“A Mascot Hall of Fame without the Chicken wouldn’t be right.” Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers’ terrifying new mascot, is ineligible because he’s been in existence less than five years, but “he’s on the right track,” Hernandez says.) (The Class of 2019, which was elected by an executive committee that includes Tim McCarver: Sluggerrr, Benny the Bull, the Chicago Blackhawks’ Tommy Hawk, and Penn State’s Nittany Lion. He’s planning a boot camp for high school mascots and an induction ceremony the second weekend of June, which will feature a car parade and, he hopes, be televised on ESPN or Nickelodeon. “This is gonna have a national audience,” predicts Hernandez, who is expecting 50,000 visitors a year.
REGGY MASCOT SERIES
(As he goes about his rounds, Hernandez sports an enormous 2003 World Series ring.) To run it, the city hired Orestes Hernandez, a former Florida Marlins business development executive who agreed to move to Indiana from Coral Gables, Florida. Whiting floated an $8.5 million bond to construct the three-story hall of fame. “I thought they were crazy,” says Raymond, who, since locating Whiting on a map, has visited four dozen times.
“So, we called David,” says Whiting Mayor Joe Stahura. It sounded like a worthy competitor to those attractions, and a worthy companion to the zany Midwestern kitsch that is Pierogi Fest. Local officials discovered the Mascot Hall of Fame’s website. Whiting wanted a year-round attraction to bring tourists to Northwest Indiana, something to compete with the casino in Hammond and Gary’s minor league baseball team and ruin porn. But Pierogi Fest is only one weekend in July. Whiting, a town of 4,997, is best known as the home of Pierogi Fest, a carnival of gluttony that draws 300,000 visitors each summer to eat pierogies-meat and cheese–filled Polish dumplings-and anything else that can be fried, covered in chocolate, or covered in fried chocolate. “We did it first and foremost to bring media attention to mascots being important,” Raymond said. To Bowling Green, for Western Kentucky University’s Big Red, an amorphous mascot which has been described as “ a large, fuzzy, red blob.” After a couple sparsely attended induction ceremonies in Philly, Raymond began traveling to mascots’ home arenas and stadiums to induct them in front of their fans. At first, the Mascot Hall of Fame was a virtual enterprise.
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