Will Ferrell plays himself in baseball comedy

Funnyman Will Ferrell has made it his mission to play every position in a Major League Baseball team, one team at a time.

Turning out for the Oakland A's, Chicago White Sox, LA Dodgers, San Francisco Giants and half a dozen more, Will Ferrell experienced life as a baseball player if only for a moment at a time.

"I brought passion to the field, dedication, ability, and a lot of ignorance," he proclaims in the trailer for HBO's TV special.

Playing in all ten positions, including batter, backstop and pitcher, enables Ferrell to equal the 1965 record set by Kansas City Athletics player Bert Campaneris.

No mere publicity stunt, the endeavor also raised money and mindshare for cancer awareness campaigns and associated assistance groups.

The TV special airs on September 12, six months after its March recording, and between now and then there's plenty of time to catch other comic actors playing themselves, or versions of themselves, in films on the big or small screen.

Released this July 17 is Amy Schumer's romcom "Trainwreck," which Schumer wrote and stars in as a young careerwoman named Amy, struggling with the concept of a stable relationship when the right man comes along.

On the other side of the pond, British comedians Steve Coogan ("Tropic Thunder," "Alan Partridge") and Rob Brydon ("The Gruffalo," "Gavin & Stacey") accompany each other on TV series spin-off "A Trip to Italy," an extensive, high-end restaurant review and road trip.

An ensemble cast of comedians starred in and supported "This Is The End," which had Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Danny McBride among its characters caught in the midst of an apocalypse event.

One of the quintessential self-portrayal comedies is "Being John Malkovich," but for an alternative and more recent slant there's Sophie Barthes movie "Cold Souls" with Paul Giamatti as the intense and rather complicated method actor, Paul.

And within Francophone cinema, the semi-improvisational "JCVD" saw Belgian action star Jean-Claude Van Damme play himself as a washed-up, hard-up actor who gets mixed up in a post office robbery, cementing his position as either a villain or a hero in the public eye.