I saw a video of Wally’s cheesy introduction where the crowd was going mild and the camera cut to kids with blank expressions. Commenters were saying that people hated Wally at one point.
I saw a video of Wally’s cheesy introduction where the crowd was going mild and the camera cut to kids with blank expressions. Commenters were saying that people hated Wally at one point.
Winning a World Series helps everything.
It was a moody World Series starved fan base ready to sacrifice Wally to the baseball gods for the prize
https://preview.redd.it/16t24xcwigcg1.jpeg?width=194&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=33fd2b8ca197f03317cdb3376e8be40f971c3a89
I feel like Jerry Remy was instrumental in helping make Wally more popular. I'm not sure when it began, but he conspicuously placed a Wally plush in a tiny Adirondack chair on the ledge of the NESN booth. He would reference the Wally plush during the broadcasts and it became a good luck charm. I seem to remember Remy doing stuff like standing Wally on his head when the Sox needed a rally. He was doing it during the '99 season, but perhaps even earlier.
RIP RemDawg!! Buenos Noches Amigos!!
I can hear his laugh that always followed now, thank you
All I can think of is “PizzaGate” lmao he and Orsillo were gasping for air they were laughing so hard!!
The dead air during that is perfect, it’s hard to know why it’s silent but then you realize they are out of air laughing so hard. They are real pros pulling in together to break down the play.
https://youtu.be/ufSQMXLO95w?si=kCi22NUKePAYyMXD
Here is the complete pizzagate incident!! lol
I had a little Wally like this too. We'd always make sure he was facing the TV for big playoff games and moments. I don't know where he is.
Maybe that's the problem...
REM dog is the only reason I give a f about that stupid mascot
He gave him a whole persona. One time in Minnesota (I think) Remy went on a long tangent about how Wally had been out all night and came back to their hotel singing “living la vida loca.”
Exactly...Remy would go on these hilarious "stories" of Wally out partying while on road trips. I swear one time the telecast showed a fake graphic of Wally in a limo, too.
It made Wally more likeable to fans who thought it was a boring mascot.
I still have my Wally with chair signed by Rem Dawg. I agree with you completely.
Yea this is what happened. Wally just didn’t have any identity so he was hopelessly lame. Remy changed all that.
Wally was a break of tradition and was perceived by many as a cheesey moneymaker ploy. Boston fans prided themselves on the atmosphere and and most of the fan engagwment schemes were met with heavy pushback and disdain (Wally, music other than the organ, the Neil Diamond song, etc.).
Am I crazy or did they not even giveaways like bobble heads and the like?
There is no need for giveaways when the ballpark is sold out every night.
I think people were indifferent, they all liked free shit, but they didn't go out of their way for it.
They’ve messed up a lot of stuff with the cheesy money-grab efforts. I used to look forward to Truck Day, now it just pisses me off. No need for Wally but Lefty and Righty was awesomely bad.
Yeah, most of the ideas came from that weird dentist guy. I can just picture Henry demanding ideas to make a couple of bucks.
https://preview.redd.it/axfts2tgbgcg1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ea4a87f0f34deb92ea06e65737aca160b33c0fa2
Bring back Lefty and Righty!
nightmare fuel
What happened to make him more beloved?
"Hey Wally! Wally? It's not what you think!"
Fantastic “this is Sportscenter” add
My lasting memory of it was how bad an actor Jorge Posada is.
I think a lot of current fans grew up as kids looking for him.
Like everything with the Red Sox, new things are always slammed. The monster seats were an abomination before they became beloved. I am pretty sure there exists two Dan Shaughnessy columns; one complaining about the giant coke bottles going up and another complaining when they took them down.
Jerry Remy having Wally sitting in a chair helped.
Wally was part of the crew that I originally started watching the 162 games with. Remy and don….growing up with those two I didn’t know how fortunate it was to be in the booth with em. Miss you Jerry
I met Wally in 99 when I was about 10. Immediately loved him
This is the thing, I think. Anyone that grew up with Wally loves him, and the people who were adults when he was introduced have slowly made up less and less of the fanbase. I also associate Wally with Remy which doesn't hurt
I fall into the "older folks who don't like Wally" camp. But my feelings are admittedly irrational. My knee-jerk reaction when he was introduced was to hate it even though I actually like other mascots like the Philly Phanatic.
Can't explain it, but Wally almost seemed like he was modeled after Orsillo.
