The fuzzy terror of sports mascots

The Philadelphia Flyers have unveiled a hairy, frightening friend. But ‘Gritty’ is just the latest in a long list of horror mascots.

The Philadelphia Flyers’ new mascot Gritty. Picture: AP

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He looks like Satan’s armpit. He looks like peak-Trail Blazers-era Bill Walton, struck by 100 bolts of radioactive lightning.

In all honesty, he looks like a corporate marketing meeting gone amok.

His name is Gritty. He’s the new mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers. I don’t know whether to hug him or call an exorcist. I cannot understand why all of Eastern Pennsylvania hasn’t been evacuated.

Sports mascots are perhaps the most perplexing tradition in sports. They’re supposed to be cute, but the vast majority of them are not. They’re hyperactive, big-headed and creepily silent. I’d advise against spending too much time looking at them, because they will truly weird you out.

The Flyers’ mascot, Gritty, takes to the ice. Picture: AP

Just look at any photo of Gritty: his lidless, spinning eyes; his inert tongue; his unshaven beard which avalanches over his collarbone, like a Portland bartender’s. He’s stuffed inside the iconic Flyers uniform, with a helmet that’s 10 sizes too small.

I don’t want to make the young fellow self-conscious, and I don’t support mascot-shaming, but: yikes.

Even the mascots we’ve had for eons are pretty odd. Here in New York, we have Mr. Met, a gentleman who is four-fifths human until, at the top, he has a giant baseball for a head. Mr. Met’s expression never changes — he’s wide-eyed and mildly slack jawed, as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. In other words, he’s a Mets fan.

Mr Met. Picture: Getty Images

(A few years ago, Mr. Met got in trouble when he gave somebody the middle finger. That’s when he really became a Mets fan.)

Still, on the nightmare scale, I’d give Mr. Met a 3 out of 10. He’s rather harmless, like his mediocre baseball club. He’s nowhere near as frightening as WuShock, the mascot of the Wichita State Shockers — a humanised, grumpy-faced shock of wheat wearing a college sweatshirt.

WuShock, the mascot of the Wichita State Shockers. Picture: Supplied

And WuShock is an adorable kitten compared with King Cake Baby, the plastic mardi gras mascot of the New Orleans Pelicans NBA franchise. I love cake, and finding the baby in King Cake is a beloved New Orleans tradition. But I genuinely fear that the Pelicans’ King Cake Baby may be the last thing you see before you die.

New Orleans Pelicans' King Cake Baby. Picture: Supplied

The Olympics are infamous for botching mascots. The Atlanta summer games in 1996 had Izzy, a sprightly blue blob who seemed to have escaped from an antacid commercial. London 2012 had Wenlock and Mandeville, a pair of two-legged cyclops who resembled characters from a William Burroughs fever dream.

I guess it’s helpful to realise that mascots aren’t for adult fans. They’re for kids. And marketing departments. Optimally, they’re an entry point for children to fall in love with a team — and, hopefully, get their parents to purchase a lot of merchandise. (If you could convince the Journal’s business side that a mascot would get kids to buy a newspaper, you’d surely be seeing Subby, The Wall Street Journal subscriber. They’d probably stick me in the Subby costume and make me go to street fairs and birthday parties.)

Which brings us back to Gritty, whom the Flyers introduced with great fanfare and a rather alarming backstory: named for a sports cliche, bully for a father, eats snow from the Zamboni machine, recently expelled from his sanctum by stadium construction. I’m not making any of this up — this is directly from the Flyers’ own materials.

Izzy, the 1996 Olympics mascot.

“He claims that he’s been around for a lot longer than we know it, and recent construction at the Wells Fargo Center disturbed his secret hide-out, forcing him to show his face publicly for the first time,” the team says.

Sheesh, Flyers. Are you trying to keep us up at night?

Gritty’s introduction was … well, gritty. First was the predictable internet roast, followed by the torment of the late-night comics. (“That thing is horrifying,” said Stephen Colbert. “He looks like Ed Sheeran exploded.”) There were suggestions that Justin Turner of the Los Angeles Dodgers should sue him for red-haired copyright infringement. Gritty had a rough go in his first preseason game, falling backward on the ice and shooting an innocent in the back with a T-shirt cannon.

I assume the Flyers marketing people are doing high-fives about all of this. Maybe they’ve got another Phillie Phanatic on their hands. Virality is the currency of the modern publicity trade, and Gritty was an immediate sensation. I am a hockey ignoramus — I cannot name a single Flyer. But I sure know Gritty. I guess that’s the point. See you in my nightmares, buddy.

The Wall Street Journal