It was at some point during the major league baseball lockout last year when Raymond Sbarra, a Yankees fan from Staten Island, received a message on Reddit from an anonymous, one-day-old account.
"I don't remember what the first message was, but then it said, 'Follow on Instagram @MikeTrout,' " Sbarra, 28, told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. "I thought it was a joke. Somebody was just messing with me. And then I go on Instagram and I follow [Mike Trout] and he follows me back."
Sbarra — whose day job is working as a delivery truck driver for an office solutions company — at the time had been in the middle of an internet art project, "Drawing Mike Trout every day until the lockout is over." He picked the Angels star because he thought Trout was the most renowned player universally respected by fans of every MLB team.
