Before Mr. Met, the Mets had a much cuter mascot, Homer the Beagle. They had to get rid of him, though, because beagles are beagles.
There are 30 MLB teams, and not one of them has a live mascot. The Rays have a fishtank, but that's it. The Chicago Cubs do not have an adorable baby bear. The Baltimore Orioles do not have a warbling bird. The Diamondbacks don't fling snakes into the crowd every half-inning. Well, maybe the last one is a good thing.
However, that was not always the case:
@lana original Hank pic.twitter.com/Vh2Eowysbb
— Z (@ZacHAttach7) July 26, 2014Pictured above is Homer the Beagle, a dog I did not know existed prior to that above picture, apparently from the Hall of Fame. As a New Yorker and the owner of a beagle, I was absolutely delighted to finally learn of Homer's existence.
Googling brought us another pic of Homer, from Faith and Fear in Flushing, who scanned it from Jack Lang's The New York Mets: 25 Years of Baseball Magic
We needed to know everything about Homer, his floppy ears, and his ability to hold Mets-related banners in his mouth.
Homer was the mascot of the Mets in their inaugural year, a miserable team that played in the Polo Grounds and went 40-120-1. Despite a complete, utter lack of talent, they managed to attract over 900,000 fans in a city that had just lost the Giants and the Dodgers.
Of course, their ability to attract huge throngs to watch a hapless team was probably linked primarily to Homer, the adorable baseball dog, right? As Richard Sandomir of the New York Times wrote in a 2012 profile of Mr. Met:
Trained by Rudd Weatherwax, who put multiple Lassies through their paces, Homer rooted on the Mets in 1962, their first season. Manager Casey Stengel hated him and refused to let the beagle sit on the Mets’ bench.Homer was supposed to celebrate a Mets home run by running the bases at the Polo Grounds. According to Roger Angell’s book "Game Time," Homer performed well in rehearsals, but in his first real test he touched first base and second, then took a detour and raced to center field. He had to be wrangled by "three fielders, two ushers and the handler," according to the book.
Homer was fired.
Oh, well maybe not.
We blame the Mets for trying to convince a beagle to do anything besides "sprint around, smell something, and then sprint after the thing it just smelled," which accounts for 98 percent of beagle activity. The puppy got to second base and then realized there were hot dogs somewhere in the stadium and hey maybe if I run towards them I can put them in my mouth hey maybe if I run towards them I can put them in my mouth hey maybe if I run towards them I can put them in my --
By 1964, there was a real life Mr. Met. You can see a drawing of Mr Met on one of those pennants Homer was holding, but the man with the leather head did not have a physical manifestation at the time. The downgrade from adorable puppy to baseball-headed freak is enormous.
This could've been different. The Mets could've bred a series of Homers, gleeful dinger-loving dogs, capturing the hearts and minds of New York while the staid, tradition-obsessed Yankees refused to sully their stadium with such low-minded, lovable gimmickry. Instead of a kitschy apple emerging from a hat, the pup-adoring crowds would rise and chant HOOOO-MER! HOOOO-MER! HOOOOMER! as the gleeful beagle -- Homer VII, by this point -- bounded around the bases.
Sadly, the Mets didn't realize what could've been. Also, they couldn't train the beagle, because beagles are beagles.