The writeups about how much fans hated him at first were absolute gold. One quote I remembered was something along the lines of wishing he'd go back to his home, behind the wall, where the coke bottle hopefully explodes in an acidic fury to burn him away forever or smth sinister
Yes. Fenway wasn’t always a place desperately trying to improve the “Fenway experience” for casual fans. It was always baseball first, no frills, a bit rough. Add a stuffed animal mascot into old dirty Boston (pre big dig) die hard fan base and yeah they’re gonna hate him
Young fans don’t understand that Fenway (the area and ball bark) wasn’t thought to be a “family friendly theme park experience”
It was an old stadium in a seedy kind of sketchy part of town and symbolized a no frills baseball first attitude
Mascots and a lot of the goofy on field stuff teams do was seen as unnecessary for a “traditional” baseball town like Boston (the Yankees also didn’t have a mascot)
Introducing Wally to Sox fans at the time was little league stuff. Something teams with less tradition had to do to woo young fans and “casuals”
But when Henry (and co) bought the team and dumped millions into revitalizing the ballpark and neighborhood, focusing on “family friendly” stuff, Wally became more accepted because the game day experience catered to, and attracted more, families and casuals.
Thanks for that blast of honesty. When I was a kid, there would be drunken fights in the aisles and the certainty of ingesting second hand smoke.
Yeah I had a better chance of getting kicked out of a Yankees sox game than seeing a kid with face paint and a balloon
I was a teen so I had to show I wasn’t a baby. As an adult I love Wally and that it’s corny. I hope his parents are there tomorrow
I was ten, and Wally fucking ROCKED
Marketing and appeal to younger generation fans who grow up.
Teams sucked and mascot was a joke, other fans thought we were a joke. Winning fixes everything
Lol yes, definitely hated.
Fun fact, the day he was introduced in 1997 (I think) was one of only one or two game in which the Sox wore their alternate white hats. That season, they had a white alternate hat with a blue brim and a red hat with a blue brim (kinda like the 70’s hat, but with a white “B”). These were quietly shelved after only seeing the field once or twice apiece. I think the red hat was only worn on the road.
I remember almost buying both hats but holding off, and now I definitely regret it. They were weird and I wish I had a piece of that history!
I bought both, that red hat was my every day hat for years. Wish they’d bring that back instead of the absurd yellow and baby blue.
The white hats were a dumb novelty look like the 2004(?) silver Patriots alternate jerseys which they wore once or twice.
Funnily enough, I think the white would sell fine now since fans want the team to wear any and every color possible. Young fans don’t care about tradition or color schemes. A white hat would probably sell just as well as the yellow or green or camo or st Patrick’s green
My perspective is that there was and is this idea of us being "Real Baseball Fans", and that we didn't need mascots and other things that would take away from the game. This was pandering to kids.
Pretty lame actually but I think that was the general consensus. I don't recall "hatred" per se but more like "This is the kind of shit that expansion franchises do."
I think with time and people like me being 20 then, but later having kids and taking them to games where they loved Wally( and Tessie for that matter) that I certainly developed a soft spot for him.
I went to a lot of games as a kid in the 80s and 90s. I thought Wally was a post-success thing. Wtf? How long has Wally been around?
Since 1997, that’s why he wears #97
Back then he was just called “The Green Monster”
Remdog
Yes! Remy with his Wally in a little Adirondack chair was totally how Wally became more accepted!
I can’t speak for the whole fan base but my response was mostly mild confusion and apathy. It changed a little when I had my daughter in 2004 but overall I was unimpressed.
My dad complains about Wally to this day. No one tell him about Tessie.
As you know, my dad is Wally’s biggest fan 😂
Yeah, the first couple of iterations I dont think were designed well and Boston always have their purists.
Fan definitely thought it was really douchy & for kids
In 2010ish Wally went missing- does anyone remember that? The joke was they sent an amber alert (not really) but he was 16. I forget why that was a publicity stunt.
Red Sox fans once upon a time were hardcore baseball nerds. Literal die hards. You could walk up to the box office on game day and buy tickets, even when the team was pretty good. I bought tickets from the box office on the day of Roger Clemens' first game pitching in Fenway for the a Blue Jays.
Those old fans hated any kind of fluff or nonsense. Celtics fans were the same way, the idea of having dancers and cheerleaders in the Garden would have been laughable in the 80s.
