Dan LeMonnier remembers it well. It was at a Little League World Series regional playoff game and he and a colleague were doing a guest appearance as Ribbie and Roobarb, the White Sox’s old mascots from the 1980s. LeMonnier, a.k.a. Roobarb, the woolly yellow one, was giving Ribbie, the purple one with the long snout, batting tips in a skit that ended with Ribbie bopping his “coach” on the nose and knocking him down.
Laughs, applause, end of skit.
But then, LeMonnier recalls, came the unscripted, audience participation segment:
“I got up and brushed myself off and was standing by third base, and the kid coming out to the batter’s circle called `Hey, Roobarb.’ I turned and he whacked me in the head with his bat. Full swing. He knocked me out. I woke up in the hospital.”
An ambulance ride to the emergency room — heck, the fans in the stands probably thought it was part of the show — wasn’t enough to persuade LeMonnier to put away the mascot suit. For 18 years now he has been an insider in the world of giant heads and fuzzy pants, first as Roobarb, and for the last 16 years as Benny the Bull.
Yet it did not surprise LeMonnier one bit to read three recent news reports (see accompanying story) attesting that being a mascot is not all fun and games. It can be dangerous and physically demanding — even wet.
“We used to refer to Friday nights as Beer Bath Night,” LeMonnier says of his Comiskey Park years. “The first 5,000 fans into the park threw their beer on the mascots.”
Of course, the physical abuse is just part of the package. Conversations with mascots of all kinds — and there are walking hot dogs and skyscrapers as well as cartoon figures and sports creatures — indicate that hazardous duty pay should be standard, even when the perils don’t rank with wandering into a grandstand of drunken South Siders.
Jamal Okader, for example, never has to deal with loutish fans or slugging Little Leaguers. Three days a week, he suits up as Big John, the mascot for the John Hancock Building. His primary mission is to lure customers to the building’s observatory by handing out money-off coupons.
The big drawback to his job is the heat. Walking around on hot days in a bulky black costume can be rough. But Okader says he takes breaks as needed and gets to dress comfortably under the outfit.
“For summertime I can wear shorts, so you can try to move and stuff like that,” he says. “You try to be comfortable. But it’s not always easy.”
David Raymond, the original Phillie Phanatic, had issues too.
“It was hot. The costume smelled. And it was hard work,” says Raymond. “And you felt like nobody really cared about the person inside.”
As the Philadelphia Phillies’ large green mascot, Raymond spent 1978 to 1993 clowning with players, umpires, fans and stadium workers. “I had a natural aptitude to be a professional idiot,” he says.
There’s always the jerk
Don’t get Raymond wrong. He loved the job, especially being able to enjoy the team’s successes and to do things for charities and kids. But for every 10,000 people he entertained, there’d still be one or two jerks. Once, an enraged player from an opposing team tackled him, causing minor injuries. Kids would routinely kick him to see who or what was inside the costume. And fans, overserved and otherwise, could be a problem.
“Almost every night,” he says, “there’s always one person who decides he doesn’t want you to touch his girlfriend. Or he doesn’t want you to challenge his testosterone-filled manhood. And there’s always some old guy, `Hey, why don’t you get the —- out of the way?'”
Comfort is also a big priority at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, where, with such a kid-heavy audience, the characters are usually among friends — a fact, though, that can present problems of its own.
The entertainers who portray the two dozen or so costumed characters work an eight-hour day with an hour for lunch; but they’re out in public for only a half-hour at a time. It’s 30 minutes of mingling with park visitors, then 30 minutes of rest in one of the “dock boxes” on the grounds, where they can pop off their heads, kick off their feet, climb out of their costumes and relax. The most important thing about the breaks is that they can be — and must be — done out of sight.
“People walk around; people see things. How tragic would it be to see Tweety with his head off?” asks Rose Bisciglia, who supervises the park’s characters.
She says her people have other rules they must follow as well: Don’t do anything unsafe (no diving into the reflecting pool), don’t go on rides (there’s the danger of someone’s head flying off), don’t talk while in character (the metal threshold at the doorway leaving the dressing area is called the “Line of Reality,” and any characters crossing it must be in full costume and must not speak), and the Looney Tunes characters can’t be seen with the Hanna-Barbera characters — George Jetson et al. (that’s one of those corporate dictates).
Six Flags crowds may not be as challenging as a bunch of angry baseball fans, but they can be difficult in their own way. Little nippers can get overexuberant (the characters don’t feel pain in the cartoons, so how could a kick to the shins hurt?).
And sometimes even older visitors can be a handful, either by crowding around and keeping kids away, or in other, creepier ways. Last year, for example, some teens and young adults wondered about the gender of some of the people portraying the characters, “and they tried to find out by grabbing things,” Bisciglia says, leaving one with the unsettling mental image of Yosemite Sam being groped.
`People love you’
Still, though, stepping into the costumes — as she still does on occasion — is fun, Bisciglia notes. “I don’t think any day is horrible. Every day you get to see people who love you.”
Karina Jaros is one of the workers who portrays a Six Flags character. A high school senior-to-be in Saginaw, Mich., she has wanted to work at Six Flags since she was a kid.
Her favorite part of the job, she says, is when she’s walking the park and hears a reaction from the small kids on the rides when they notice Bugs Bunny, Pepe Le Pew or whomever she’s portraying that day.
“You hear this screaming from the rides above you when they see you coming,” she says.
Of course, costumed characters sometimes find that it’s better for kids to keep their distance.
