LEGO made a life-sized version of Big Papi out of 34,510 blocks

David Ortiz is on a retirement tour, which means gifts, like a giant salmon from the Mariners and Big Papi-themed toasts from the Angels. In honor of Ortiz (and because it’s “LEGO Day” at Fenway Park), folks over at LEGO constructed a life-sized Big Papi statue made out of 34,510 LEGO blocks. It stands at 6’7 — from the foot to the statue’s finger tips — weighs 170 pounds, and reportedly took 290 hours to finish.

ESPN spoke with LEGO’s Erik Varszegi, who was the mastermind behind the statue, and he revealed how painstaking it was to get all the details right:

Actually, the hardest part was getting his tattoos just right. I couldn’t get a lot of visual reference on that. His left arm has a whole bunch of tats. I had a couple pictures of it, then I saw some stuff online from a video game. There was a 3D map of his skin texture, so I was able to utilize part of that.

There’s even footage of the LEGO team building LEGO Papi piecemeal:

I don’t know what Ortiz intends to do with this LEGO statue, but I have a few ideas:

1. Put it in the passenger seat, so he can drive in the carpool lane.

2. Pull a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and somehow convince the Red Sox he’s LEGO Papi, so he can ditch a game, lead a parade, and crash his best friend’s dad’s car into a river.

3. Deconstruct the statue, and rebuild it into an otter with his normal head on it.

4. Start a buddy cop TV show with the LEGO Papi statue.