The lonesome life of a baseball mascot, isolated in the stands because of COVID-19

As baseball players get back to business, mascots too are facing a new reality — performing in empty stadiums. In Philadelphia, the Phillie Phanatic isn't letting it stop him. During one recent game, he tried to start a wave and spewed silly string on a cutout of a Miami Marlins fan for the cameras.

As It Happens guest host Susan Bonner spoke with Dave Raymond, the original Phanatic, for his perspective on the lonely life of a mascot during the pandemic. 

"A twist of humour is really what we need," Raymond, who is now a keynote speaker, said. "We need the power of fun now, and more than ever."

Here is part of their conversation. 

Dave, as you watch the current Phillie Phanatic in action, what did you imagine was going through the mascot's mind as they stepped out to perform in that empty stadium for the first time?

I'm certain there is a strange feel to it. But I also know that the personality of the Phanatic is what drives you. You truly become the Phanatic. And when that magic happens, it's hard to stump somebody who's got that ability to entertain themselves, if you will. 

Well, you always hear about feeding off the energy of the crowd. And then you heard the announcers talking about how this mascot had no friends around. Maybe looked a bit sad. How would you respond to that?

Sad is not the way I would look at it. It's a challenge, and it's a very interesting dynamic to go through. So when you see the Phanatic working with a cutout and making them smile and laugh doing that, then it's a success.

Wait a minute. He made the cutout laugh and smile?

Well, he can't make the cutout laugh, but he made the people that were watching him having fun with the cutout laugh, because it was consistent with what he would do with a live, actual opposing fan, or official for the other team.

I remember watching and just giggling and sharing it on my social media and getting a lot of positive response in the same way. They didn't say sad, but they say, "It's amazing he can entertain himself, and look at how he's working as well with a cutout as he does with a live human being."

How challenging do you think it is? How much harder does the mascot have to work?

Any performer feeds off the energy of the crowd. So what the character performer needs to do at that time is recognize that even though he doesn't have the audience to work off of, the television audience is bigger than any audience, most likely, he'd been performing for.

So when that stadium's full, it's 45,000 to 48,000 fans. But [in] just a few seconds of a shot, you're having hundreds of thousands and millions of fans watching you on television. So you need to pretend, or know, that you are being watched, and those people are at home laughing and responding.

The performer needs to put a trick on himself just as if, you know, as a broadcaster, if you're on the air, you're either looking for that red light or you're looking for the camera light to go on, and you have to assume that you have an engaged audience that is reacting and really being entertained through your work.

It's not easy, but the really good performers can do that seamlessly, like it doesn't even matter. And certainly, you see that in one of the best mascots ever, in the Phanatic, because that whole organization treats him like he's a living, breathing entity anyway.

I guess you've got full control as well. You don't have to worry about crowd response, because you don't know exactly how the crowd's responding, the audience.

I'll tell you another thing. The bane of a mascot performer's existence has been [for] every single human being that comes into the stadium to have a phone at their disposal.

I'll age myself. They still had the Instamatic cameras with a little flash cubes on it when I was performing, so very few people would actually have those. Now, everybody's stopping you to take a picture, so you can't really ... try to put together a routine when you're constantly being stopped.

So there's beauty in no fans in the stands in that no one's stopping you to take a picture. You can go about whatever it is that you want to do to be entertaining.

Given the circumstances that baseball is coping with, the questions around safety, are mascots really essential now?

They are, and that's what I've argued for from the beginning.

We're talking about sport. That is an entertainment feature in and of itself. Its whole reason for being for sports is for us to be entertained. Certainly for the players, it's their livelihood and they've got to compete and be great to get there. But what they're doing is they're entertaining us.

What you want to do is broaden your audience base, so what better than to have a muppet as the representative of your team spirit so that younger people can get connected through, first, falling in love with you, and then recognizing how beautiful baseball is?

I really think the value is in the entertainment and the character, and mascots can build young fans that will replace the fans that obviously, eventually, you're going to have turnover in fans like you do in life, and you have to connect to a broader audience.

And if you wipe away the mascots, "Oh, well, there's no fans in the stands," yeah, but the fans are missing that already. Now they're watching from home looking for some sense of normalcy. And, "Oh, there's the Phanatic in the stands. There's the mascot in the stands fooling around within empty stands. Isn't that funny?"

A twist of humour is really what we need. We need the power of fun now, and more than ever. And you can't just say, "Well, we can't have fun. We can't be entertaining because we need to be serious and safe." You can do both.

Written by Mary Vallis. Produced by Morgan Passi. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.