Speaker 1: No really, now, really, you see what's going on here.
Speaker 2: If you're watching this on YouTube, you don't even know
Speaker 2: what that and you just grew tissues.
Speaker 3: Strut the shop. Laurie start to show.
Speaker 2: Peter and I are going to interrupt this argument to
Speaker 2: bring you another episode we really know, really, the podcast
Speaker 2: where Peter Tilden and Jason Alexander talk about things that
Speaker 2: make us go really no really? Oh good, thank you.
Speaker 2: You came right in on here now this one. When
Speaker 2: you mentioned this to me, I did a little research
Speaker 2: because this was a really not really where I said,
Speaker 2: you're punking me. So there are in our country, ladies
Speaker 2: and gentlemen, there are many, many kinds of halls of
Speaker 2: fame there for you know, the obvious ones, the baseball
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame, rock and roll hall of fame, there
Speaker 2: are these are all true. There is a towing and Recovery.
Speaker 3: Hall of Fame. There is a.
Speaker 2: Kites Hall of Fame, a pinball Hall of fame, derby
Speaker 2: in there, there's lose suber.
Speaker 3: I mean, what is that?
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. There's a croquet hall of fame, and
Speaker 2: insurance hall of fame, a fresh water fish hall of fame,
Speaker 2: and none of that stop me in my tracks. As
Speaker 2: when Peter Tilden said, Hey, you know what I just
Speaker 2: found out there's a mascot Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: Really no, really, so this is really exciting for me.
Speaker 3: This is really exciting.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is really exciting.
Speaker 3: Really it is. It is. And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 3: Growing up in Philadelphia and I wasn't the biggest sports
Speaker 3: fan because I wasn't a good act. We are the
Speaker 3: same heart as I'm the sweater, and my mother would say,
Speaker 3: don't overheat. It was horrible and embarrassing that said. Anybody
Speaker 3: who lived in Philadelphia doing a certain period knows the
Speaker 3: iconic Philly fanatic. Because a matter of fact, when I
Speaker 3: walked into the building today and you mentioned the people
Speaker 3: go out of their mind. He's a rock star. He's
Speaker 3: Forbes said he's the number one, number one mascot of
Speaker 3: all time. Yeah, but Forbes isn't the number one magazine,
Speaker 3: so their opinion. That's like when in Vegas they say,
Speaker 3: voted best performance in Vegas by the hotel that the
Speaker 3: guy's performing at.
Speaker 2: That's who voted go ahead, finish it.
Speaker 3: Stephen Hawking said that this through his voicebox said this
Speaker 3: said this man, this is the guy. David Raymond pioneered
Speaker 3: the field of sports mascots as the first person to
Speaker 3: go out on the field as a Philly fanatic. He
Speaker 3: did sixteen years. After sixteen years, he was there for
Speaker 3: Tug McGraw in the World Series. I was the fanatic
Speaker 3: changed what mascots were. We can talk later or with David.
Speaker 3: Were they the history, Well, they were actually staggered. They
Speaker 3: would just show up and kind of stands. It was
Speaker 3: kind of creepy and just out to day first that
Speaker 3: I want him to be putty.
Speaker 2: Dave Raymond, ladies the original Philly fanatic.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, and you're in the Hall.
Speaker 2: Of Fame right, Oh, you created the Hall of Fame Jesus.
Speaker 1: Just like you said about the hotel that voted, I
Speaker 1: created the mask off and the fanatic.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, who was the.
Speaker 3: First first and so way back and tell me go
Speaker 3: through the history of theague. If I'm incorrect, It used
Speaker 3: to be Jason that they would pick kids out of
Speaker 3: the stand and then it went to kids who had
Speaker 3: disabilities and they thought they were good luck. So players,
Speaker 3: players rubbed their head. It was really cool.
Speaker 2: Was the thing. I'm going to hit you?
Speaker 3: So it grew from that. Then Max Packham was a
Speaker 3: and I remember the Mexican pack Him was a player
Speaker 3: who then became like the crown Prince of jokesters. He
Speaker 3: had his hat on sideways. He would run bases and
Speaker 3: do commune.
Speaker 2: And then he was the Harlem glove traulers of Bingo.
Speaker 3: And then I guess right before you, Dave was the
Speaker 3: San Diego Chicken.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he and he was sponsored by the radio station.
Speaker 1: And he was a kid who raised his hand. He
Speaker 1: was in the Columbia School of Broadcast. In their end
Speaker 1: of the two weeks, they said, who wants to get
Speaker 1: in this chicken costume? You get paid for another two weeks.
Speaker 1: He raised his hand, said you'll fit the costume, and
Speaker 1: he went out. And over the next three or four
Speaker 1: weeks he was doing all these typical promotions for the radio,
Speaker 1: as you might know, Peter. And then they said, hey,
Speaker 1: go to San Diego Potter's game. It was an expansion franchise.
Speaker 1: Nobody but the military were going. I remember the players
Speaker 1: telling me that San Diego was a military base with
Speaker 1: a beach, and so the chicken was no one was
Speaker 1: watching the game. He'd come out, he was drinking, he
Speaker 1: was chugging beers. He was Oh my god, and he
Speaker 1: was getting away with it, and so all the players
Speaker 1: were saying, this thing is amazing. And one of our
Speaker 1: junior executives, Denny Lehman, came back from San Diego and
Speaker 1: went to Bill Giles, who was my boss's boss, and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got to do this. And he said do what
Speaker 1: He said, Well, we've got to create some sort of
Speaker 1: a mascot character. And it took him a little bit
Speaker 1: of time to get to convinced, but that's how it
Speaker 1: all started. And I was just an intern.
Speaker 3: Natica has been ten percent of the revenue of retail
Speaker 3: revenue ten percent of retail revenue in Philly at the ballpark.
Speaker 3: That's big, that's gigantic.
