The bite behind the Wilmington Sharks’ mascot
Andrian Jackson opens the door to the visiting clubhouse at Buck Hardee Field and feels the chilling blast of the air conditioner before he plops down at a stall in the front right corner of the room.
To his left sits a fuzzy shark head with beady eyes and a friendly grin. Above him hang a gray-fabric costume and an extra-large blue jersey. A dark blue belt lays neatly atop a folded pair of white baseball pants on the shelf.
Two men, the umpires for that night’s Coastal Plain League baseball game, chat across the room, but Jackson has no time to small talk. He needs to find his zone.
Jackson is about to begin his third game as “Sharky,” the mascot for the Wilmington Sharks summer collegiate team. He inserts earbuds and blasts “Look Alive” by Drake as he zips his suit, ties his shoes and readies for another night of high-fives, fist-bumps and hugs from many of the 1,266 fans in the ballpark.
“I get really nervous, but then I have to realize that I’m not me in this,” said Jackson, referring to the costume. “I never expected to be a mascot, but to be a mascot, you just got to be yourself even though no one knows who you are.”
He grabs the fuzzy shark head, made of a thick layer of foam attached to a baseball helmet, takes a final breath of the cold air and shimmies into the last piece of his costume.
He walks into the bathroom, looks in the mirror and then heads out into the humid North Carolina air.
Learning the game
Jackson has been a sports fan all his life, but he doesn’t know much about baseball.
He had never attended a game before his mascot debut. He didn’t know what the numbers on the scoreboard meant until his second game on the job.
That wasn’t important, though. He already juggled shifts at Dairy Queen and Journeys shoe store to help pay his tuition at Cape Fear Community College.
Jackson, 20, is a Wilmington native interested in sports broadcasting. His dream is to become as famous as Stephen A. Smith ― the popular ESPN provocateur. He plans to transfer to a four-year college for his next step toward that goal, but he’s not sure where.
He knows that he’ll have to work his way up to Stephen A. status. A mascot job for $100 per game is a sweaty start, one he seized in a hurry.
He heard about the job from an athletic director at CFCC and was hired shortly after he called the team and expressed interest.
“It’s just being in a sports environment that really sets it off,” Jackson said. “I want to be able to interview players and just see different things.”
His responsibilities with the Sharks are simple: Don’t say a word and be the most interactive, fun person at the ballpark.
OK, maybe that’s not as easy as it sounds, but it fits Jackson’s quiet, yet loving persona. The latter trait makes it easy for him to mingle. He can make anyone smirk even if he hides a beaming smile behind a shark mask.
It didn’t take long for returning fans at Buck Hardee Field to notice a new level of fun from the mascot when Jackson was hired. Carson Bowen, the team’s general manager, was approached by a fan in Jackson’s first game who expressed appreciation for the pep in Sharky’s step.
“He’s killing it,” Bowen said. “Fans have definitely noticed, and we were thrilled to bring someone like him in.”
Not everyone appreciates Sharky, though. Jackson frequently deals with upset toddlers whom he frightens into tears when he’s in the suit, and plenty of teenagers and adults are still fearful of mascots.
For the terrified kids, Jackson pretends to be sad. For the older fans, he shrugs his shoulders or holds his arms out in confusion.
No matter what happens, though, Jackson tries to be himself — silent but not shy. That’s why he arrives at the ballpark nearly 45 minutes before the game even though he’s not needed until first pitch.
He wants that time to relax and soak in the environment. He never knows who he’ll meet when the suit is on.
How to interact
As Sharky rounds the right-field fence for his first stroll through the patio area, kids desperate for hugs and pictures from their parents swarm him.
Then he hears a scream.
“Sharky, Sharky!” a team employee shouts. “You’re up!”
The employee takes him by the arm and escorts him to the fence by the Sharks dugout. “Real American” by Rick Derringer blares from the speakers as Sharky sprints behind home plate, energizes the crowd and rips off a white Sharks T-shirt à la Hulk Hogan.
It’s Sharky’s grand entrance, and one of the few times he’s not greeting fans or posing for another picture.
As Sharky returns to the right-field patio area, a boy with glasses and dirt-covered flip flops screams his name amid the buzz of the crowd and runs up to him.
“Hey Sharky!” the boy yells. “I want you to do something!”
He hands Sharky a set of bean bags and challenges him to a game of cornhole, no easy task for a shark with poor vision, far away from the Atlantic Ocean.
Sharky’s up against a ringer. All three of his bags end up the dirt; his opponent throws two through the center and dabs with his friends to celebrate.
The boy runs into Sharky’s arms for a hug, but the boy’s grasp looks a little tighter than that from Sharky, perhaps a bit displeased with the loss and starting to feel the fatigue of the nightly life of a mascot.
The evaluation
Jackson takes a deep exhale in the locker room as he lifts the mascot head from his body.
Beads of sweat drip from his face as he leans over a water fountain, which refreshes him with water that was much cooler than the two water bottles he brought for himself.
His night is done even though the game is in the eighth. He undresses from his baseball pants, stained with dirt and grass after he was playfully tackled by a Sharks player in a third-inning race with a child on the field, and disassembles the costume.
A sweaty stench instantly fills the room.
“I had to feel my way out tonight,” Jackson said with another deep breath. “I just had to get myself amped up. I got out there, and I don’t know what happened. It just went down.”
Overall, it was still a successful night. Sharky won the concessions stand race in the sixth, and the number of flustered kids afraid to interact with him was kept to a minimum.
It may have felt like an off-night for Jackson, but it didn’t look like one.
His night done, he slips on a Sharks tank top and fixes his black, curly hair. He sprays the inside of his costume with disinfectant, and places the baseball pants and belt in the same spot on the shelf where they were four hours earlier.
He takes a last look to make sure everything is in place before he leaves the clubhouse. For his trip home, he stops at a concession stand for a cheeseburger and a bottle of water.
As he heads to the parking lot, he walks past the boy who beat him in cornhole and through the throng of people with whom he posed for pictures. None of them looked in his direction.
Original Story | July 12, 2019
