Indy native and former MLB player’s artwork showcased at historic Rickwood Game
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — When Major League Baseball honors the Negro Leagues in a game being played in Birmingham, Alabama, artwork from an Indianapolis native will be on display all around Rickwood Field.
Former Major League baseball player-turned-artist Micah Johnson is the man behind a set of artistically rendered Topps baseball cards that highlight the legends of the Negro Leagues.
“I just went into work mode,” said Mic Johnson on a recent Black Baseball Mixtape podcast appearance. “There’s a few opportunities in this life where you got to capitalize on, and I saw this as one of those opportunities. And so, for the next three weeks, I worked around the clock.”
The set, which features Negro Leagues legends Josh Gibson, Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, and Willie Mays, is going to be on full display at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, where a regular season game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals will take place.
“In a lot of ways, it was the perfect project,” Johnson said in an interview with Ripped.TOPPS.com. “It taught me a lot. I did a lot of research going into it on each player because I really [wanted] to understand the magnitude of this project I was working on, and I went through a lot of iterations leading into this before I actually completed one. Just destroying canvases trying to get it right.”
The original artwork was completed by Johnson with charcoal on canvas.
“One of the first things we thought of as far as who should we connect with on this is Micah Johnson,” says Michael Linkens, director of product & creative at the Topps Company. “As a former MLB player turned artist, he’s been on my radar for a while. I’ve been looking at him as somebody who does really cool work that is affecting culture. So, this was just a slam dunk opportunity to connect with him and to collaborate.”
There will also be oversized 24-foot-tall versions of the cards are traveling to different cities and ballparks.