COLUMN: What is the deal with mascots?

You’d probably have to actually be in my mind, entangled in the web of electrons, to even begin to wonder why I would ponder such a thing, but I’ve been wrestling with this question for years.

What is the deal with team “mascots”?

I can’t think of a team that doesn’t have some kind of animal, person of historic importance (self or otherwise), color, etc. emblazoned on the front of their sports shirts, gym floors and walls and seemingly everywhere one could stick a colorful graphic.

Often these are cartoon characters, toughened up by imaginative graphic artists to scare opposing fans into switching teams.

Who, for example, is going to think the Dallas Daffodils would stand a chance in a sports contest with the Alberton Panthers?

But the strange part of all this may be the very fact there are such a plethora of mascots in the first place.

And I’m talking here about the dudes and dudettes who actually climb into a heavy fabric costume and do weird things up and down the venue of play, delighting and sometimes scaring the least among us, and almost always bringing a smile and a request for a photo from adoring grandparents, parents and fans.

But something ain’t right here.

Grab the reins and pull em tight, its “whoaaaa” time.

Things just don’t add up.

Why, for example, are we supposed to believe there are, or ever have been, Tigers in the woods around St. Regis? Ever actually see, or better yet, trap a panther in Alberton?

Didn’t think so, at least not since the circus train crashed back in ‘04.

There are all kinds of even more bizarre pairings of schools and mascots.

Everywhere, there are Devils. Lord knows that. But in the wacky world of sports mascots, there are Red Devils (Noxon), Lady Red Devils (oxymoron or not?), Blue Devils (Duke University and students who wait shirtless in freezing weather to get a ticket to the big game), and I’m sure somewhere there are checkered Devils.

What about Pastel Devils? Oxymoron for sure.

There’s a town in Idaho, Orofino to be exact, whose mascot is a wildly strange looking man with bulging eyes and hair standing on end. He represents Orofino High School, which is in the town of Orofino, which is or was home to Idaho’s premier mental treatment facility.

That’s right up there with the Richland Bombers, the team from everyone’s favorite radioactive picnic grounds, Hanford, Washington, who have fought off several attempts to change their name from Bombers and remove the mushroom cloud as mascot.

Back here in Montana, the last sane place, folks have puzzled, then grinned for years about the town of Belfry and its mascot, the Bats. Bats in the Belfry, eh?

Don’t get me started on Butte and the endless possibilities of the Mining City.

Even here in Plains there’s an interesting choice of Mascots, this being the two-faced mascot of the Plains High boys and girls teams.

The boys teams are the Horsemen, a mascot befitting the horse history of the area and the fact it used to be known as Wild Horse Plains.

The girls teams most often go by “Trotters” an obvious reference to a particular horse gait. Trotters? Was Interlopers already taken?

Just kidding Trotter fans.

And the “color” mascots are also a head scratcher.

Boston Red Sox? What if you couldn’t find the match to the pair the day of the game?

Or one of my favorites, the Hoya de Rocas, which is Latin I believe for Hard as Rocks and is displayed on fan gear for those cheering on the Georgetown University Hoyas.

It goes on and on.

All I can figure is it must be a thrill to dress up in a costume that indicates you, as a proud buck deer, like the Milwaukee basketball team enough to languish in the sweat of the previous wearer, while kids tug at your make believe body parts.

I was once assaulted, and deservedly so I will admit, for heckling the Boise Hawks mascot at a baseball game there several decades ago.

To this day, my kids, when they mix with my ex-wife’s sister’s kids, still talk about the time the guy in the bird costume jumped on my back and wouldn’t get off during a promotional event between innings.

I coulda taken his worthless feathered behind had I not been hanging with my friend Adolf, he of the Coors family, for most of the game.