A dead penguin, a drug-running parrot and the dark past of Pittsburghs mascots ·

02 Jun 2024, 00:00

The penguin was first, and the penguin died. Pittsburgh is no place for mascots. Someone should’ve realized it back then.

Nobody did. And thus, the history of one of America’s great sports cities has — for five decades and counting — doubled as a parade of some of the field’s strangest, most fraught, most bizarre stories on record. It’s an odd niche to occupy, one where the Pirates’ mascot runs drugs and the Steelers mascot terrifies children, but here we are. If you don’t know, it might be time to learn.

Is it a three-franchise city, punching above its weight class yet again? Is it a series of lightning strikes? Is it a curse? If you figure it out, let us know. And if you’re dressed up as a sausage, beware.

The death of Pete Penguin

Here’s how it was supposed to work: “Pete Penguin” would escort the players on to the ice. Later, he’d walk out of the tunnel during intermissions. He’d zoom around with a stick in his mouth, maybe, and with skates on his feet, certainly. Everyone would be happy. Everyone would cheer. It’d be a groundbreaking tradition for a brand new NHL team in a brand new NHL city. A skating penguin for the skating Penguins. Too easy. Why hadn’t anyone done this before?

Here’s how it actually worked: the bird waddled out a handful times over a nine-month period — if he ever skated, it was only in the most academic sense of the term — and then he died. Ah, yes. That’s why nobody had done this before.

Decent shorthand, really, for the futility of the franchise’s first couple decades. Seven years before they blew a 3-0 playoff lead against the Islanders and saw the I.R.S. padlock the doors, they … well, they didn’t kill professional hockey’s first live mascot. But he died, for sure.

Now, did Pete actually catch pneumonia at the rink in November 1968? That’s impossible to know for a couple of reasons. The first: Penguin autopsies weren’t standard during the Nixon administration, and if one was performed, the results are long gone. We’ll get to the second reason in a bit.

What we can say — contrary to some old newspaper accounts of the whole deal — is that if Pete got sick, it wasn’t because the ice crew at the arena kept his living quarters too warm. This is because Pete didn’t live at the arena. He (a bird) lived at the Pittsburgh Zoo (where many birds live) and showed up at the arena at game time. Also, he was either a Humboldt or Galapagos penguin; those are equator-area species.

“It was probably more natural causes,” Joe Gordon said. He worked in public relations for the Penguins those first two seasons before starting a decades-long run with the Steelers. “A major reason — and I have no medical backing for this — was the stress factor.”

You could almost hear the poker voice through the phone.

“Oh yeah, you put a lot of stress on an animal when you take him out of the natural environment, put him in a totally foreign situation and walk him out on the ice with loud noises, cheering people — it probably got to him mentally.”

He definitely wasn’t a physical match for the job. Buddy was less than two feet tall, more accustomed to warm water than ice and, again, a bird. “Pete,” Gordon said, “looked like a big chicken.”

Jack McGregor, the team’s first president, was undeterred. The plan, after Pete’s two initial appearances in front of the crowd in February 1968 (sponsored by Western Electric), was in place.

“He’ll skate and carry a stick before games and between periods, but we haven’t signed him to a contract,” McGregor said ahead of the 1968-69 season, which was the team’s second. “We can’t tell whether he shoots righty or lefty, and wouldn’t know where to play him anyway, although there probably were times last season when coach Red Sullivan might’ve found a place for him.”

So, naturally, McGregor ordered custom-made skates and, he swore, set up some lessons. Now, the plan was in action.

“If it was, it was unrealistic,” Gordon said. “I never saw him get any skating lessons. (McGregor) likes to embellish that story.”

In 2012, former player Gene Ubriaco said he saw Pete on roller skates before practice and, presumably, did not write it off as a hallucination. Former general manager Jack Riley told the Canadian Press in 1968 that, if nothing else, actual skates made their way onto Pete’s feet, or flippers, or whatever they are. “He always wanted to flop on his stomach,” Riley said. “We couldn’t get him to stand up on them.”

In fairness, they didn’t have many opportunities. Pete — sans skates and stick — showed up for the Penguins’ first seven games of the 1968-69 season. Early returns were not great. “The Penguin was out of his element when they had him parade on the ice,” Gordon said. “I think he was doomed.”

On Nov. 16, Pete did his job for a game against the New York Rangers. Five days later, he died.

He also is not on display at the Penguins’ offices, though he was for a few weeks in 1969. Shortly after the team had him stuffed and put behind glass, someone broke him out. It could’ve been a fan, or an animal lover, or an animal hater. It could’ve been an inside job. Jack McGregor is on Team Theft; he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2016 that he thought a fan was responsible. A few years before, he blamed “an animal-firster thief.”