Speaker 2: When you said that, what do you mean, how did
Speaker 2: it generate revenue?
Speaker 1: Well, you there's there's merchandise, there's merchandising. Yeah, yeah, there is.
Speaker 1: There's a number of what you would call direct revenue.
Speaker 1: So it's it's merch it's increased ticket sales. But how
Speaker 1: do you value the community good and then the brand benefits.
Speaker 1: I mean, truly, you could say it's been forty five years,
Speaker 1: it's a billion dollar brand extension.
Speaker 3: So if you don't know, the fanatic and Fanatic was
Speaker 3: the icon of all the entire industry. But you were athletic.
Speaker 3: I remember it used to go on the dugout roof
Speaker 3: and dance and that stuff. But you also used to
Speaker 3: tease people. And I always thought, weren't you getting hit
Speaker 3: in the nuts? Aren't you getting grabbed? You must be
Speaker 3: getting killed out there. Plus you're sweating that that fit
Speaker 3: is thirty pounds? How did you not? And he would dance,
Speaker 3: he would taunt people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm familiar with you know.
Speaker 3: Do you know the tom know?
Speaker 2: I actually I live in the real world. I'm not
Speaker 2: just a celebrity. But I don't just appear on tears however,
Speaker 2: I know, but I'm aware of the thing.
Speaker 3: But did you ever see the Tommy Lasorta incident? I
Speaker 3: didn't you do?
Speaker 2: Know why I saw it?
Speaker 3: Why you sent it to me?
Speaker 1: Research? Very good. I'm proud of you talk about that well.
Speaker 1: The Timylasorda story is a is a marvelous one. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, the Fanatic got to be the mascot
Speaker 1: to represent Major League Baseball when we went to Japan
Speaker 1: with a National League All Star team and American League
Speaker 1: All Star Team, and it was six weeks of performing
Speaker 1: in front of Japanese fans. Who and Tommy Lasorda was
Speaker 1: our manager. Chuck Tanner was our bench coach from the Pirates,
Speaker 1: and I got to go over there. I'm a young kid,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty one years old, and I'm having a great
Speaker 1: time there. And I decide I get to the clubhouse
Speaker 1: early because I got to get ready. And I see
Speaker 1: all these baseballs there, so I go, I'm signing the
Speaker 1: Fanatics name on here. So I signed a Fanatics name
Speaker 1: on a baseball. Well, I don't understand what I'm doing
Speaker 1: is I'm signing in the sweet spot where the seams are.
Speaker 1: That's where the manager signs. So Tommy has seen this,
Speaker 1: and I don't know Tommy at all other than he's,
Speaker 1: you know, the manager of the Dodgers. And so they
Speaker 1: staged an intervention. They the next game. They got to
Speaker 1: the clubhouse early. They hit in the manager's locker room
Speaker 1: and their am signing baseballs and the door comes bursting over.
Speaker 1: Hees you you got right screaming at me nose nose,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, my god, Tommy Lasorda is going to
Speaker 1: kill me and and and all of a sudden, Chuck
Speaker 1: Tanner comes out of the room behind him and they're laughing,
Speaker 1: and then Tommy puts his arm as look, kid, I
Speaker 1: get it, but you can't sign where the manager signs.
Speaker 1: That's where I signed. So that's how our relationship started.
Speaker 1: And when he would go out on the field, I
Speaker 1: used to he was anatomically a unicorn.
Speaker 2: He had both legs. He was similar to Yeah, but
Speaker 2: he was bow leged Jason and pigeontoed at the same time.
Speaker 1: I would sneak behind him imitating him, and then the
Speaker 1: fans would start to go oh, because the Japanese fan,
Speaker 1: it was like I was making fun of the Lord.
Speaker 1: And then Tommy would whip around and then the fanatic
Speaker 1: would just go like he was having everybody laugh. And
Speaker 1: then when he laughed and the fans laughed, and so
Speaker 1: I really believe what happened that during that tour was
Speaker 1: Tommy realized he could entertain his ballplayers. He could have
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. If he acted nasty to me,
Speaker 1: especially in Philadelphia, then he could really connect with them.
Speaker 1: And so every time he came to Philadelphia, I was
Speaker 1: always doing that, and I kept ramping it up to
Speaker 1: the point where I found I got a dummy and
Speaker 1: I dressed it up as Tommy and I stuffed a
Speaker 1: pillow underneath it. And then he would say, well, he's
Speaker 1: defaming the Dodger uniform. And it all came to a
Speaker 1: head because here he was, he and orl Herscheiser had
Speaker 1: got into a weight loss competition. Just the two of
Speaker 1: them said we're gonna lose some weight. Sure, slim Fast
Speaker 1: comes in. They sponsor it. So he comes to town
Speaker 1: this day two weeks he has a head pasta. He's
Speaker 1: his team is in the cellar, and he had told
Speaker 1: his clubhouse manner, do not bring an extra jersey mine.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let that, sob get my jersey again. Well,
Speaker 1: the first game I came out, found I didn't have it.
Speaker 1: I went out to the store, I bought a last
Speaker 1: I bought a jersey and had seemed to just put
Speaker 1: lastre in the back and there I come out with
Speaker 1: the Tommy doll and the first thing I see, he's
Speaker 1: looking at the clubhouse manager and I go, oh my god,
Speaker 1: he's gonna he's gonna kill him because I and then
Speaker 1: he just stormed out. He and he beat the crap
Speaker 1: out of a muppet. And so my favorite me personally,
Speaker 1: my favorite part of this was, it's a big story
Speaker 1: in the newspaper. It's a big story in the newspaper.
Speaker 1: It's all over the newspaper, and uh Stan Hakman, a
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame journalist, writes a story and he basically
Speaker 1: in the story says both of us were acting like children.
