Night Owl Cards

I'm in the middle of the kind of hassle-filled day that only March can bring. So why not lend a little levity to the proceedings? I like mascots. That's a change from the past years when I didn't. Back when I first followed baseball, there were no mascots. Baseball was a joyless, regimented pursuit. Then the San Diego Chicken (first known as the KGB Chicken) was born. He was creative, funny and seemed to have a regular time slot on This Week in Baseball. The Phillie Phanatic phollowed. Then came Montreal's Youppi, which I always pegged as the mascot most likely to be beaten up. I'm not entirely clear on the order of appearance of the mascots. But somewhere in there, the Cardinals' Fred Bird snuck in, too, which I didn't think should have been allowed to happen. But allowed it was and the door swung wide open, and soon almost every team had a giant, oversized mascot. When the Red Sox trotted out Wally the Green Monster in the late '90s, I ...