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.
Sbarra initially shared his images on Reddit before he created Instagram and Twitter accounts — which now have thousands of followers — to share his work more widely. The drawings of Trout portrayed him in different situations, often borrowing from pop culture — one of his most popular drawings was of the slugger portrayed in a "Die Hard" scene — and sometimes even portraying him as an actual trout.
It's been over a year since the lockout ended and Sbarra completed his viral project. He hasn't met Trout, but he plans to attend one of the games the Yankees are playing against the Angels this week in New York, one of many Yankees games he'll watch in person this season.
Trout, for his part, told The Los Angeles Times last week that the artwork "was just something different for sure," though he didn't recall which piece of art caught the eye of him and his team initially. (Trout has someone who manages his social media accounts.)
"I don't know how many he's done, but we just kept seeing it," Trout said, adding, "I don't think I've ever had anybody do it that much, every single day. It's pretty crazy."
Sbarra continues to draw and share his work, becoming a small part of an online sports artist community, a testament to just how much things can change in a year considering Sbarra's prior artistic experience didn't extend further than early elementary school projects.
"It's something I never expected to happen," Sbarra said. "We came a long way. ... The support from everybody has been really cool and I would do it again in a heartbeat."
Much like Sbarra's collection of Lockout Art, as it is now known, had pop culture references to it his recent work has continued to follow suit.
This year, he drew and shared two World Baseball Classic-inspired pieces, including one that was inspired by the 2004 movie "Team America: World Police." He also drew a picture ahead of the highly anticipated matchup between Trout and Ohtani showing the pair dueling with sabers.
Sbarra's post-lockout work has continued to have an Angels influence to it. In May of last season, for example, he drew Reid Detmers waving a finger "no" after the young starting pitcher completed his no-hitter. In September, he drew Trout with a stack of seven cowboy hats, after his streak of games with a home run reached seven.
His drawings have also been influenced by other big baseball moments, like Albert Pujols reaching 700 career home runs and Aaron Judge hitting 62 homers last season.
This March, he completed and shared his first collaborated piece with another online artist, Rita Oak — who gained online attention for her "Drawing Jimmy [Garappolo] every day until he gets traded" — on an opening day piece inspired by "The Sandlot."
It of course featured Trout, as well as other popular faces of today's game including Trout's fellow most valuable player teammate Ohtani, the Dodgers' Mookie Betts, the Philadelphia Phillies' Bryce Harper, the San Diego Padres' Juan Soto, the Toronto Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the Seattle Mariners' Julio Rodriguez and Judge.
"I'll definitely look into doing more of those [collaborated pieces] because it was a lot of fun to do," Sbarra said.
He's also become an advocate of sorts, helping artists reclaim their work that was stolen and sold as NFTs. It's a process he's unfortunately needed to become familiar with after some of his Lockout Art was stolen and sold as NFTs multiple times last year. He spent hours filing DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] claims, which are essentially takedown notices.
Since Sbarra's Lockout Art gained popularity, he started selling prints of his work as well as merchandise, such as shirts and mugs, with his art on it. In a nod to where it all began, Sbarra even put the shaded façade of the bloated first drawing he ever shared of Trout on hats he's selling in his online merchandise shop.
That first image, of course, looked comically not like Trout. The comments he received for it were even funnier, and Sbarra still laughs thinking of them.
Sbarra donates a portion of the proceeds of what he sells to charities, based on the player or players that are in the art.
For example, some of his most recent donations have gone to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, a cause important to the Trout family; the Center for Asian American Media, in honor of Ohtani; and the All Rise Foundation, which was created by Judge.
And even though Sbarra is still on his new online artist journey, it's the feedback he gets for his work that he's enjoyed the most.
"By far the best thing has been being able to connect with baseball fans all over the world from the U.S. to Japan, from every different fan base," Sbarra said, "and getting to chat with them about the game we're all so passionate about.
"Sometimes people even send me their own art or pictures that their kids drew because they were inspired by my drawings, which I absolutely love to see," he added. "The community that built itself around these silly drawings is definitely what I appreciate the most."