Speaker 1: So I called Stan up on the phone. I go,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I want you to tell me who
Speaker 1: was doing their job. I'm the mascot, he's the manager
Speaker 1: of the Dodgers. He comes out and kicks the crap
Speaker 1: out of a muppet. I got him to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm doing my job, and Stan hangs up on me,
Speaker 1: and I only think, here's the Hall of Same sports
Speaker 1: writer going, I'm getting called on the carpet by a mask.
Speaker 1: So it and to this day it's been memorialized in
Speaker 1: that video.
Speaker 3: What an amazing thing to make you feel better. We
Speaker 3: were the Dodger station ober at KBC and Tommy would
Speaker 3: get angry. And one of the times he got angry
Speaker 3: at me and I was reading restaurant clothing and I
Speaker 3: had mentioned that the swordas in the Marina was closed
Speaker 3: for rodent infistate. My general manager calls me and is
Speaker 3: screaming like I've never heard him scream, and I could
Speaker 3: hear Tommy screaming at him, and he says, you have
Speaker 3: to go in there and apologize tomorrow. So I go
Speaker 3: in to hear the next day and Tommy's listening and
Speaker 3: I say, you know what, I apologize. Yesterday was in
Speaker 3: the thing. But they're fine now they're open. However, I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have the pasta with Raisins. And I get a
Speaker 3: call to his credit. When I went saw him at
Speaker 3: the park the next time, he laughed his ass off.
Speaker 3: It was but he had that kind of yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know that it's awful for baseball that we
Speaker 1: don't have Earl Weaver, Tommy Lasorda, Billy.
Speaker 3: Martin, the character.
Speaker 1: You know, they're all going to to you know, statistics college.
Speaker 1: You know they're coming in there and they're just looking
Speaker 1: at spreadsheets. No one is coming out in arguing with
Speaker 1: the umpires anymore. They're gonna they can eventually get robo umps.
Speaker 1: And you know we're some of that. That was entertaining.
Speaker 2: All right, Dave, we gotta go. I gotta go back.
Speaker 2: As you said, you're a young kid, They say to you, hey,
Speaker 2: we're going to figure out how to do this. So
Speaker 2: how did they What were you doing that they picked you?
Speaker 2: And how did the character get created? The costume and
Speaker 2: your your take on it.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I was growing up in Newark, Delaware.
Speaker 1: All I want to do is be my dad. My
Speaker 1: dad was a head football coach there. He's in the
Speaker 1: College Football of Fame. He knew the owners of the Phillies,
Speaker 1: the Carpenter family, said let me help you get a
Speaker 1: summer job. So seventy six I interned with Eddie Wade,
Speaker 1: who became a general manager for the Philadelphia Phillies. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, this is a path for success. I
Speaker 1: don't have to move my family around. So two summers
Speaker 1: is over. I got to go back to school seventy
Speaker 1: eight to finish my coursework, and I'm thinking the Phillies
Speaker 1: are gonna figure get about me. Instead, they call me
Speaker 1: up in that spring seven eight, said hey, do you
Speaker 1: want your job here? And I go, yeah, what do
Speaker 1: you want to do is we need you to go
Speaker 1: to New York and get fitted for the costume. I went, wait,
Speaker 1: what do you mean this? And my dad said, you
Speaker 1: do whatever. They asked you to do.
Speaker 2: So, they don't know you as any kind of an enter.
Speaker 1: Well, Bill Giles says in some of the interviews about this, said, well,
Speaker 1: Dave was kind of a smart ass, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I was Tubby Raymond's son, friend of the owners. I'm
Speaker 1: not going into that office and act like a smart ass.
Speaker 1: Apparently I must have done something that. I think. He's
Speaker 1: the one that's dumb enough to say yes to creating
Speaker 1: a muppet for the Phillies, same fans that through snowballs
Speaker 1: at Tanta Claus. Santa didn't have a very good day.
Speaker 1: But that's another story. So I go yes, and I
Speaker 1: walk into Geppetto's puppet studio in the Garment Distick in
Speaker 1: New York West thirty ninth Street. Bonnie Erickson is there.
Speaker 1: I find out she's one of the one of Jim
Speaker 1: Henson's original designers. Because Bill Giles called Jim Henson said,
Speaker 1: how do we do this?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Got to go to Bonnie's studio. I said, you know
Speaker 1: she she created statlerind Waldorf, the two old men that
Speaker 1: are you miss Piggy, and many others. And they measured
Speaker 1: me and I and I said, I go, what do
Speaker 1: I do this, said, we'll just go home, and they
Speaker 1: handed me the drawing that her and Bill Giles had
Speaker 1: worked together, and I went bade to be a Muppet.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. This is going to be easy.
Speaker 1: And then the costume was delayed and I the first
Speaker 1: time I tried it on was that night. So you
Speaker 1: guys can all appreciate this. You're going out and opening night,
Speaker 1: the curtain opens up. You have no idea who you're playing.
Speaker 1: So I go to Bill Jihous and he said, look,
Speaker 1: you need to just go out and have fun. I'm
Speaker 1: like brilliant, a college student. All the fear had gone
Speaker 1: off me. I could run out of his office and
Speaker 1: Etaels g rated fun, g rated fun. So I had
Speaker 1: this box and that's what I did. I went out
Speaker 1: and I had, you know, Daffy Duck in my head
Speaker 1: and bog Horn Leghorn, silent comedians, Charlie Chaplin, and I
Speaker 1: love slapstick humor. I was a big fan of The
Speaker 1: Gong Show, which was just starting its first big run,
Speaker 1: and I just went out and the first twenty minutes like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is great, and then I thought I was an athlete.
