Zell's Pinstriped Blog, A New York Yankees Fan Blog

Baseball has the Rally Mokey, Mr. Met, the Phillie Phanatic, and the Racing Sausages. There are nine professional sports teams in the New York market, and five do not have mascots: the Yankees, Jets, Giants, Knicks and Rangers. What about the Yankees? Why don’t they have a mascot? Some say the Yankees have an “unofficial” mascot, such as Freddy Sez but he’s not a real mascot. The Yankees Minor League affiliates actually have mascots, but there is no current mascot for the major league team. 

Well, the Yankees actually did have a mascot at one time and his name was Dandy. As Joseph M. Perello, vice president for business development for the Yankees said that as far as he knew, there was never a Yankees mascot. Lonn Trost agreed with him that the team never had one.

From 1979 to 1981, the Yankees had Dandy, who was a pinstriped character designed by Ms. Erickson. (Bonnie Erickson was part of a husband-and-wife team who ran a design and merchandising company)

He was a large pinstriped bird that sported a Yankees hat. He had a mustache that gave him an appearance similar to that of former Yankee pitcher Sparky Lyle. His name was a play on the classic American folk song “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” In the upper deck area of Yankee Stadium, to which Dandy was confined by upset Yankees management, Dandy was beaten up by fans who didn’t want a mascot. George Steinbrenner in 1998 claimed he “had no recollection” of Dandy as a mascot.

Dandy was a failure. Mr. Harrison said that was because he wasn’t allowed out of the nosebleed area in the stands. Nor did he do any outside appearances. According to Mr. Harrison, George Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ principal owner, was less than enthusiastic about the mascot after Lou Pinella, the Yankee outfielder, got so angry at the San Diego Chicken’s clowning that he threw his glove at the bird (not a Harrison/ Erickson creation). Mr. Steinbrenner, through his spokesman Howard Rubenstein, said he had no recollection of the pinstriped mascot.

Along with this experiment, the Yankees briefly had mascots resembling ballpark food (plus Yankees hats on top) during the mid-1990s. Outside of these two occasions, the Yankees have not had an official mascot or cheerleading squad roam the stands or perform on the field. Unofficial mascots have included a squirrel that Terry Kidder of the New York Times nicknamed “Right Field Ratatosk” after it was seen on the right field foul pole in late 2007.

Some think mascots are stupid, but think about what the younger part of the fan base comes to the stadium to see. Is a five year-old kid going to actually watch the game, or will he be on the lookout for the team’s mascot? Organizations want to appeal to young groups and gain a customer for life.

Do you guys think the Yankees could use a mascot? If they do, let’s hope it looks better than Dandy.

Whi is this monkey?