“I’m the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy.” -Sgt. Dignam.
In 2018, I met a guy who had never heard of Mark Wahlberg. I met this guy in America (Detroit, to be exact) and he had been born in America (Deerborn, to be exact). He was in mid-40’s and had lived his whole life in Michigan. To be fair, he was first-generation – his parents were Indian and came to the country in the mid-70’s – but he lived his whole life in the U.S. of A. and was, he claimed, a fan of movies. I named a number of Mark’s most notable characters and showed him a few pictures, but still, nothing1.
My point is, there is one.
For everyone else, Mark Wahlberg needs no introduction.
What you might not know about Mark Wahlberg, however, is that he loves baseball and the Boston Red Sox. Growing up in Dorchester, Mass., his Sox-fandom was established at an early age, going to games at Fenway back when bleacher seats still cost a couple bucks. Mark played Little League and was on a traveling team, rotating between playing center field and first base. I was going to make up some stats from his playing days but couldn’t figure out the right balance between believable and funny, so let’s just say he averaged a Cycle during his last year on the team.
While discussing his love of baseball in an interview from 2018 with Parade Magazine, Mark fondly recalled when his team got smoked in the early rounds of the Little League World Series tournament. Thank goodness for that memorable loss, though, without which the world might never have known Dirk Diggler, John Bennett (Thunder Buddies for life!), Sgt. Dignam or Troy Barlow (my personal favorite).
Despite his on-field shortcomings, Mark’s fandom is top notch. He is such a Red Sox diehard that he briefly also rooted for the Houston Astros in the early 2020’s – when his friend Alex Bregman was on the team – because they were his “favorite Yankee killers”. Obviously if there’s one thing Boston fans hate more than losing, it’s watching the New York Yankees win. Thankfully, Alex joined the Sox in 2025 and allowed Wahlberg to refocus on just one AL team.
As a Philadelphia sports fan, this author appreciates extreme sports pettiness (snowballs for Santa Claus, batteries for J.D. Drew) and we also fully support the demise of any New York team. So when the time came to select our Famous Fan for the MLB 2025 Blind Box collection, Mark’s name was at the very top of the list. He graciously accepted the honor, following in the footsteps of Aubrey Plaza, our first Famous Fan, from the WNBA set we released this past December.
ghosts tell stories. Mark’s ghost tells the story of July 5, 2009 and the outfit he wore to throw out the first pitch for a game against the Mariners. His custom Sox home jersey, hat and jeans aren’t particularly interesting at first take, but if you look closely he’s actually wearing his own Municipal brand sneakers (exactly a decade before they’d release). If you look even closer you might be able to tell that under the Sox fitted is Sgt. Dignam’s combed-over hair – straight from SIU!
Mark has the same parallels as every MLB player in the set: Victory Face /50; Emerald /25; Gold /10; Chrome /5, and the Fire 1/1 aka the Dorchester Grail!
You can read about the rest of the set HERE.
Which Mark Wahlberg will you pull? Any requests for next year’s Famous Fan?
- This is 100% a true story but I left out my friend’s name to protect the incredulous.
↩︎
ghostwrite 