Gritty: why the Philadelphia Flyers' new acid trip of a mascot must be stopped
The Flyers’ new googly-eyed mascot embodies everything that’s good and bad about the author’s hometown. But mostly the badPhiladelphia is home to the undisputed king of professional sports mascots: the Phillie Phanatic. No less esteemed a source than Wikipedia reveals he is “widely acknowledged as one of the best ballpark mascots” and “arguably the most recognizable mascot in all of North American sports”.You can imagine the horror, then, when he got a new sibling this week: Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers’ new mascot, is a horrifying bearded man-Muppet hybrid whose eyes are permanently rolling in their sockets, presumably from years of drug use. He is a nightmarish frat boy who communicates only in bro-friendly gestures – the guy who was loudly...