The 2021 World Series champs Atlanta Braves and the legendary Philadelphia Phillies are set to battle it out for the best of five in the National League Division Series this week. And the teams’ mascots are getting into the spirit of competition. Blooper, the Atlanta Braves’ newest mascot, recently took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to roast the Phillie Phanatic — one of the most unique mascots in all of baseball.
“I get that the Phanatic is an OG but his last highlight was recorded with a flash bulb, it’s shocking you guys hate Dallas so much because you relive Phanatic’s glory days the same way they relive their super bowls,” Blooper said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The post has since garnered tons of comments from fans on both sides of the field.
A 300-pound, 6-foot-6-inches “purely fantasy animal,” Major League Baseball’s official description of the Phillie Phanatic describes him as “overweight, clumsy feet, extra long beak, extra-long curled up tongue, gawking neck and ‘slight’ case of body odor.”
Developed by Bonnie Erickson in 1978, the Phillies mascot was designed to make a splash.
“I think I wanted to make a shape that was going to have its own sort of character,” Bonnie told WBUR in 2019. “So that if you put a performer or a human being in it, it was going to be funny just because of the way it moved.”
The mascot’s iconic snout was designed to make the Phillie Phanatic as fanatic as possible.
“They had a slogan which was ‘Philly, Be a Phillie Phanatic,’” Bonnie says. “I took that as wanting to have a megaphone. So that’s where the snout for the Phanatic came from.”
Perhaps the greatest piece of the mascot’s backstory, however, is his origin.
“He evolved in the Galapagos and became this enormous baseball fan,” Bonnie explains. “Because, we figured, who could contest that? This seemed to be the perfect background for a character that nobody could describe. It’s a purely fantasy animal.”
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