Mascots provide more than just entertainment

While in Phoenix over the weekend, I had the privilege of attending an Arizona Diamondbacks game at beautiful Chase Field. Right before the game started, the PA announcer introduced the team’s mascot, Baxter, to the crowd. And to my surprise, Baxter was a furry bobcat and had nothing at all to do with a snake.
Being from Chicago, I immediately connected Baxter to Southpaw, the White Sox mascot, whom the team introduced several years ago. While cute in his own right, Southpaw, the big green something (Wikipedia doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to represent), has nothing to do with the team name or its history.
Just in the world of baseball, Southpaw and Baxter are joined by several other meaningless mascots including TC (the Twins bear), Lou Seal (from the Giants), Stomper (the A’s elephant), and Junction Jack (the hickish rabbit railway conductor for the Astros). And there’s more: have a look at mlb.com/kids/mascots.jsp.
To be fair, the Wikipedia page on MLB mascots does list the supposed significance of each mascot to their team, but some of these are just an outright stretch.
“TC is loosely modeled after the Hamm’s Beer Bear, a mascot used in advertisements for Hamm’s Brewery, an early sponsor for the Twins.” Seriously?
In Arizona, the original stadium went by the name “Bank One Ballpark” and was commonly known by local fans as “The Bob”. Therefore, the team mascot became a bobcat, but come on! Doesn’t it just make a whole lot more sense to have it be a freakin’ snake?!?!
I know, team mascots are primarily there to entertain the kids and big, furry animals are the most enticing characters around (thanks, Walt Disney). But to crazy sports fans, mascots are a part of the game that all aficionados like to latch onto and they become part of the fun and magic surrounding the team.
To prove this point, I need only direct you to the best mascots in sports—some of whom are so cherished that they are indeed the face of the team. Mr. Met appears on the Mets uniforms in Queens, the Phillie Phanatic is just hilarious and Benny the Bull is as well known as Michael Jordan. And those are just three examples out of many.
In college sports, mascots are arguably more respected and in some cases, a cult-like atmosphere surrounds the mascot’s honor. Bucky Badger is all over Wisconsin’s campus and dons most official university signage. It’s widely known that Georgia’s Uga has a student ID card and following the bulldog’s death (Uga VI to be exact) last year flags on campus were flown at half-mast.
Most people are familiar with the controversy surrounding Chief Illiniwek at Illinois where the NCAA strong-armed the university into abandoning its most recognizable symbol in 2007. But for students, alumni, and fans, the Chief lives on—proving that mascots can be especially powerful even after they have ceased to exist.
Many Columbians do not know that the university’s adoption of the lion as its mascot happened nearly 100 years ago. The modern adaptation of the Columbia mascot is, of course, Roar-ee the Lion. And to its credit, the university has done a decent job of promoting him. Roar-ee makes it to all major sporting events (and even shows up in the jersey of the sport), is available in bobble-head form, and the lion’s logo can be found on everything at the bookstore.
But while the Columbia lion’s history is long, the mascot is not widely known outside of Morningside Heights. Even worse, the Columbia community hasn’t adopted Roar-ee even though it was the student body that selected the character’s name in a 2005 vote.
Before Roar-ee can make members of the Columbia community (past and present) proud, the mascot needs to be invigorated by the wider community on a campus that remains highly fragmented. The university can help by giving out free stickers and posters or asking the bookstore to stock more apparel that features the mascot. But somehow, Roar-ee must become a facet of student life before students can walk around like they do at Illinois or Wisconsin with shirts that just read “Chief” or “Bucky”.
It’s always easier to point out problems then to create solutions to solve them, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do. At least we can be happy that Roar-ee is indeed a lion and not a giant pink caterpillar named Baxter.

Jacob Shapiro is a List College junior majoring in history and Talmud. sports@columbiaspectator.com