An Ode to The Six Most Absurd—and Unique—Team Mascots by Emma Bernstein
From the ghosts that supposedly haunt Ithaca’s centuries-old buildings, to the various pumpkins that have been tossed, flaming, into gorges or been found perched atop the clocktower, to the legend of certain campus statues’ vested interest in the social construct of virginity, our school is no stranger to the unique or the absurd. However, when it comes to our mascot, we are seriously lacking in individuality; a point underscored by the fact that Touchdown is not even the only bear in the Ivy League (he is accompanied by Bruno, of Brown University). UC Berkeley, UCLA, Baylor, and six more Division I schools are all represented by bears as well, along with the Bruins of professional hockey, the Cubs of professional baseball, and the Bears of professional football. Touchdown, while always a delight to see riling up a crowd on Schoellkopf Field or getting a pie to the snout on Ho Plaza, is certainly not winning any points for uniqueness—but many other college and professional mascots are. Here, for your consideration, are the top six strangest mascots in all of sports. Perhaps one of them will inspire our own dear Touchdown to, at the very least, spruce up his look by the next in-person homecoming. 6. Mr. Met (New York Mets) The oddity of Mr. Met is somewhat obfuscated by his secure place in the upper echelon of the mascot establishment. Since making his first appearance, and the first of any live mascot in all of Major League Baseball, back in 1964, Mr. Met has been listed by Forbes Magazine as the greatest mascot in sports history and has been elected to the Mascot Hall of Fame. Mr. Met may have enjoyed mainstream 32 • zooming out
success, but his concept was always fundamentally avant-garde; instead of choosing an animal or even a person to represent them, the Mets went with an anthropomorphic representation of the sport of baseball itself. This choice may be fitting for a New York team named, descriptively, the Metropolitans, but the resulting creature is unlike anything else in this world, leaning so far into a nondescript abstraction that he comes all the way back around to the bizarre. Here’s to almost fifty years of Mr. Met terrifying New York’s children—may we be blessed with fifty more! 5. Stanford Tree (Stanford University) Fear may be one ingredient of the full meal that is Mr. Met, but when it comes to the Stanford Tree, terror is the main course. After Stanford finally abolished its offensive Native American mascot in 1972, the university did not pick a replacement; like Cornell’s “Big Red,” Stanford’s official team name is now simply “Cardinal,” after the color of their uniforms. Unofficially, however, the school has been represented by the Tree, in honor of the city of Palo Alto, ever since it was first introduced by the marching band in 1975. It is tradition for the band to redesign the costume each fall, but each incarnation shares a few notable features: a misshapen green tent to fully disguise the mascotwearer from the knees up; a pair of bulging, semiattached eyeballs that point in both directions; and a toothy, oversized grin. The real nightmare, however, is knowing that the Tree’s frightening appearance is not just for show—on multiple occasions, the Tree has been known to throw punches at other mascots or referees, including one occasion on which it ripped the head off of a fellow bear, UC Berkeley’s Oski. Reader beware: the Stanford Tree may be one of the most unsettling mascots to look at, but years of scorn and mockery have also primed it for a fight, earning it