But now that the Red Sox and Fenway are tourist destinations, everyone seems to love the fluff. In fact it seems people are less interested in the game and more interested Wally, singing Sweet Caroline and going "WOO WOO!"
Sweet Caroline is the worst
Agree. Baseball should be about baseball.
It was fun in 2003-2004. It's been stupid since about 2005.
Part of all this was because during that time period being a Red Sox fan wasn’t necessarily “fun”. Baseball and sports in general are fun, or at least supposed to be, but it wasn’t always to be a Red Sox fan. It meant frustration, heartache, disappointment. There were far less casual fans and you wondered if you were introducing a lifetime of trauma and frustrstion to your children. So the thought was “why the hell was any effort put into this anthropomorphic green carpet… when we need focus on even making it to the playoffs.
I was in 8th grade when they invented Wally. It was corny and he looked an awful lot like Oscar the grouch. I generally ignored him and never really considered him a team mascot until I had kids. Before that he just seemed like a joke.
Fenway was bettah with a screen on the wall, taste great less filling chants, and no mascot!
I enjoyed games without Wally...
A memory that stands out to me about the day they brought Wally out, was a Mariners player noticed the indifference and awkwardness of the moment as Wally walked up the 3rd base line, so he walked out of the dugout and tried to lighten the moment by dancing with Wally to whatever song the PA was playing. The player was Joey Cora, Alex’s brother.
It was a scheme devised by Dr. Charles (I.e., snake oil salesman employed by Henry) to get kids into the ballpark. Most fans hated (and still hate) Wally and his mongoloid girlfriend, Wallina. I think the current team engagement with Wally is mostly ironic.
He also gave us Glenn Geffner, so the guy was not a genius
When the first brought him out, he was booed off the field. I think they waited another year or two to try him out again. He is fully representative of Fenway becoming a “family friendly” stadium and not the gritty place it once was.
Is Wally beloved?
I’m a native New Englander, but moved to Philadelphia in my 30s. The Phillie Fanatic is more popular than the Phillies (and the Phillies are much-loved, though not comparable to the passion expressed for the Eagles here).
I don’t really think of Wally when I think of the Sox, except as an afterthought, but I’ve been gone from the area a long time now.
I don’t know what happened to make him more beloved, but Wally is absolutely beloved by my kids. They will watch Sox games on tv just to see Wally. They’ve watched every Wally video on YouTube 100 times.
I was at that game. Wally was met with indifference at best. A few people in our section even booed. One drunk yelled about fighting him, but couldn’t get to him because back then, the bleachers were locked off from the rest of the park until the 8th inning.
I miss the days when the park wasn’t flooded out with sound effects, flashing lights, and constant distractions.
I know I sound like a cranky old man, but the constant barrage of crap thrown at fans diminished the game itself in the name of “fan experience”. Fan experience was something struggling franchises, minor league teams, and expansion franchises used to spark interest.
This was Boston. We didn’t need that. We knew when to stand and cheer without sound effects and scoreboards prompting us.
Sometimes you just want to watch a game.
I grew up with Wally, and although I'm neutral on the mascot thing, I do appreciate how he's contributed to making Fenway more attractive to families/young kids. To some extent it's a distraction from the game, but I'm sure it's also helped create a lot of young baseball fans. If a silly mascot helps drum up more interest in the game, then I'm all for it.
That being said, if Fenway turns into another Yankee Stadium (soundbytes being played between every single pitch, music being blasted constantly, etc.) then I'll stop going. I think they've done a pretty good job of keeping a lid on that sort of stuff so far, though.
Mascots are great for kids. And they have a place at games, absolutely.
It’s all the other crap that’s unnecessary, and quite honestly, distracts and degrades the actual game experience.
I remember going to Skydome and thy had an emcee for between innings. And in the 9th inning, he had to get on the video board to beg the fans to stand up for the 9th inning rally. I hope Fenway never needs that.
For the longest time, Fenway didn't need mascots. Fenway didn't need sound effects. Fenway didn't need blackout lighting for pitching changes and home runs. Now Fenway has all of that. It's like someone decided to make it more fun for the casuals.
Wally wasn't around back then. Can't remember when he was introduced, but I don't think it was in the 90's.
Ah, can't say I've given him that much thought. Just sort of felt like he showed up one day recently ...30 years goes by quickly when you get older. 😆
wally and the pink hats. hated them both as pandering and knew it would just lead to more casual fans showing up and increasing prices.