Speaker 1: It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I
Speaker 1: worked my way all the way down to the It
Speaker 1: was a picnic area back then, peter were the most
Speaker 1: expensive seats in the land. Was a series of picnic tables,
Speaker 1: so Fantasy could go eat there. And I'm jumping back
Speaker 1: and forth and the picnic tables. People are laughing. I
Speaker 1: tripped and fell. They thought it was great, and then
Speaker 1: I realized, oh my gosh, I have to walk all
Speaker 1: the way back up the stands to get to my
Speaker 1: lock and go down the elevator. So when the last
Speaker 1: that was made, I jumped over the railing into the
Speaker 1: field to run to get out behind home plate, and
Speaker 1: people went, oh. The one of the umpires waved at me.
Speaker 1: I waved back at him, and people are I go,
Speaker 1: these people are not entertained. They've never They're like, they're
Speaker 1: loving every single thing that this giant, green, furry bird
Speaker 1: is doing. And I realized if I could break that
Speaker 1: wall and I could be with the player one minute
Speaker 1: and then be next to you and your kids the next,
Speaker 1: that really worked. Plus I got to get to know
Speaker 1: the players, and it went on like that in two weeks.
Speaker 1: It was a huge deal, and in six months I
Speaker 1: finally had figured out that. You know, I could watch
Speaker 1: old video and see, well that's Dave Raymond. Oh there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of the fanatic there, and then I
Speaker 1: had a personality that really took over.
Speaker 2: But Dave, that's the amazing part to me, especially given
Speaker 2: now that I know you really had no prep. You
Speaker 2: had no time to discover the character, as we would
Speaker 2: say in my business. But what was what's astonishing to
Speaker 2: me about watching you and now, of course the videos
Speaker 2: I'm seeing is the fanatic over the years, so you
Speaker 2: gained experience and knowledge, but you as someone who was
Speaker 2: not born to performing in that way. Your knowledge of
Speaker 2: physical comedy, the way you are taking a character whose
Speaker 2: face is not animated in a way that is moving
Speaker 2: and giving the impression of expressions, and the way you
Speaker 2: would manipulate the costume to poof out the stomach or
Speaker 2: to pull you the physical work is so clean and
Speaker 2: so precise that if you're in the last row of
Speaker 2: the stadium, you know exactly the game that's at foot.
Speaker 2: It reads to the person three feet away and three
Speaker 2: hundred feet away. I don't know how you had an
Speaker 2: innate sense of that.
Speaker 1: That's so what a first of all, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: That's that's kind. But until only just a few years
Speaker 1: ago I did. I wasn't giving myself credit. Then when
Speaker 1: they were saying, hey, do you want to break I
Speaker 1: went no, no, because I didn't want anybody else get
Speaker 1: in costume, because I figured, you know, hey, we're paying
Speaker 1: this kid a lot of money to be stupid. We
Speaker 1: can get somebody stupid for last time. I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: not thinking. I just don't have any idea of what's
Speaker 1: going on. And then so my mother, when she was
Speaker 1: twenty nine, I was three years old, she went deaf.
Speaker 1: She had manar syndrome, and she went from a hearing
Speaker 1: woman to a death one. And I had a reporter
Speaker 1: well into the eighties, so two thirds of my career
Speaker 1: asked that question, Hey do you think maybe you're good
Speaker 1: at this because your mom is deaf? And I got
Speaker 1: frustrated because I thought, well, that's kind of taken advantage
Speaker 1: of my mom in some way like and I went,
Speaker 1: well now, and then I went home and talked to
Speaker 1: my mom. She goes, ouh, my gosh, of course, and
Speaker 1: that's you were three. Were not only were you communicating
Speaker 1: with me, but you realized I'd laugh and giggle when
Speaker 1: you did something, and you were doing it your whole life.
Speaker 1: So I was in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 1: And then of course I had ten thousand hours of
Speaker 1: practice when no one was looking at it, like you
Speaker 1: would go and do Broadway and they're immediately going to
Speaker 1: be critiquing what you're doing to No one knew what
Speaker 1: the hell I was doing. They thought some idiot had
Speaker 1: put this together in his garage and just showed up
Speaker 1: one night. Because the Phillies never promoted it, because they
Speaker 1: recognized that was the best way to do it. Let
Speaker 1: it go out there and see if it were and
Speaker 1: if it's bad, so sorry, we didn't mean that. And
Speaker 1: so I think that I can look back and give
Speaker 1: myself credit and to have somebody like you and Peter
Speaker 1: who are in this industry, that's all I thought, like, oh, maybe,
Speaker 1: like I would go work with the Philly Pops and
Speaker 1: I would work with the Pennsylvania Ballet, like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: with real, real performers, talented people, you know, And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm sticking my tongue out.
Speaker 2: Than give you the compliment, and not so much Peter.
Speaker 2: Peter isn't really that.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 2: You know, some part of your brain is able to
Speaker 2: see the potential for a comedic possibility instantaneously and spin
Speaker 2: on it. That's a very unique gift. I know gifted
Speaker 2: comedians who who can't do that, they don't see the
Speaker 2: potential of a moment, and they take advantage.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that I was doing whatever I felt made
Speaker 1: me happy, and I think as a result, you know,
Speaker 1: the Fanatic does some amazing things in the community that
Speaker 1: are that are making people happy when when there's no
Speaker 1: good reason for them to feel good. So and you
Speaker 1: can and he's doing that. That his ability to seamlessly
Speaker 1: connect on an emotional level with people is an amazing
Speaker 1: valuable thing for marketing, branding, but it's also a wonderful
Speaker 1: way to distract people when when they're having a difficult time.
Speaker 1: And the Fanatic, you know, for the sixteen years I
Speaker 1: was doing it, now forty five years later, going to
Speaker 1: all kinds of places you never see the hospital rooms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is it is so important for us to
Speaker 1: value that. That's what I love the most about the
Speaker 1: work is that in these and there's some and it's
Speaker 1: only the organizations that treat it and do it right.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to do. But there are a number
Speaker 1: of mascots out that are doing it and that and
Speaker 1: that's truly the reason for the Mascot Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about the Hall of Fame. So you
Speaker 3: ended up leaving the real roles Fanatic and then working
Speaker 3: with other teams to come up with their mascots. You also,
Speaker 3: the controversial one was Gritty for the fly for the
Speaker 3: Philadelphia Flyers, And we were talking about before you got here.