His son, Doug, had a simpler explanation; people don’t love being greeted at the elevator by a dead bird, so they complained. “I think Pete got chucked in the Dumpster,” he told the Edmonton Sun in 2013.

In any case, Pete hasn’t been seen in 50 years — so an exhumation is also out of the question. We’re never going to know how he died.

There is an upside, though. By the end of the 1969 season, replacement “Slapshot Pete” (or “Re-Pete,” depending on whom you ask) was in place. He was a king penguin, so he physically fit the bill, and he had some help from another Pete. (The fourth, for those keeping track. He is the first human.) As the Zoo’s longtime supervisor of grounds and buildings, Peter Schepis built and maintained animal habitats. He also moonlighted as Slapshot’s handler, which meant carting the bird between the zoo and promotional appearances in his family station wagon.

“You had to hope you were close to your destination,” Schepis’ granddaughter Adriane LaRussa said, “because that would stink up the car for the rest of the trip.”

Schepis and Live Penguin No. 2 were on the job until 1975. Everyone made it out alive.

“That penguin was probably more attuned and more stable to the pressures of the job,” Gordon said. “Maybe he was more mature than Pete.”

Maybe. He still couldn’t skate.

Drug trials and other Pirates’ mascot miscues

“My partner and I approached the, uh, Pirate Parrot and solicited his cooperation in our investigation.”

It might be one of the more surreal lines ever uttered in law enforcement.

FBI special agent Wells Morrison was working on a drug case that first started in 1984 when an informant told the Bureau of a drug deal involving a Pittsburgh Pirates player. By September 1985, several marquee players — including Dave Parker, Keith Hernandez, Tim Raines, Lonnie Smith, Jeffrey Leonard, Al Holland, Rod Scurry and Lee Lacy — testified in a federal trial that exposed widespread cocaine use in baseball.

One of the biggest players in the scandal wasn’t a player at all.

Kevin Koch was chosen from the more than 120 applicants to wear the Parrot suit when the mascot debuted in 1979. By day, he entertained kids and families at Three Rivers Stadium. By night, he helped supply cocaine to some of the best baseball players in the world.

Koch had grown close to several players during his time around the team, often partying with them into the wee hours of the morning.

“More or less, I was part of the family,” Koch said during an interview on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” in 2011. “It was amazing to be part of that, to know those guys. It was like a childhood dream.”

Cocaine was the drug of choice in the early 1980s, and the players worked with Koch to supply it because he would deliver it directly to them. Eventually Koch, who did not respond to an interview request with The Athletic, introduced several players to one of his closest friends, Dale Shiffman, a freelance photographer. Shiffman acquired cocaine for four or five players and Koch handled the deliveries. In the 2011 interview, Shiffman told HBO that “15 to 17” of the Pirates were using cocaine during the season.

“I never stopped to think,” Koch told ANG Newspapers in 2016. “I thought, ‘This will last forever. We’ll never get caught.’ Boy, the choices you make are huge. The drugs end up taking your dignity away.”

After the 1984 FBI tip, federal agents came to Pittsburgh and interviewed several players — including Scurry, who was one of Koch and Shiffman’s biggest clients. Eventually, the agents uncovered a network of drug dealers who supplied players on several teams. The ring extended beyond Pittsburgh.

When the FBI caught up with him in the spring of 1985, Koch cut a deal to avoid prosecution by giving evidence against Shiffman, who was indicted on 111 counts of conspiring to possess cocaine and distribution of cocaine from April 6, 1982 to Nov. 8, 1984.

“I felt like Judas,” Koch said.

When the indictments were handed down in Pittsburgh, Gary Ogg, Shiffman’s lawyer, referred to “witnesses who came forward under immunity to save their careers, their lives. Mr. Shiffman is being made the scapegoat. Certain individuals felt someone had to take the brunt of this and he’s the one.”

An all-star lineup of players was granted immunity in exchange for their grand jury testimony. Twenty-one players were implicated and 11 later were suspended by MLB, but all the penalties were commuted in exchange for fines and community service.

Shiffman and six other men later pleaded guilty instead of facing trial. He was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison but was released after serving two years.

Koch was fired by the Pirates and moved to Fremont, Calif., where he worked as a truck driver. Koch now lives in South Carolina.

The Pirate Parrot survived, after a redesign. But it and other Pirates-affiliated mascots haven’t been able to escape controversy in the years that followed.

