What I am after are things like The Red Wings having an Octopus for a mascot or ,I vaguely remember, the Red Sox in the 70’s having something to do with pickles(was it because of Fergie Jenkins?).
Just stuff that makes ya go WTF when you see it associated with a certain team if you don’t know the story behind it.
Share the story if ya know the reason.
I believe the Red Wings adopted the Octopus as a mascot because someone tossed one on the ice after a goal and it snowballed from there.
You’re sorta right.
In 1952, a coupla fishmongers thought it’d be slick to toss an octopus on the ice. Octopus have 8 tentacles, took 8 playoff wins to get the cup, see?
The Wings won in '52, the octopus was hailed as a good luck charm ever since.
Especially lucky for owners of local fishmarkets, who probably don’t move much octopi the rest of the year. 
It really should be octopuses, or perhaps octopodes, but not octopi.
What I’m interested in knowing is how the “rally cap” (ie, putting your baseball cap on upside-down in the last inning when you’re team is behind to “rally” some runs) became popular.
Funny note: The big local fishmonger in Pittsburgh has been carding folks coming to buy Octopus during the finals, and is refusing service to folks with ID’s from a certain Northern state…
Ok, whatever ya wanna call it.
More sales for the Motor City fishongers. They hold up quite well in a cooler for the drive - or so I hear…
Here’s the Wiki entry on the octopus tossing in Detroit. When I was young I had always heard they needed to win the final 8 games of the 1952 season to make the playoffs and the legend had started from there, wrong apparently.
As you might guess, I find the whole practice abhorrent.
You can break 8 kneecaps at once…better get started! 
I remember first seeing rally caps when the Mets were in their late season and playoff run up to their 1986 World Series victory. The the players in the dugout would wear their hats inside out or in some other odd manner to rally the players on the field when they were trying to pull out victories in close games.
Texas Tech used to have a tradition of throwing tortillas at football games. Not necessarily onto the field, mind you, but many did end up there. I remember being at the games before the practice was banned (apparently people were slipping on tortillas and falling), and it was really kinda cool. There’d be the build-up, the opening kickoff, and immediately the air was filled with hundreds of tortillas, spinning like frisbees, flying every which way. Damn funny, if I may say so. As for how it started, I honestly have no idea, and I can’t find any history behind it.
You can see some flying around (though it’s nothing like it was back in the early 90s) in this clip.
They used to do the same thing at California Angel home games during the 80’s. However, like authorities at Texas Tech did later, I believe the practice was suppressed due to safety concerns.
Ok I’m sure this was not happy times for the people who got seriously hurt…but that just made me laugh out loud 