Speaker 3: Why was that? What that? That thing took off like immediate, Yeah,
Speaker 3: but not in the.
Speaker 2: Grid not in the grid way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was forty eight hours.
Speaker 3: Uh So.
Speaker 1: Anyway, so this process that they followed is what I
Speaker 1: engaged to help my clients. So you got it. You
Speaker 1: have to commit to it. You have to believe it
Speaker 1: both mentally and financially. Get to commit this is a
Speaker 1: big project we're gonna do. Then you have to sit
Speaker 1: down and tell your story because you know, I just
Speaker 1: want you have to follow this process and you have
Speaker 1: to follow it religiously your way, because I, even though
Speaker 1: I understood the Flyers and I know Philadelphia, I couldn't
Speaker 1: do what they needed to do. So I'm watching after
Speaker 1: they tell the story of a troll that lived underneath
Speaker 1: all iterations of the stadium. He was he was a
Speaker 1: died in the Wolf fan and he was tired of
Speaker 1: all the changes in the stadium. Let's stop doing this,
Speaker 1: let's just get to hockey. And they caught him defacing
Speaker 1: some of the new stuff because he was he was
Speaker 1: putting graffiti up, but it was almost like an old
Speaker 1: flyer sticker. That was the story. So they find him,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, he looks like our players. You know,
Speaker 1: he's he's he's unkept, he's got hair coming out of
Speaker 1: all kinds of or if it's on their face, he's
Speaker 1: not hasn't shaved, he smells bad. This is our guy.
Speaker 1: And then when they start doing the drawing, I brought
Speaker 1: in a designer. They said, can we bring in another
Speaker 1: design I said, yeah, this is about doing what you want.
Speaker 1: And then I'm looking at one of the designs. I say,
Speaker 1: that's great. They take it and make it even look scarier.
Speaker 1: And they told me their whole focus was to build
Speaker 1: new fans out of young people. And I went to
Speaker 1: the boss and I sit Sean Tildre. I go, I
Speaker 1: get it, but you know this looks like something you know.
Speaker 1: Stephen King would like, it's it's gonna eat kids, it's
Speaker 1: not going And he said, you told us we're gonna
Speaker 1: I said, okay, you're right, okay, and so I was
Speaker 1: a little concerned. Then I went to the rollout in
Speaker 1: front of three hundred elementary school kids. Not one of
Speaker 1: them jumped up and ran in terror. I've never seen
Speaker 1: a rollout where at least one kid runs over to
Speaker 1: his first grade teacher and goes, no, nothing. They're all
Speaker 1: just watching this. Their mouths are open. He's blowing steam
Speaker 1: out of his hockey helmet, and I'm like, okay, and
Speaker 1: then and then all then I told them expect all negativity.
Speaker 1: It's all gonna be negative. It might be six months.
Speaker 1: You stick to your guns and show them that you
Speaker 1: believe it. He's member of your yours, he's one of
Speaker 1: your family. You're not getting rid of him. It will
Speaker 1: work well. In the second day he opened up, there's
Speaker 1: a picture of him skating like I'm here and that's
Speaker 1: just getting hammered all the people. Ironically, the trolls are
Speaker 1: are trolling him. And finally the Pittsburgh Penguins feed says okay,
Speaker 1: l L very dismissive tweet. So Gritty goes sleep with
Speaker 1: one eye open tonight bird and that and meet, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's our ugly, he's not your ugly. You leave him alone.
Speaker 1: And then the Philly fans rallied around him, and then
Speaker 1: he got brought on all late night TV. I mean,
Speaker 1: John Oliver said profanely on his show, Oh my gosh, Gritty,
Speaker 1: he just said, lol, and you went right to f
Speaker 1: and murder. So now you know it's it's good content
Speaker 1: for late night. And he and they had a media
Speaker 1: tracking service and within this is no, this is a
Speaker 1: media tracking service, so for eyeballs, not actual revenue. But
Speaker 1: he had driven in earned media over eight billion dollars
Speaker 1: of that tracking mechanism over eight weeks, eight billion dollars
Speaker 1: of media attention. And I go and I don't know, I'm.
Speaker 2: Doing this thing in purple feathers. How are we killing them? Conversation?
Speaker 1: Well, its it depends.
Speaker 2: What's it like inside that guys, cold.
Speaker 1: Heavy, Well, when they handed it to me that first day,
Speaker 1: they said, you can't wash this because they were involved
Speaker 1: in controlled environments on television and film, and okay, to
Speaker 1: just let it dry blow fans on it. Well, there
Speaker 1: were no breaks it's a game. Three appearances a game
Speaker 1: than a day game, and then more appearances. And it
Speaker 1: was like, you see these parents in kids' faces, so
Speaker 1: it's a fanatic, come in and give them a hug,
Speaker 1: and then you walk away in They're going, oh my,
Speaker 1: what the heck was that? So I went to my
Speaker 1: mother and I said, Mom, this it smells terrible. She goes, uh,
Speaker 1: you could throw that in a bathtub with woolite. So
Speaker 1: I threw in a bathtub with wolfe. I hung it up,
Speaker 1: I blew a fan on it. I called Bonnie up,
Speaker 1: I go, we cleaned it.
Speaker 2: You did?
Speaker 1: What'd you do? I threw it in a bath tuble woolite.
Speaker 1: It smells great now. So we only had one costume.
Speaker 1: So but it uh. So I was a football player
Speaker 1: double sessions back. They don't let even do double sessions anymore.
Speaker 1: Two practices in one day, and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking this is easy, And it was until that
Speaker 1: first night I went, this is the hardest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever done. And it was awfully difficult physically and taxing,
Speaker 1: but you know, like anything, you get used to it.
