He arrived as if a meteor had collided with a bag of Cheetos residue on the Schuykill Expressway.
He was unsightly. He was unkempt. He had a physique suited for competitive belly-bucking. Quite frankly, he looked like the Muppet who got hooked on the bad stuff so Jim Henson had to show him tough love and let him live under the highway overpass.
I instantly fell in love.
He is, of course, Gritty, the new mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers who exploded onto the scene in late September with a resounding head scratch. But with his menacing grin, straggly, ginger beard, and demonic, googly eyes, he was transfixing. People couldn’t stop looking and asking: What the hell’s a Gritty?
It is no accident that Gritty looks the way he does. He is a mirror to the City of Brotherly Love, which has traditionally preferred fisticuffs to hugs. But Gritty is in on the joke. He is a skating, body-checking embodiment of Philly accepting its own bruised, darkened soul.
When the curious creature debuted, he lived rent free on late-night shows, morning shows, and everyone’s Twitter time line. He inspired memes, mockery, nightmares, and, after his first appearance on the ice, very little confidence. The seven-foot monster hit the rink during a preseason match up against the Penguins and he clumsily landed right on his giant culo. He later tweeted, “Why didn’t anybody tell me the ice is this slippery.”
But to quote that Rihanna song: We found love in a hopeless place. In a matter of days, Gritty would crawl from the bowels of the Wells Fargo Center to become far more than a bizarre Philly avatar. He is now America’s mascot.
To understand the magic of Gritty — the son of a “bully” who, according to the Flyers’ website, lived in the Wells Fargo Center until some construction shook him from his hiding nook — one must know his genesis. The hulking, hirsute, orange monster wasn’t born in some bonkers imaginarium. He was essentially concocted (with Pennsylvania artist Brian Allen) in the team’s marketing office. In true Philly form, they didn’t deliver a sanitized, safe, corporate product. They gave us the guy who might have a pretty thick file with human resources; a dude who in another life definitely logged hours at the Veterans Stadium jail.
And we can’t get enough.
Just look at his performance during an intermission when children played a quick game on the ice. After a pint-sized player roughed him up, Gritty picked him up and threw him in the penalty box. This week in a video, he visited ESPN darling Katie Nolan where he re-enacted the cue card “Love Actually” scene by saying he’s followed her on Twitter forever. But then he unleashed the real animal. He laid into her for a recent tweet telling her she doesn’t understand an NFL rule and mocked another young female ESPN talent, Mina Kimes. “Maybe you’d know this if you played the game,” his sign said.
Gritty has become an Internet alchemist (kudos to the Flyers’ social media team). The night he was introduced to the world, he recreated the infamous “Internet-breaking” 2014 Kim Kardashian Paper magazine cover by legendary French photographer Jean Paul Goude where the champagne stream perfectly lands in a glass on her ample rear. Only instead of a champagne bottle, Gritty, a man of the people, used a Gatorade bottle.
Since then, he has provided enough viral moments to fill his own Gritty Gazette. He’s crashed a wedding, accepted an Oscars hosting gig, was named one of Ad Age’s Creativity All Stars,and, last month, he even drained a half-court shot during halftime of the Rutgers-Michigan State basketball game. This guy can’t miss. Even humorless Antifa tried to claim him.
Strangely enough, Gritty has become a bright spot in a year that made throwing pitchforks surpass baseball as our national pastime.
While Maury Povich hasn’t yet completed a DNA test, it’s safe to assume he is somehow related to the Phillie Phanatic. The fun-loving, green, flightless bird rose to prominence in the late ’70s and ’80s by riding his ATV around the stadium and taunting opposing players. But if the Phanatic is the goofball, Gritty is the Van Wilder of the fuzzy fraternity. He can out-party and out-fun everyone in the room. Gritty is the dude you want to shotgun a few beers with and go streaking late at night. Don’t worry, he’ll be able to charm the cops out of arresting you.
Conjuring up a mascot that adults want to high-five and kids want to hug isn’t an easy feat. There is a litany of costumed critters who never quite translated. Friar Dom of Providence University looks like the creepy guy from “Poltergeist II” and will most likely put your children into therapy for years to come. Sparty from Michigan State is far too earnest. Nebraska’s Lil’ Red probably sold you the worst used car on the lot.
Gritty just wants to make you laugh, at both him and yourself. And that is something we simply don’t do enough of these days.
