Baseball Shorts: How an Ejected Manager Became a Mascot

In today’s episode of “Baseball Shorts,” we pay attention to a Minor League manager that was ejected after a bench clearing brawl and who became the mascot of the team.

In baseball, ejections are from all times. Not only players are ejected at times, also managers, and heck, even mascots. But ejected managers becoming mascots? It happened once in 1993.

We’re talking about Tim Flannery. Back in 1993, he was managing the Spokane Indians. In a game where the Spokane Indians hosted cross state rival Bellingham Mariners hell broke loose.

At one point of the game, a Mariners runner crashed into the Indians’ catcher during a close play at the plate. Tensions got high, but both benches stayed in the dugouts. But a future MLB player was on the mound and he was a kind of hothead. Since both sides had a warning already, Flannery went to the mound to urge him to let it go and settle this some time later.

After Flannery was back in the dugout, Greg Keagle, hit the batter with his first pitch after the time out. As a result, the benches cleared and Flannery was tossed. Totally ticked off, Flannery went to his office that was beneath the Indian’s dugout. Suddenly, the new team’s mascot passed. Flannery ordered him to take off the suit, and he (Flannery) put it on and snuck back into the dugout and sat on the bench to watch how the game might end.

The coaches sensed something was odd but they knew for sure when the mascot, named Otto the Spokaneasaurus, held up a sign for his players to play on double play defense.

With the Indians trailing by four runs, Fannery entered the diamond during the seventh-inning stretch and did a dance around home plate. Apparently, Flannery fired up his players because they clinched a comeback from behind victory over Bellingham.

After the final out, Flannery had to get back to his office as the umpires would leave the field as well and pass his office. He was just in time to take off the mascot suit and acted like he still was in rage when the umpires came by.

Since there were not many TV cameras in MiLB in those days, league officials, umpires and other teams never figured out it was Flannery in the mascot suit on that eventful night in 1993.