Sometimes the best part of a sports game is the antics of the mascot. College to pro these guys can be pretty funny.
IMO the best was the first - The Famous San Diego Chicken. Before he started doing his thing in the 1970’s I read most teams didnt have a mascot or the mascot didnt really entertain much. But the Chicken really made his act part of the game.
According to his site: “His impact is such that The Sporting News editors named him as one of The Top 100 Most Powerful People in Sports of the 20th Century. He’s on a list that includes Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth, Jesse Owens, Pete Rozelle, Ted Turner and Wayne Gretzky among others.”
Mascots are also basically an American thing. You wont see them in Europe or Asia.
Here in Kansas City the biggest 2 are “Slugger” for the KC Royals and “KC Wolf” for the Chiefs. My favorite is the Wolf because he often gives inspirational talks where he takes off his costume and talks to kids.
Other interesting mascots are for food companies like “Twinkie the Kid”.
So in your opinion who/what is the most interesting mascot and have you had any special experiences with a mascot?
The Phillie Phanatic, hands down the best. Frankly, most are pretty lame, generally clumsy, garish moving bobble-heads, with noggins the size of Barcaloungers. Their expressions are cemented and their movements limited, so they never let you suspend your “this is a guy in a suit” perception. They wander slowly around the stadium with an unchanging expression, waving and high-fiving the kids. And that’s it.
The best mascots create personas, they have a range of movement, they create an impression of changing expression somehow. They’re funny and physical. The Phanatic is large, funny, animated, immature, unsophisticated, and I still laugh at him and I’m 53.
This. The Phillie Phanatic is the best mascot in any sport. It should be the only mascot permitted in MLB, and for that matter, all sports, as mascots in general are lame.
It cracks me up that The New Yorker has to throw in Mr. Met as a mascot on par with the Phanatic. Yes, I realize that the New Yorker is written for a New York audience, and countless New Yorkers grew up loving Mr. Met, but come on. It’s not even close.
I am a Pittsburgh Pirate fan, for crying out loud, and my DNA is written to hate all things related to Philadelphia sports teams, especially the Phillies. And I love the Phanatic!
I agree. Mr. Met is the textbook personality-less, bobble-head mascot. I can’t find a cite for it now, but I once read a short piece by Dan Quisenberry (a pretty entertaining athlete) who said that the Phanatic was ML ballplayers’ favorite mascot–and then qualified it further by saying, he was the ONLY mascot big leaguers liked and actually watched do his schtick. The rest they considered lame.
He really got into the part, it must be difficult to do all that stuff, not only because of the body suit, but also what I would assume would be a very limited field of vision.
I forgot in my previous post regarding British soccer mascots… The Mascot Grand National, always a keenly contested race.