let's get weird

Getting gritty with it

Q: Do you have a best friend among the other mascots? Do you have a rival?

A: "I have friends. I have enemies. They know who they are."

THERE'S NOT ENOUGH WEIRDNESS IN SPORTS.

That's not to say that sports themselves aren't a little odd. Imagine explaining the concept of going to a football game to an alien. Yeah, so thousands of people get together, many of whom put paint on their faces or wear giant blocks of cheese-shaped foam on their heads, to scream for guys in very tight clothing who try to advance a ball that is purposely oblong-shaped so it won't bounce normally. And when things go bad, they yell at a man in a striped shirt.

But once you accept that this universe exists, you have to concede that life inside it can become a little mundane. Sports are a massively big business. Not many athletes want to risk alienating their audience by being too different. Press conferences yield boring answers. Teams have the same attitude: The easiest way to appeal to a wide crowd is to play things right down the middle. Be safe. Normal. Not weird.

But there's hope. A beacon of bizarreness. Someone (thing?) who just doesn't care what you think of him. A creature who embodies everything that's wonderfully odd about not just the world of sports, but the world. A beacon we should all aspire to follow.

I'm speaking, of course, of Gritty.