The man who portrayed the short-lived “Buccaneer” was arrested for skinny-dipping in 1995 and promptly fired. The Pirate Parrot was issued a fake gun license from the Allegheny County Sherrif’s Office in 2016 and quickly earned a heap of scorn after photos of the Parrot’s gun license circulated on social media. Two years later, team president Frank Coonelly spoke at a Republican fundraiser that also included GOP operative Kellyanne Conway, congressional candidate Rick Saccone and the Pirate Parrot. The appearance later prompted Coonelly to release the following statement, which trails only Wells Morrison’s quote as the most bizarre reference to the Pirate Parrot in a formal setting:

Neither I, nor the Parrot, were promoting any candidate, any party, any political slate. We were there to get people in Pittsburgh excited about the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Then, of course, there’s Randall Simon, whose actions on July 9, 2003, are as baffling today as they were back then.

Why did he pick up a 34 1/2-inch, 33-ounce bat and swat one of the Milwaukee Brewers’ famous racing sausages in full view of 22,400 fans at Miller Park?

Let’s, uh, let Simon explain.

“I thought it was going to be all in fun,” Simon said. “Sometimes, we play with the mascots. I wasn’t trying to hurt her. It shouldn’t have happened like that.”

The Pirates were in the middle of a four-game road series against the Brewers. Before the top of the seventh inning, the four sausage mascots — Italian, Polish, bratwurst and hot dog — jogged their usual course from left field to right. As the pack passed in front of the Pirates’ dugout, Simon tapped the head of the Italian sausage with a bat.

The bat didn’t connect with the woman inside the costume, Mandy Block, a 19-year-old Brewers employee. But she was knocked off balance and crashed, dragging the hot dog down with her.

“I did not see what happened,” Brewers manager Ned Yost said at the time. “I just looked up and saw the weenies in a wad.”

Block and the other racer were treated at the ballpark for scraped knees. After the game — which the Pirates lost, 2-1 — Simon was arrested by Milwaukee County sheriff’s deputies, whisked away in handcuffs and booked for battery.

Simon was fined $432 for disorderly conduct and released. Although he could have faced a misdemeanor battery charge, which carries a maximum penalty of $10,000 and nine months in prison, no criminal charges were filed.

The Today Show and SportsCenter highlighted video of the incident. One television news broadcast in Milwaukee labeled it the “Miller Park Assault.” Brewers VP of business operations Rick Schlesinger fed the hype by calling Simon’s swing “one of the most despicable things I’ve seen in a ballpark … an insane act of a person whose conduct is unjustifiable. It sickened me to see it.”

Instead of threatening a lawsuit, Block asked for an apology and an autographed bat. Simon eagerly complied. “It makes me feel good,” he said. “There’s no hate or anything.”

Simon was suspended three games and fined $2,000 by MLB.

No doubt wary of being known only as the “sausage race girl,” Block has hidden from the spotlight. On the 10th anniversary of the incident, she politely declined an interview request from Deadspin, saying, “I can’t imagine I’d have anything exciting to add to the already hilarious wiener debacle of 2003.”

The mascot nobody asked for

He’s a tempting target, Steely McBeam.

Strike 1? He’s a mascot. Strike 2? He’s an NFL mascot. Strike 3? He’s a relatively new NFL mascot. Strike 4? He’s a relatively new mascot for a traditional and/or hidebound NFL team. Strike 5? Look at that face. Stare into its eyes. Things for him were never going to be easy. Things for him were always going to be hard.

But man, that initial reaction back in 2007 felt like it was next-level negative. Now, with the passage of time, things have mellowed — “What the hell is going in with the Steelers mascot?” was a PTI segment, so the baseline was high — but old anxieties still crop up. The only mascot polls he’s doing well in are “creepiest.”

Butter Steely McBeam will eat your soul and vomit it into a hellhole https://t.co/PQ1qUtX7Zg pic.twitter.com/CEKWlf4GYJ

— Virginia Montanez (@JanePitt) January 2, 2020

It’d be easy to blame the decrease in attention on the Steelers marginalizing him over the past few years. It’d also be incorrect. Steely McBeam, in a few ways, was born an orphan. He was marginalized from the jump. That was a feature, not a bug.

McBeam’s development, introduction and deployment were, more than anything, the fulfillment of an NFL request, according to multiple mascot-industry sources. At the time, virtually every other franchise had some sort of mascot/mascot-adjacent representative to make community appearances. The Steelers? Nope.

The response — and remember, this is when Dan Rooney was still at the helm — was to say, essentially, “Fine. We’ll get a mascot, and we’ll send him to 5Ks and chambers of commerce and Verizon store openings, and he can hang around in tailgating lots and stadium suites, but that’s pretty much it.”

One big reason to do that, according to a source? “(Dan Rooney) hated it. Hated it. Absolutely hated it. Hated the mascot, hated the concept, hated the hoopla.”

Thus, you’ve never seen Steely McBeam in the end zone, mugging for the camera during field-goal attempts, because he’s not supposed to be on the field at all. Those who have tried have been scolded. Leading the team out of the tunnel? Not gonna happen. Ever. That’s typical mascot behavior. It also was never part of The McBeam Plan. The term “limited visibility” is and always has applied.

“I think (the organization’s approach to Steely are) measured. That’s probably the best way to put it,” Zach Scheimer said. He wore the suit as an intern in 2011, then full time during the 2013-14 seasons. Now, he’s working in marketing in Austin. Back then, he was a college student looking for something to put on his resume.

“So of course I asked about making a social media profile for Steely, just to get him out there in some other way,” Scheimer said. “That got turned down. In retrospect, I don’t know if I blame them. When I started doing it and saw the fan reactions, it’s just not the same as with Pirate Parrot or Iceburgh. I think they do understand how the fans feel about him, and that means hitting more community events than anything else.”

And while those crowds tend to be more welcoming than the ones at the stadium — early on, McBeam walked on site with a security guard out of necessity — they still tend to be underwhelmed. Folks will still have their pictures taken. They’ll just crack some jokes beforehand. It’s a mixed bag.

“I don’t know if there’s anything the organization can do better. I honestly don’t know,” Scheimer said. “The community stuff was always well-received. The kids that weren’t terrified of Steely really loved him. But it’s a Bill Cowher chin, and it’s not the Pirate Parrot or Iceburgh. When the three are at an event, you know which ones kids are gonna gravitate to.”

So, no, things aren’t great for Steely McBeam. They never have been. But if nobody else, he’s got Diane Roles. The Steelers, months before the announcement, ran a “Name The Mascot” contest on their website. Roles entered, then forgot about it until the phone rang in August 2007.

“I have a swimming pool, and I was watching my grandchildren through my kitchen window while I’m making spaghetti sauce and meatballs and so forth. So here I am, I’m making dinner, I’m watching all the grandkids — I think there was four of them in the pool. I pick up the phone, and a young lady says to me ‘Is this Diane Roles?- I say, ‘Yes it is.’ … ‘Did you enter a contest?’

“From time to time, I entered different contests. And I said, ‘yeah.’ And she says to me, ‘Well, this is the Steelers calling you, and we want to inform you that your mascot name was selected.’ And I said, ‘Oh really?’ For the life of me, at that particular moment, I couldn’t remember what I put down, y’know. I said, ‘Oh, will you tell me what it is?’ She starts laughing, and she says, ‘It’s Steely McBeam.’”

The rationale tracks. Steely? Well … Mc? The Rooneys are Irish. Beam? Steel beam. Also, Jim Beam. Within a couple of hours, a KDKA news crew was at Roles’ home in Valencia, Pa., for an impromptu family party by the pool.

She didn’t have a chance to ask what she won — but the haul was solid. Signed jerseys, helmets, tickets, a free cell phone plan that she and her husband passed down to their oldest granddaughter: “We got everything. It was awesome.”

Plus, of course, that interview in her yard. Roles came out of that with a “beautiful photo book” and, yes, some internet fame. After the segment aired, one of Roles’ daughters-in-law heard a familiar voice in her Downtown office.

“There are people in the next cubicle, all watching me. So she goes over and she goes, ‘That’s my mother-in-law!’”

The original KDKA video has been viewed more than 100,000 times and was included as an example in a 2014 Gawker bracket of regional accents — which Roles brought up in our talk. She remains the best of sports.

“I’m from the city,” she said. “I’m from Lawrenceville. I mean, I’m 74 years old, and that’s the way I talk! It’s just so natural. And here I am with my daughter-in-laws — it’s not my sons, so much, but my daughter-in-laws, they jag the heck out of me. ‘How do you say wash? How do you say finish?’ And I just laugh and talk.”

Those are Roles’ two daughters-in-law and two sons. She claimed a third, though.

“A lot of my relatives, when they see (the mascot), they’re taking pictures with him, and they always send them to me and say, ‘Here’s your son,’ stuff like that. And he’s mine. He’s my Steely.”

So, the franchise might not love Steely McBeam. The fanbase might not either. But Diane Roles does. That counts for something.

(Illustration: Stu Ohler / The Athletic)

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A dead penguin, a drug-running parrot and the dark past of Pittsburghs mascots

The death of Pete Penguin

Drug trials and other Pirates’ mascot miscues

The mascot nobody asked for

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