Euro's World: Mascot Madness

After a brief mascot respite, it is the turn this week of my beloved baseball team, the Cleveland Indians. Once the butt of many jokes, mistake on the lake et al, the Tribe are now one of baseball best teams. It was not always thus, they were the inspiration for the Major League series of goofball comedies about a team that sucked. For the best part of the sixties, seventies and eighties they were the American equivalent of Rochdale Town, and often played in front of crowds under ten thousand in a stadium that held around 75,000. In a vain effort to encourage more folk through the turnstiles in 1974, they held a 10 cent beer night, that ended in a riot. Of course in these time of Politically Correct nonsense, the use of the name Indians, and their logo Chief Wahoo, saw the do gooders petition for a name change, thankfully to no avail. Back to the actual pitchside masc

ot. It is some kind of pink monster called Slider, a big stupid looking thing, that goofs off between innings. He is pretty useless, but does perform one cool stunt. He gets a big elastic band, lays down on his back, and fires hot dogs from between his legs into the stands. He also wanders up and down the aisles posing for photos with kids. Thats about it. He doesn't get to fire his weiner up any cheerleaders, so yet again he is no match for the mighty Brutus Buckeye. There is however one team that do have a mascot or two to rival our love conker hero. The Milwaukee Brewers are so named due to their one time position as the number one city for beer production. During the seventies, they had two mascots, Bernie and Bonnie Brewer. Bernie stood out on top of the bleachers, sporting a moustache and leiderhosen, and when the Brewers hit a home run, he would launch himself down a big slide, into a vat of frothy beer (sounds like the greatest job in the world doesn't it?). Inexlpicably, he was retired in 1984. Brought back by popular demand in 1993, he was now a fully fledged foam mascot, and as these prudish time dictate, he no longer slides into a big glass of foamy lager, he just goes down a slide (in this country they would probably force him to wear a high visibility jacket as well). The one thing the brewers have now, is a sausage race, were a bratwurst, hot dog, Chorizo, Polish sausage and Italian sausage race around the infield during the seventh inning stretch. They even have an official website, click here to view. Follow this link to see an actual race. Of course this race has not been without controversy, the most infamous example being the sausagegate incident which can be viewed here. Honourable mentions in the baseball mascot ranks are the Philly Phanatic of Philadelphia, and Mr Met of the New York Mets, said to have been the first live mascot in the Major Leagues. For me though, none still live up to the bonkers conkers that belong to Brutus the Buckeye. So to round up this weeks offering of mascot madness I present Brutus: An Evolution......