The Big East Tournament is back in Madison Square Garden, which brings us to the one-year anniversary of this:
Maybe not the most iconic photo from the beginning of lockdowns, but…I don’t know what superlative to use. The funniest? The least sad? The most encapsulating of the situation? Something about mascots.
Something about mascots.
Yesterday, I asked Mike Rutherford of Card Chronicle whether Johnny Thunderbird (which is evidently the St. John’s mascot’s name, and it’s a fine name but “St. John’s mascot” is way easier to remember) was still up there. Not that Mike Rutherford would know any more than you or I, necessarily. He just has a place in the college basketball media landscape, and he seems to read his Twitter replies, and I’ve gotta take shots where I can take them. NIT blog followings don’t build themselves. Anyway, he confirmed my suspicions. Johnny Thunderbird never left:
Having spent a lot of time in the empty upper reaches of Madison Square Garden myself (as part of the non-courtside press at the 2018 and 2019 NIT’s, and I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this to anyone but Shaka Smart was nice to me in 2019 so please join me in supporting him forever), I’m uniquely situated to do the following:
How Johnny Thunderbird Spent His Year at Madison Square Garden
Looking at the Display Boxes
There are a lot of display boxes in the MSG concourses. Not positive all of them are properly termed “display boxes,” but I don’t know what else to call them. “Plaque” sounds too shiny. Anyway, there’s a lot to see. Concert things. Sports things. A large shrine to the six-overtime UConn/Syracuse game in 2009 that’s perched right near the backup press area in the corner behind the benches. It’s a museum, and a large one, and were I a mascot spending twelve months in Madison Square Garden alone, I know I’d read all of them.
I imagine Johnny Thunderbird did the same.
Eating Hot Dogs
MSG has great hot dogs, because MSG has hot dogs, and all hot dogs are great. There’s no way anyone thought to flip off circuit breakers when they left. They thought they’d be coming back in a few weeks! Hot dogs. Popcorn. Johnny Thunderbird’s nutritional needs were met. And picture him in there, in his boxers, cooking breakfast. Cooking lunch. Cooking supper. Hot dogs all the way down.
Trick Shots
Were you alone in Madison Square Garden, would you not dedicate an hour or two a day (at least) to shooting from the highest reaches of the place into the baskets that, again, there’s no way anyone put away when they left last March? It’s like how all those people at Pompeii posed in the funniest positions they could think of as the ash rained down. If you’re going to be found preserved thousands of years from now, you have to make sure people think you were cool.
More Staring
I feel it. We all feel it. There were trying times in the last twelve months. I’d imagine Johnny Thunderbird, like many of us, spent lots of time staring off into the distance.
Deleting Tweets
You think Johnny Thunderbird was immune from Cuomo fever? This guy went wild on the Twitterverse. Burners, verified accounts, his buddy’s handle his buddy stopped using when he got canceled for opposing the War of 1812…you name it, