This Tweet blew my mind:

I did some Google research and found this, the back of Lansford’s 1987 Topps card:

But — but! — there’s nothing about Sir Francis Drake on Lansford’s Wikipedia page and in fact, an old edit of the Wikipedia page that’s now archived on a Carney Lansford Facebook fan page says:

According to his 1988 Topps baseball card, Lansford is a direct descendant of the British privateer Sir Francis Drake. However, this is extremely unlikely since Drake is not known to have fathered any children.

And indeed, Sir Francis Drake’s Wikipedia page confirms that he had no children, though who really knows with those pirate types?

Anyway, if the lineage is fictional, I wonder who made it up. I’m not sure if it’d be funnier if the lie came from Lansford himself or from the guy writing the blurb on the back of the baseball card. I feel like if I had that job that’s exactly the type of thing I’d make up and try to slip in there to see if anyone noticed. But then it’s also really funny if one day in 1986 Carney Lansford was all, “yeah, I’m just going to tell this sucker from Topps that I’m a direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake, see if he buys it. I mean, I kind of look like him.”

The least funny scenario is that Carney Lansford’s father or grandfather made it up, and Carney Lansford grew up really proud to be a direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake and is only finding out right now from this blog post that he’s been living a lie. If that’s the case, sorry, dude. Nice mustache.