Gritty, 

Oh Gritty, you naïve little lint trap. You squeaky dunce. I hope you enjoyed your birthday. 

For those of you who are unaware, it was the Orange Menace’s birthday last week, and on Twitter, he asked to be roasted in honor of his second year of being alive. Believe me when I tell you that it was music to my ears. 

For those of you who aren’t me, you probably don’t realize that every time I tell someone I’m a mascot journalist, they always say, without fail, SOMETHING to do with Gritty.

“Oh, What do you think of Gritty?”

“Did Gritty get you interested in mascots?”

“I’m sure you report on Gritty quite a bit!”

It’s tiring! Like, yeah, I’ve talked about Gritty before, but he’s not the end all be all. There, I said it. As long as the Phanatic is around, Gritty will never even be the best mascot in Philadelphia. 

In “Lethal Weapon” terms, Gritty is Riggs. The Phanatic is Murtaugh, Youppi is Murtaugh. Gritty is a loose canon. Promising, but he has a lot to learn. He hasn’t even been sued yet. 

Anyways, Gritty, per your request, the rest of this column is going to be spent roasting you. Happy Birthday, you jaundiced lumberjack. 

You know, Gritty, when I first saw you, I thought you looked familiar. It wasn’t until about a month later when I was carving pumpkins and scooping the pumpkin guts onto some newspaper that I realized where I had seen you before. 

And then, about a month ago, my boyfriend caught some sort of condition in his armpits that turned his hair yellow. It was disgusting, but familiar, and it wasn’t until I saw a photo of you that I remembered where I had seen it before. 

I will say, you were a great PR move for the Flyers. When your team hasn’t won a Stanley Cup since 1975, you need to give your fans something to watch, because it certainly won’t be the hockey team. It’s like distracting people from a trainwreck with another, larger, trainwreck. 

I do think it’s very noble of the Flyers to give their new mascot a medical condition. Those panicked, hallmark bulging eyes of someone with a thyroid problem make my heart swell when I think of the representation they could bring to the mascot world. 

And hey! He’s cost effective, too! That’s what happens when you make your mascot with whatever scraps of fabric were left on the floor of a Spirit Halloween surplus warehouse. 

God, he has such a bizarre face. You have these giant, terrified eyes, and a mouth that just . . . opens? It looks like it could be a smile, sure, but the more you look at it, the more it looks like he’s seen something terrible and is just barely holding it together. It is the face that I imagine is plastered on every current and previous Chuck E. Cheese employee. What are you hiding, Gritty? What do you know?

At the end of the day, Gritty is quite the character, which is great. My job thrives on characters, and even though he looks like a guy who sweats just an unbelievable amount, he stands out, which can make him a pretty fun subject from time to time. 

Happy birthday, Gritty.

From, Sarah