, I'm going to have to pull the trigger one them really soon. Great cards!

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  3. Those are awesome cards!! I've never seen the jersey ones. And Stranger Than Fiction was an awesome movie!!

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  4. I watched the HBO documentary on one of my flights to Arizona. It was fun.

    Love the Rojo cards!

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  5. Love the cards and would love to pick up a few myself. Thanks for sharing them!

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