Photo: Brandon Soto/Minor League Baseball via Getty Images
“We’re sending our furry child out into the world and you are the custodian of it. Now, please be careful with our child.” So John Oliver ushered the Erie Moon Mammoth’s new mascot, Fuzz E Mammoth, into Erie, Pennsylvania. The mascot was just one part of a larger rebrand Oliver was doing as part of Last Week Tonight’s gonzo journalism on Minor League Baseball teams. In may, Oliver volunteered on-air to give a makeover to a Minor League team, and nearly 50 teams stepped forward. The Last Week Tonight team eventually settled on the Detroit Tigers-affiliated Erie SeaWolves, who play nowhere near the ocean. Now the team is named after — not a cryptid — but a dude. George Moon discovered mammoth bones while scuba diving in Lake Pleasant, and thus the Minor League team name was born.
“Erie did stand out to us as being, you know, uniquely eccentric. And I say that as both a compliment and an insult, which is the biggest compliment there is,” Oliver told the Associated Press. “There was something about the Moon Mammoth that spoke to us for being particularly odd. It felt like it could make a baseball team’s theme. You could almost see the logo in your head and it felt like something to be extra surprising.” Along with bringing a mascot and throwing out the first pitch (George Moon caught it), Oliver also passed out Moon Pies to the sold out crowd. Since the rebrand, the Erie Moon Mammoths have sold four years’ worth of merch.
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