The Cubs Have A New Mascot And It Isn't Ronnie 'Woo Woo' Wickers (Though Maybe It Should Be)
By Chuck Sudo in News on Jan 13, 2014 10:50PM
Image courtesy Chicago Cubs.
“Clark” the Cub will make his first appearance Monday night when he scares children at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center’s Pediatric Developmental Center in a private meeting, accompanied by several prospects in the Cubs’ farm system. Clark was conceived after fan interviews and surveys revealed fans wanted to see more family-friendly entertainment instead of the crumbling Margaritaville that Wrigley Field currently resembles. From the looks of the drawings, the Cubs’ marketing department wound up trying to make Clark appeal to both innocent children attending their first game at the Friendly Confines and the bros and Trixies they’ll eventually grow up to become.
A release from the Cubs announcing Clark reads he “will be a champion for Cubs Charities' mission of targeting improvements in health and wellness, fitness and education for children, and families at risk.” He also will “not be on top of the dugout between innings, tossing T-shirts or hot dogs into the stands, and it won't disrupt the game. Instead, Clark will greet fans as they enter Wrigley Field, and also stop by the ballpark's ‘First Timers Booth’ to welcome new guests. On family Sundays, the mascot will help kids run the bases after the game.” This proves the Cubs can’t even announce a new mascot properly. Yeah, Clark isn’t going to be like Southpaw and the group of college girls in hot pants who dance atop the dugouts at X-rated White Sox games! If a mascot isn’t dancing on top of dugouts, pissing off players in both, trying to get the digits of the women three rows back, tossing hot dogs and T-shirts into the stands, what good is he?
The announcement of Clark as the new Cubs mascot definitively answers the question of whether the Ricketts family is interested in working with John Paul Weier, the man best known as being behind the “Billy Cub” mascot that busks outside Wrigley Field during home games. Weier, who has made Billy Cub something of a cottage industry, offered his services to the team as the official mascot, which went over as well as, well, a bear cub ruining a picnic. It would be funny to see Weier, as Billy Cub, continue to do his thing outside the ballpark despite receiving cease and desist orders only to be served lawsuit papers by someone in a Clark the Cub suit.
Clark’s announcement hasn’t gone over well, at least in the blogosphere. Deadspin’s Tim Marchman called Clark “nothing less than the product of a design competition held at a furry message board.”
Generally, pantsless anthropomorphic animals pull off a certain sexlessness that keeps them from looking like voracious predators; Clark, with his shirsey covering his allegedly sexless crotch, with his shoes only calling attention to his pantslessness, represents a disturbing new variation on the threat that has always loomed behind the Cubs' seemingly friendly facade. With his arrival, Wrigley will now be known to Midwesterners less as a green cathedral than as a house of nightmares through which a freakish, perverted bear will chase you, forever.