Speaker 1: And I was in pretty good shape. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sixty seven now, and that costume, all that work
Speaker 1: I did for because I continued to perform for another
Speaker 1: eight ten years after I left the Phillies, because I
Speaker 1: was doing it for my own company, and and that
Speaker 1: was the you know, that was the thing I kept saying, Well,
Speaker 1: it's keeping me in shape, and it was that was
Speaker 1: That's the hardest part about our industry. When you get
Speaker 1: a young person who's talented out of costume and they
Speaker 1: haven't been in costume before, and you put them in
Speaker 1: the costume, there's fifty percent of them go running out
Speaker 1: of the audition.
Speaker 3: Now it had.
Speaker 1: Tom claustrophobic, I can't breathe. But the costumes that we
Speaker 1: design and build are costumes that are performer friendly. They're
Speaker 1: they're about as cool as you can make them. But
Speaker 1: you know you're gonna sweat.
Speaker 3: Did I not read that you spread You told somebody
Speaker 3: to spray the costume with water and vodka.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. It's because that's kind of an old
Speaker 1: minstrel history when they would go on the back I
Speaker 1: guess in the seventeen hundreds, and they'd travel in wagons
Speaker 1: and they would drink a lot of alcohol party and
Speaker 1: then it would spill on their clothes and they say, hey,
Speaker 1: these clothes smell pretty good. Maybe we ought to do
Speaker 1: that more often. And it's two parts water, one part vodka.
Speaker 1: And so we we sayah, A couple for the costume,
Speaker 1: a couple for the reformer, A wet looking at David.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't also know ready, because he invents costumes that
Speaker 3: he played irritable bowel.
Speaker 1: You have done your research, You've done that.
Speaker 3: Irrit What does that costume look like.
Speaker 1: It's well, it looks like an irritable vow you. It's
Speaker 1: it's pink, and it's it's it's an air character. So
Speaker 1: the performer steps inside, puts a little belt around his side,
Speaker 1: and it has a fan and a battery that sucks
Speaker 1: the air out and fills the shape. So whatever the
Speaker 1: shape is. And then you've got pulleys and knobs and
Speaker 1: you can make and you can stick your hands in there.
Speaker 1: And the SALEX Pharmaceuticals they're a company that creates a
Speaker 1: medicine for for lower bell issues. And I mean I
Speaker 1: went to their trade show. There's a million people there,
Speaker 1: and I go, this is all just for your colon,
Speaker 1: this whole environment, all this millions and billions of dollars spent,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to engage their their doctors. That came
Speaker 1: in and this was when we knew we had a success.
Speaker 1: The other engagement technique was you could sit in virtual
Speaker 1: reality and go through a bow and see what it
Speaker 1: looks like. So and that was the big one. This
Speaker 1: one's really work and this is great. So we want
Speaker 1: something for maybe the you know, the less intellectual. So
Speaker 1: so they come over to a to a site where
Speaker 1: to a part of the booth where you could take
Speaker 1: a picture with Why am I I'm forgetting his name.
Speaker 1: He does have a name, good guy guy. So there's
Speaker 1: a there's a lot of ball humor like hey, what
Speaker 1: did you have to eat last night?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: I see it? And they're taking pictures with this and
Speaker 1: and they we we helped get the company to build this.
Speaker 1: The design was already there because they had used this
Speaker 1: design many years ago. We bring it out and I
Speaker 1: have one, I have a trained performer there to do
Speaker 1: this work. I'm too old for this stuff. And he
Speaker 1: and I told him he's going to work and he
Speaker 1: has to go on a break for lunch and then
Speaker 1: I'll come back. Well, they had a line of about
Speaker 1: one hundred people so I said, he's got a break
Speaker 1: for lunch, said could you please just get in the
Speaker 1: costume and do this while he's a break?
Speaker 2: And I went all right, okay, oh schmuck. So that's
Speaker 2: when you say, yes, of course I can. But it's gone.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: They had taken good care of me, they'd take good
Speaker 1: care of her. So I'm in there and I'm just
Speaker 1: reliving all this fun. And he comes back and I
Speaker 1: take it off and I call my wife Sandy, and
Speaker 1: I go, hey, I Scott in the costume. It's so great.
Speaker 1: It's just man. She goes, what are you doing? Do
Speaker 1: not get in that costume again. Meanwhile, for that next
Speaker 1: because that was a three day event, I was doing
Speaker 1: at least two hours worth of work in costume every day.
Speaker 1: And the one that I did that I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: my wife was I you stand like you're still, and
Speaker 1: it's a big trade show, hundreds of people walking by
Speaker 1: the booth. So in the character, you stand still and
Speaker 1: it looks like it's it's a balloon, like it's a
Speaker 1: blow up balloon, and you stand there like that and
Speaker 1: you wait till people walk by. They haven't seen you
Speaker 1: move into place, and eventually people have never seen you.
Speaker 1: They come by and look at you, and.
Speaker 3: You go, whoa.
Speaker 1: It makes them show. And then I did this and
Speaker 1: I lost my balance and I fell in the battery
Speaker 1: pack just hit me on the side and I had
Speaker 1: a bruise that looked like somebody had hit me with
Speaker 1: a baseball in you know, when I'm going home at
Speaker 1: night and we're getting ready for bed, I'm just I'm walking.
Speaker 1: I was my wife kid. Finally she goes, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: what is said? I said, well, you know, I told
Speaker 1: you that costume. She goes, I'm telling you, David, I'm
Speaker 1: divorcing you. You're not going to do the same more.
Speaker 1: You're not going to leave us homeless because you've killed
Speaker 1: yourself in costume. You got to grow up, all right.
Speaker 2: I got a couple of fast ones because we're almost
Speaker 2: out of time. So if someone wanted to do this
Speaker 2: for a living, because it sounds like fantastic one, what's
Speaker 2: what's the method? How do they become a mascot?
