Baseball season is upon us, and only one thing matters. It’s not how active your team was during the off-season, not how many members of your team will be arrested for DUI before the season begins, and not how prospectively upset you’re going to be at Derek Jeter’s first outfield Gold Glove. No, the only important thing about baseball season is the return of baseball’s stupid, pandering pageantry, and that includes (moreso than anything) the mascots.
I love mascots in the most platonic, nonsexual way ever. It sucks that I have to say that, but there you go. I collect photos with them, and I search the Internet for others who share my passion, but the only people I can find are perverts (obviously) and those wiry forty-somethings in grandpa glasses and baseball caps who travel the country going to games alone and getting photos on what appears to be a Polaroid from 1945. I am alone in my joy. As it turns out, most people don’t know how wonderfully stupid mascots can get.
So this is the first in a series of attempts to change that. Starting with the Pioneer League, which is a rookie-level league wherein guys in coonskin caps shoot rifles at Indians affiliates, I will chronicle who these teams are and the creatures they boast as representatives. Read the rest of this entry »
