PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
He was Phantastic under green garbBy Bill Conlin
Photo by Jim McMillan
Finally, a superstar from a professional sports team in this town will retire while still in the prime of his career.
Adios, Phanatic.
The best mascot in the history of a genre that includes the West Point mule, the Naval Academy goat, Bevo, the University of Texas Longhorn, and hundreds of pale imitations is hanging up the big, green suit. Downwind, please.
Old aardvarks never die, they just incorporate and found colleges for future furry superstars.
David Raymond, the retiring Phillie Phanatic, is still crazy after 16 years. He could roll out of bed at midnight, squeeze into that huge malodorous costume, jump on his all-terrain trike and make Ebenezer Scrooge cackle wildly.
Laughter never slumps.
He's the only man in America who went to the office and spent nights legally coming on to women. Hugging them, probing their facial orifices with that party-favor tongue, dancing with them on the dugout roof.
"If I tried that, it's sexual harassment," former Pittsburgh Press baseball writer Bob Hertzel marveled one night, while Phanatic engulfed a scantily clad nymphet seated in the 100 level. "He gets a standing O."
That's "O" for ovation.
For several years, Phanatic was accompanied on his appointed rounds by a member of the late, great hot pants patrol, the Phillies' gift to sexism and large community property settlements. The idea was to keep people from grabbing handfuls of fur, feathers or whatever that green soggy stuff turned into after David had sweated about 10 quarts during a dog day afternoon.
Whenever I saw Raymond waddling out to work on one of those Sundays when it was 125 degrees on the turf, I thought of Alec Guinness' Col. Nicholson being locked into "The Oven," a corrugated tin cubicle in "The Bridge on the River Kwai."
When the ballclub quietly phased out the stunning young women who decorated the early years of Veterans Stadium, Phanatic did just fine as a solo act, thank you.
Like every great mime, from Charlie Chaplin to Marcel Marceau, Raymond put himself above and beyond the rest of the silent phylum with a wonderful improvisational feel. He was at his best working the room when it was half-empty.
One gelid night several years ago, he spotted a young couple huddled in the empty reaches of the 700 level. The young woman briefly vanished under a blanket that covered them both-ostensibly to keep warm. The Phanatic materialized several rows away and gave them one of those wonderful, paws on hips, cocked head poses of disapproval. He wagged a finger, then sidled closer, looking from side-to-side with Chaplinesque exaggeration.
By then, the young woman was redder than a Jersey tomato. Phanatic plopped into the seat next to her, reached across and ripped the blanket off the couple, covering himself. Then, with halting, shy Phanatic vulnerability, he pointed to the blanket and beckoned the girl. For the frozen fans who missed it, the moment was captured on an out take video put together by the Phillies TV production guys.
It was one of the few times in his remarkable career that Raymond was less than wholesome, G-rated act. And even that small trespass into bawdiness was no worse than PG-13.
In fact, wholesomeness was what put Raymond above and beyond his West Coast rival, Ted Giannoulas, the superb but recently X-rated San Diego Chicken.
Giannoulas had an edge the minute he put on the costume. Without twitching his beak or goosing umpire Eric Gregg with a bat handle, you knew that foul fowl was up to no good.
By contrast, there was no way the Phanatic could waddle around the bases after hitting a mock home run, pausing when he reached third the base umpire, lifting his leg like a dog at a fire hydrant. That would have been as out of character as Se. Ted Kennedy lobbying for MADD.
Nobody denied Raymond's ability to entertain. But from the time of his debut on April 25, 1978, the replacement for the terribly obvious Philadelphia Phil and Phyllis alienated baseball purists.
The anti-Phanatic forces were led by the late columnist Harold "Bus" Saidt, of The (Trenton) Times, who felt that anything short of the way Pat Piper used to open a ballgame was an intrusion into a sacred ritual to be celebrated on grass and dirt under God's sunshine.
I didn't like it myself when you hear a baseball crowd of 50,000 fans explode for a reason totally removed from the action on the field. When Phanatic takes to the roof of the Phillies' dugout in the seventh inning, most games are down to their cathartic final acts. The end game demands the undivided attention of undistracted fans.
The Phils have the tying run on second...The crowd erupts as Phanatic begins buffing the head of a bald man with his jersey...Schmitty swings...Long drive...Where the hell's the ball?...Everybody was reacting to the roar from behind the dugout...Out at the plate...Bus Saidt is bellowing like a rutting bull moose.
But, hey, this is 1993. You're dealing with the brain-dead generation, videots whose IQs are measured by their Nintendo scores. Their lives are short-attention-span theater.
Nobody can tell me that in the 16 years Phanatic has been around Mike Schmidt, Pete Rose, Steve Carlton or Lenny Dykstra has done any more to keep young fans coming to the ballpark than David Raymond did in the gorgeous, reeking costume.
I have seen Tom Burgoyne, the backup Phanatic, perform, and he is good. No wonder the Phillies have turned down my application for the job-I figured they could save some money simply by putting me in a crop duster to spray paint me green.
Burgoyne will carry on the proud tradition. But there will never be another David Raymond.
Fortunately, only we mascot purists will notice the difference.
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