Speaker 1: Well, they in this day, believe it or not, they're
Speaker 1: working since high school to get they're going to a
Speaker 1: college where some colleges give you a full ride if
Speaker 1: you win the audition. To be the character. Yes, some
Speaker 1: very nice collegiate situations like Auburn take care of their performers.
Speaker 1: So you you hone your craft, you get ready. I
Speaker 1: have asynchronous Maskot boot Camp training so you can go
Speaker 1: online and take training and you can work with me
Speaker 1: one on one on a zoom call. And that's really
Speaker 1: I love. I've been teaching this for like twenty seven years,
Speaker 1: and it's you've got to dance, you got to be
Speaker 1: able to move, you got to have non verbal skills,
Speaker 1: and you have to be passionate, you got to be
Speaker 1: in shape, and you gotta love it. Uh and and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of kids love it.
Speaker 2: Worst worst interaction you've ever had, the one that was
Speaker 2: really like wow, that went.
Speaker 1: South when I decided that I thought it would be
Speaker 1: funny during a particular break in a Bruce Springching song,
Speaker 1: that I would open up a box and pull out
Speaker 1: a little person who was playing a saxophone. I got,
Speaker 1: I got done. I thought it was great.
Speaker 2: This is what I got. What was that?
Speaker 1: What was he doing?
Speaker 2: Wow? Yeah?
Speaker 3: By the way, so the Hall of Fame, we started
Speaker 3: this with the Hall of Fame. You just decided in
Speaker 3: earnest to create a hall of Fame. You did it
Speaker 3: and put it together. A is economy tanked and be
Speaker 3: the mayor who supported you went to jail.
Speaker 1: Correct, he did not go to jail. He did not
Speaker 1: go to jail.
Speaker 3: What happened to him?
Speaker 1: He well, he had to resign as the mayor. And
Speaker 1: he's and and look, yeah, it's look it is a
Speaker 1: it's the disney from Mascots. It's in Whiting, Indiana. It's
Speaker 1: a small town that embraces British petroleum. They have the
Speaker 1: largest North American footprint of their refinery there. But Whiting
Speaker 1: sits out the Lake, Michigan, has this gorgeous, beautiful park
Speaker 1: right up to the you'd want your daughter to get
Speaker 1: married there. And they they are the little silly city
Speaker 1: that could they have. They have Progi Festival every year
Speaker 1: where three hundred and fifty thousand people come to this
Speaker 1: little tiny town. And the Mascot Hall of Fame was
Speaker 1: something they wanted. It was part of their brand of
Speaker 1: the of the city. It's a twenty six thousand square
Speaker 1: foot facility. It teaches steam and stem to kids. Because
Speaker 1: everything about Mascots has some analytics to it, and and
Speaker 1: it's people are coming from all over the world to company.
Speaker 3: You think about branding period, you have all of these
Speaker 3: companies that did branding because it's so important. I remember
Speaker 3: growing up Frank Purdue Chickens. It puts a face to
Speaker 3: a company, the ones that bothered me kind of charm
Speaker 3: and bears walking out with their their.
Speaker 2: All that that is what the hell is happening? What
Speaker 2: what pitch meeting did somebody say, have we got these
Speaker 2: blue bears that come out with and that it'll be sureman,
Speaker 2: because it's it's a gold mine.
Speaker 3: I mean it's gold Mascots and business mascots are really
Speaker 3: important again for community, for branding, and they wouldn't do
Speaker 3: it if it didn't test.
Speaker 1: You know, if I said I could listen, I'm going
Speaker 1: to create a marketing initiae for you that is going
Speaker 1: to go out and it's gonna deliver your brand message.
Speaker 1: But it's gonna be entertaining everybody. And they're not even
Speaker 1: gonna know they're getting a commercial. There's like and they'll go,
Speaker 1: can I take a picture with you? So they'll take
Speaker 1: a picture with the band. They're gonna hug your brand
Speaker 1: and they're gonna show the picture of your brand going. Look,
Speaker 1: this was just last Tuesday, I'm putting this on the wall.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a brilliant marketing strategy to be
Speaker 1: able to connect to people on an emotional line.
Speaker 2: And I will tell you the thing that blew my
Speaker 2: mind because I was totally in it as a kid,
Speaker 2: and then when I became an adult, I went they
Speaker 2: con do so only if you're my age. I'm sixty
Speaker 2: three and Peter, you might remember this. Cuisp and Quake.
Speaker 2: Do you remember cuispin Quake? Okay, cuispin Quake? Were these
Speaker 2: two cereals. Now they're the exact same cereal, They're exactly
Speaker 2: the same. One was chopped in one shape, one was chopped.
Speaker 3: In another shake.
Speaker 2: But Cisp was a space alien and Quake was like
Speaker 2: a coal miner. And which one is better? Kids, Crisp
Speaker 2: or Quake? And Crisp and Quake would have commercials where
Speaker 2: they vied for European and you got and I was
Speaker 2: team Cisp totally quist. It's the same cereal, but its engagement,
Speaker 2: it was absolutely and you got involved with it and
Speaker 2: you cared about it and you wanted yours to win.
Speaker 3: It was think about brilliant, Think about the cavement for
Speaker 3: the insurance. It was the insurance company, was it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a Geico.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Colonel Sanders, you were Colonel Center you were actually Colonel.
Speaker 1: Yes you were.
Speaker 2: That's but it goes smoke it bear.
Speaker 1: Well McGruff, the crime Dog, the crime the Pembridge Farm
Speaker 1: raised their sales twenty six percent with the Goldfish by
Speaker 1: naming them and giving them backstories. And you're eating them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're getting them.
Speaker 3: I mean it is.
Speaker 2: It is proven time and time again if you can
Speaker 2: create a caricature to represent your brand. Which is why
Speaker 2: I ask you today, why do we not have a
Speaker 2: brand for the show. You need a mascot for the show.
