The Peculiar Truth about Crazy Crab, the Hated Sports Mascot
Published in
3 min readApr 18, 2023
- The San Francisco Giants in the mid-1980s were an underachieving Major League Baseball team.
- They played home games at windy, foggy Candlestick Park. Day games would be cold and blustery… even in mid-August. (Most Northern Californians know Mark Twain’s quote: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”)
- Between having a losing team and the unpleasant natural elements, attendance suffered.
- At the beginning of the season, the Giants created a TV ad that satirized baseball mascots.
- The Padres had the San Diego Chicken. Philadelphia had the Phillie Phanatic. But the Giants had no masco t. And they knew their fans didn’t want one.
- In the TV ad, team manager Frank Robinson got angry at a fictitious costumed character called Crazy Crab.
- Rather than being lovable and friendly, Crazy Crab was… crabby. Unlikeable. Not cuddly. The opposite of all other mascots.
- A local actor named Wayne Doba was hired to wear the costume in the commercial. He had appeared in a few horror movies in prosthetic makeup as monsters and freaks. He also had experience in dance and as a mime.
- Crazy Crab was created just for the TV ad. It was never intended to become a recurring…
