Boston’s Professional Sports Team Mascots

When the kids were small, their television viewing habits included programs that featured adults stuffed into oversized costumes, dancing and cavorting about imaginary places such as Sesame Street, Teletubbyland and the Big Blue House.

Now, the life-size stuffies are right at home in professional and collegiate sports. They are called mascots.

Team mascots are nothing new, but could you imagine Babe Ruth hamming it up with Wally back in the day?

SportMascots.com says, "Let's not sugarcoat it – the goal has always been (and largely is today) to help the teams sell merchandise and popularize it."

There is a Mascot Hall of Fame in Whiting, Indiana, with 29 inductees, including the Phillie Phanatic, the (Phoenix) Suns Gorilla, and Jaxson de Ville (Jacksonville Jaguars). Each year since 2005, mascots are elected to the Mascot Hall of Fame.

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All five Massachusetts-based professional sports teams have mascots, as do most, but not all professional sports teams, though none from Massachusetts are in the Mascot Hall of Fame.

In Major League Baseball (MLB), the Boston Red Sox mascot is Wally the Green Monster. Wally is more kid-friendly and less intimidating.

The National Football League's (NFL) New England Patriots have Pat Patriot. The original mascot was a Revolutionary War soldier. The current rendition bears a resemblance to Elvis.

Many fans still like the original mascot better and retro Patriots gear with that image still sells well.

The Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association have Lucky the Leprechaun featured mainly as artwork, though Lucky is known to hang around TD Garden. Fun fact: the original Lucky was designed by Zang Auerbach, brother of Celtics legendary coach and executive Red Auerbach.

The National Hockey League's Boston Bruins put Blades, a bipedal brown bear, on the ice. Blades was named by nine-year-old Jillian Dempsey in 2000, who later grew up to be a professional hockey player.

Blades is probably the most fearsome-looking of all of the Boston team mascots.

Slyde the Fox gets the job done for the New England Revolution of Major League  Soccer (MLS). I hear Slyde is well-known for trash-talking with the other mascots.

The Pawtucket Red Sox had Paws and Sox as co-mascots before the team moved to Worcester and became the WooSox.

Many of the college sports teams in New England have mascots as well.