Speaker 3: We're going to get one. Why do you think Dan's
Speaker 3: Da Dave?
Speaker 2: Knowing the full I'm sure you researched our show fully.
Speaker 2: If we had to have a mascot, what what is
Speaker 2: the character? What would what would what would really counter.
Speaker 4: This?
Speaker 1: This would have to cost you a great investment and
Speaker 1: we'd have to spend four days in a room alone,
Speaker 1: take some ayahuasca, you know, go into a sweat lodge,
Speaker 1: and then we come out and we'll have the.
Speaker 2: Starts.
Speaker 3: The last one is as we as we go back
Speaker 3: to the Tommy the sort of joke where I said,
Speaker 3: rode an infestation. How did they sit around a table
Speaker 3: and come up with Chucky? My kid used to go
Speaker 3: to Tchucky Cheese all the time, and still I'm sure
Speaker 3: flourishes the guts it would take to say, you know what,
Speaker 3: let's make our spokesperson.
Speaker 2: And here I goes a sponsorship wrote right, oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, By the way, I understand that negotiations with Chucky
Speaker 3: Cheese sponsor, I spent more Have you ever taken a
Speaker 3: kid to Turkey cheese? Let me tell you something, more
Speaker 3: times than my last experience of turkey cheese was this.
Speaker 3: I'm standing there with my previous wife, which okay, and
Speaker 3: I'm standing there with a billion tokens and kids are
Speaker 3: coming up and give them tokens, and she goes, why
Speaker 3: are you giving them all this tokens? I said, because
Speaker 3: I want them to have a good time. She said,
Speaker 3: that's not our party.
Speaker 2: That's good, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: But it's just always fascinated me that that that that
Speaker 3: was there.
Speaker 1: Well, you know you've got you've got no jingles, no masks.
Speaker 1: This is funny because my kids are like, you know,
Speaker 1: adults now. They go, Dad, what do you think about
Speaker 1: the company that's And they don't need no jingles, no maskuts.
Speaker 1: I said, they're using them, just they're using them. They
Speaker 1: are talking about jingles and mascots the whole time to
Speaker 1: say we don't have them.
Speaker 2: Thank you for all those years A fantastic that you
Speaker 2: are for me.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're a rockstar, dude.
Speaker 2: And if you want to know more about everything you're
Speaker 2: doing because you're a motivational speaker, you do have the
Speaker 2: Hall of fame, and you are you do coach people
Speaker 2: about how to get into this mascot business. Raymond eg
Speaker 2: dot com is where you will find out more about
Speaker 2: Dave Raymond David go to Yes.
Speaker 4: Well, just to start out, since you mentioned Chuck E
Speaker 4: Cheese believe or not, the owner of Chuck E Cheese
Speaker 4: when buying the costume for the mascot thought he was
Speaker 4: buying a coyote costume and.
Speaker 2: Later thank you for the mistake. And the rest is
Speaker 2: you're you're terrible bets to history.
Speaker 3: Oh is that great? Wow? Wow? Can I say I
Speaker 3: just want to wrap up, but I want to say
Speaker 3: something and it's kind it's a little serious in the
Speaker 3: sense that in watching David do his thing when starting
Speaker 3: to research it, and he knows I go nuts and
Speaker 3: I go deep, I got blindsided because you started talking
Speaker 3: about fun, that it was about fun and distraction. I
Speaker 3: know you went through your dad dying anywhere, and I
Speaker 3: really got it from the fanatic that you got sixty
Speaker 3: thousand people. Everybody's got a fifty pound bag of cement
Speaker 3: in the back. Everybody's got a mom with cancer, or
Speaker 3: bills to pay or something horrible, and for just that
Speaker 3: moment in time, they can just escape that. It's a
Speaker 3: vacation for that, and people need that so badly to
Speaker 3: just to finalize what Peter said.
Speaker 2: The thing that you said that was also struck me
Speaker 2: is that you look in the stands and you see
Speaker 2: men and women of different colors, different backgrounds, different ethnicities,
Speaker 2: different countries of origins, religions and everything else, but at
Speaker 2: that moment united in one thing, and that is joy.
Speaker 2: And I listened to a a gentleman named sad Guru
Speaker 2: who says some very profound things sometimes, and he always says,
Speaker 2: someone asked them about, you know, getting involved with how
Speaker 2: good you look or should I look better? And he goes,
Speaker 2: you know, a joyful face is always a beautiful face.
Speaker 2: And you what you did, what you spend your life
Speaker 2: doing and you still do it now is it's the
Speaker 2: creation of joy.
Speaker 5: It's a sharing and you've got a positive spirit, which
Speaker 5: is which, which is why I don't know why I
Speaker 5: find him so annoying. I just found everything about it.
Speaker 5: It could be the leftover from the fanatic you know
Speaker 5: what I love about that we could just give and
Speaker 5: take us away. There's also there's an odor that's still
Speaker 5: coming from the alms that got on.
Speaker 3: Before he came.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you knew he was coming.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: No, really, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: You can watch us so you can interact with us
Speaker 2: on really noreally dot com. Tell us really, no really
Speaker 2: that you have If we do it on the show,
Speaker 2: we'll send you something and grab you say your name
Speaker 2: was send your Dave Raymond in a suit you. You
Speaker 2: can find our new episodes every Tuesday at the iHeart app,
Speaker 2: the Apple Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. If
Speaker 2: you're watching us on YouTube, thank you, and please remember
Speaker 2: to like and subscribe because that's gonna put us in
Speaker 2: the money. Thank you to producer David Good and I'm
Speaker 2: producer Lori Criminy. Everybody here, please go wash your hands,
Speaker 2: wash your hands and enjoy and spread a little joy. Peter,
Speaker 2: thank you, sir. I did wash my hands.
Speaker 3: I know that's what you We'll see you next time.