Justin Givan works for Those Funny Little People, a Burr Ridge-based company that employs more than 60 people who dress as the “little people.”
They don head-to-toe outfits, much like sports mascots, although their characters cover a broader spectrum.
They perform skits at trade shows, beauty pageants, parades and town festivals, but most of the company’s business is at wedding receptions, where two little people will do a 15- or 20-minute skit.
By virtue of their appearance, the little people attract crowds of kids, and it’s tough to perform when you’re being mobbed by even littler people.
“You learn to feel with your feet,” says Givan, who was the groom for three wedding shows one recent Saturday night. “If you’re doing a show for kids, you feel a little tug on your hair or a little tap, so you know someone’s there.”
Although the costumes probably don’t weigh more than 10 pounds, the job can be demanding.
Keep in training
“Any time you have to do anything physical, you have to train yourself,” he says. “You have to be well-hydrated, have food in your stomach, and you learn to pace yourself. It probably took me a good three months to learn all that.”
Maggie Pinkous, the bride to Givan’s groom at the three Saturday shows, tells of finishing routines at indoor events during the winter. “Then you go out to the car, and you’re steaming. Literally steaming,” she says.
“This is not a job for prima donnas,” says David Gregoire, co-owner of Those Funny Little People.
“Or if you want to have perfect hair,” interjects Pinkous.
Despite the drawbacks — the heat, the potential for injuries, the crowds of kids, the dangerous stunts (a few years ago, a hockey team’s duck character tried to leap a pit of fire, came up short and fell bill-first into the flames) and unruly fans — there are benefits to wearing the big suits.
Raymond says the good times as the Phanatic far outweighed the bad. His greatest moment, he says, was having his own flatbed truck in the victory parade after the Phillies won the 1980 World Series, and being able to do things for people, particularly kids, meant a lot to him. . For some performers, the plus in being a mascot is that it gives them a chance to take on a new personality. One of Okader’s co-workers said that out of costume, he’s quiet and shy. He’s transformed when he becomes Big John.
“Once you are out of costume, you’re yourself,” he says. “If you do something that doesn’t make any sense, then people are going to say you’re crazy. But in the costume, you are acting, it’s part of the job.”
Adds Jaros, “I’m really outgoing in the first place. But normally you wouldn’t walk up to people and tap them, like I can do [as a character].”
Warm and fuzzy feeling
There’s also that warm and fuzzy feeling the mascots get.
Givan recalls performing at a 50th wedding anniversary celebration a couple of years ago, where the script called for the characters to dance to “The Anniversary Waltz.”
“The woman [who was celebrating her anniversary] had had polio or something, but she got up and started dancing,” he says. “And she yelled to the crowd, `Hey, I’m dancing! I haven’t danced in 25 years!’ And I look out in the audience, and everyone’s crying. So I started bawling. Here I am, in this costume, crying.”
Ask LeMonnier about his fondest memories, and he, like most mascots, is quick with a kid-related story.
“Our dressing room [at old Comiskey Park] was right behind the first-aid station,” he says. “One night I came in off the field, it was the seventh inning or so, and there was this little girl who had been beaned by a foul ball. She had a big lump on her head, and her dad had gone to get the car to take her home, and she was waiting there.
Turning off the tears
“She was crying and she was in pain, I ended up doing a little comedy routine to try and cheer her up. Everything was fine, but when I started to leave she started to cry again. So I started to do silly things — turning and walking into the wall, falling. I’d shake it off and she’d laugh. And I’d start to leave and she’d start to whimper, and I’d walk into the wall again.
“I just kept doing this until they said her dad was there. So I scooped her up and carried her out to the car. And as I handed her to her dad, she said, `Are you going to be OK? Be careful of those walls.’ It was like she’d totally forgotten she’d been the one who was injured.”
And for some, the job itself is the biggest benefit.
“A lot of people I know are working at Burger King for the summer,” says Jaros. “I’ve got a very cool job.”
I don’t want to share my underwear’
When a 22-year-old Maryland man was arrested in late June for beating up the Cookie Monster, it marked the third time in less than a month that costumed mascots had been in the news.
– First, doctors at Johns Hopkins University reported that being a sports mascot can be hazardous to your health. The 48 mascots from around the country who participated in a study reported a total of 179 injuries incurred on the job, led by heat-related illness (58 percent of respondents) and knee injuries (17 percent). In addition, 44 percent of the mascots reported a history of chronic lower back pain.
– Shortly after that came word that the workers who portray Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Pluto and other characters at Walt Disney World in Orlando won this concession in contract negotiations: They would each be assigned undergarments that they could launder themselves at home nightly. In the past, they had been required to turn in their Disney-issued undies after their shift and the items would supposedly be washed by the theme park. Occasionally, claimed the workers, when they picked up underwear the next day the items weren’t, well, up to snuff. By getting their very own unmentionables, they would be able to avoid the problem. As one Disney worker poignantly put it, “I don’t want to share my underwear.”
– Finally came the arrest of the man who allegedly shoved, kicked and punched Cookie Monster at a Sesame Street theme park near Philadelphia, supposedly because the big, blue creature had pushed his 3-year-old daughter away. The father, Lee P. McPhatter, denied the allegations. “I did not kick or punch Cookie Monster. The cop did not want to hear my side of the story, and I got arrested,” he said. “Why would someone take their 3-year-old daughter to the park and attack Cookie Monster? I would never do that in front of my daughter.”
Cookie Monster was not available for comment.
— William Hageman
