Mascot Roll Call

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, each of Seattle’s major sports franchises has its own mirthful mascot. Though sports mascots were historically intended to bring their respective teams good luck, nowadays it seems their only role is to provide live audiences with high-energy sideline entertainment. Their hyperactive antics usually involve dancing, pantomime, and general clowning around. They also mingle in the stands, delighting/scaring children, groping women, getting harassed by drunken fans, and enticing any furries in attendance.

The dean of Seattle mascots is also our favorite: the Mariner Moose, who got the call up in 1990. He’s basically Bullwinkle in an baseball uniform, whose short pants often ride up to reveal a prominent moose knuckle. During the 1995 ALCS, the alliterative alces donned in-line skates and was towed around the Kingdome turf behind an ATV, but he slammed into an outfield wall and broke a leg. Following the M’s move to Safeco, however, the Moose drives the ATV himself. He zips around the warning track doing wheelies and, as he speeds past the bullpens, gets water dumped on him by relief pitchers.

The Sonics’ Squatch scores big points for the clever regional reference -- he’s Bigfoot! Unfortunately, his long hippie hair, beady eyes and expressionless plastic face make him just plain creepy. Sonic fans understandably booed Squatch upon his 1993 arrival, but he eventually won crowds over with his acrobatic, trampoline-enhanced dunks. We’re still booing.

Coach Holmgren didn’t even know the name of the Seahawks’ mascot when he blasted Blitz during a 1999 post-game press conference. It seems the giant blue bird was slinging balled-up T-shirts high into the Kingdome stands during a crucial fourth-quarter, fourth-down play, diverting fans’ attention from the game and drawing Holmgren’s ire. Otherwise, since his 1998 debut, Blitz has hasn’t made much of an impression on anyone.

Still, Blitz fares better than Seattle’s B-list mascots, like the UW’s biped canine Harry the Husky and the Storm’s Doppler. No, Doppler isn’t the noted 19th-century Austrian mathematician/physicist; he’s just a maroon fuzzball with an anemometer on his head.

Seattle has no controversial Native American-themed mascots, unless you count Cool Bird, whose slapstick shenanigans have entertained Thunderbird fans since 1997. An apparent bastardization of the T-bird in Northwest Coast Indian art, the blue/green C-Bird is actually more derivative of the logos of both the Seahawks and the old Seattle Totems hockey team.

Finally, soccer fans, we have no idea what Sammy the Sounder looks like, but you can apply for his job here.