Team Mascots: Are They Necessary?

Ted Giannoulis, The San Diego Chicken

We see them now at most major league parks. Most are there to entertain the fans during lulls in the action on the field. The Dodgers are one of the few franchises without a mascot. I am pretty sure the Yankees also have no mascot. All of the Dodgers’ rivals in the west have mascots. The Giants have Lou Seal, D-Backs, Baxter the Bob Cat, the Rockies have Dinger, and the Padres now have the Swinging Friar.

The first one I remember is the Chicken. Ted Giannoulis became synonymous with that costume and his antics at Padres games. He was a San Diego institution. It was originally a promotion started by KGB-FM radio in San Diego. The chicken was animated for a TV commercial. In March of 1974, Giannoulis was hired to wear the chicken suit. At the time, he was a 20-year-old journalism student at UCSD,

His first appearance was at a KGB promotion to distribute Easter eggs at the San Diego Zoo. After that, Giannoulis, a lifetime baseball fan, approached the Padres front office. He thought this would be a great way to get into the games for free. At first, he would roam the stands, and when a fan would say, lay one on me, he would drop an egg through his leg, and the fan would win prizes.

He was soon allowed to take the field and according to Giannoulis, discovered a side of his personality he never knew existed. Padre attendance, which was the lowest in the league, doubled that summer. He began to add other events. He could connect with fans, players, and umpires very easily. He performed at more than 520 Padres games in a row and also appeared at Clippers games before they moved to Los Angeles.

A dispute arose between KGB and Ted in 1979, and he was fired on May 3rd. Another employee replaced him, and the fans knew it was not him, and he was booed loudly enough to be forced from the field. Giannoulis won a suit against the station, and he was allowed to resume being the chicken, but not in the same costume. He now called himself the Famous Chicken. He hatched from an egg at Jack Murphy Stadium on June 29th, 1979, as the sound system played “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, the theme from 2001, A Space Odessey. He was still performing as the Chicken in 2016.

Now, I totally understand that mascots are fun for the kids to see. I have been to several Quakes games, and they have not one but two mascots. Tremor and Aftershock. Not sure what kind of animal they are supposed to be, but you judge for yourself.

They are either alligators, crocs, or some convoluted dinosaur. But the kids love them. They do a lot in between inning entertainment for the crowd. To my knowledge, there are no alligators, crocs or dinos in the Ranch vicinity. They used to call the ballpark the Epicenter. Now it is Loan Mart Field.

I remember when Lasorda had the Expos mascot, Youppi, ejected from the game for dancing on the Dodgers’ dugout roof. He later returned to the game but was confined to the Expos dugout roof. After the Expos moved to DC, Youppi switched teams and joined the Montreal Canadians, becaming the first mascot to change teams. He was elected to the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2019. I did not even know there was such a thing.

My main problem with mascots is that while they entertain, they also distract fans during games, and if a hot line drive is headed in your direction, you need to be alert. The in-between innings stuff is ok, but I have seen them interacting with kids during a game. That, to me, is when the danger of being hit creeps in. Has it happened? Not that I know of. It may never happen.

Teams like the Yankees and Dodgers generally do not need a draw. Their play on the field is usually enough to keep the fans coming out. The Dodgers this season are currently the only team above 3 million in attendance. The Padres and Yankees are both about 180,000 fans from reaching that number. The Padres have 11 home games left to reach that number. The Yankees have 12. It is kind of surprising given their performance this season that San Diego is drawing that well. They have actually outdrawn the Yankees by almost 6000 fans. Their average attendance, though is 40,373. Yanks are at 41,473. The Dodgers top everyone with 47,740.

Twenty-seven of the thirty MLB teams have mascots. Some Brewers, Mets, Reds, Rays, Nats, and Cardinals, have two. Of course, at this point in time, the most famous, and probably the best, is the Philly Phanatic. The Phanatic came into being when the Phillies wanted to bring families into Veterans Stadium, where they were playing at the time. There was a lot of violence in the stands and the Phils wanted to change the atmosphere in the park.

The Phanatic has an ATV he rides as he entertains the crowd. It has been known for some pretty zany antics. One of the classics was a skit where he brought out a stuffed version of Tommy Lasorda, and they had a little on-field tiff. Lasorda ended up taking the stuffed version away from the Phanatic. There are videos of that on YouTube.

The Phanatic at Work

All of the teams in the Western Division have mascots except the Dodgers, Arizona, Baxter the bobcat, Colorado, Dinger, a dinosaur, and an homage to the beds of dinosaur bones that can be found around the state, San Diego, the Swinging Friar, and the Giants have Lou Seal.

The Angels also have no mascot. Probably the closest they ever came was when they had the stuffed “Rally Monkey”. The Astros have Orbit, and the Cardinals have Fredbird and the Rally Squirrel. Very recognizable are the Mets, Mr. and Mrs. Met.

Some of the teams’ mascots are not so well known. I have seen the Dodgers play the Nats on TV in Washington several times, and outside of the racing presidents, I have never seen an actual mascot. But they have one, Screech. A bald eagle who wears a DC cap and jersey. He was designed by a nine-year-old fourth-grade student during a contest in 2005.

The Dodgers use their play on the field to draw, but they also probably have some of the best so-called giveaways in baseball. I have several of the bobbleheads, and I also have some from other teams. The Dodgers seem to be slightly larger than those of, say, the Yankees. Right now, if you go on eBay, the bobblehead celebrating Koufax’s four no-hitters starts at $699.00. I have seen it on there for as much as almost $1700.00. It was given away in 2012.

The Vargas-Outman bobblehead they gave away on the 31st is selling for more than 40 dollars on average. JD’s is over. 50. So, nope, they do not need a mascot to draw. Might they do it at some point? And what would the Dodger mascot look like? I have never seen a Trolley Dodger, and if there was a photo of one, it would be watching pedestrians in Brooklyn dodging trolly cars.

Perhaps the closest thing to a mascot they ever had was when they were in Brooklyn and lovingly called Dem Bums. And no one personified that more than this man, Emmet Kelly.

The spring before they moved to LA. O’Malley, Snider, Norris Poulson and Kelly

Dem Bums, yep, if anything symbolized the Dodgers history, it was a bum. They were a poor franchise who just could not win for years. They were the Daffiness Boys, The Boys of Summer, and the toast of Flatbush. I would bring back the Bum.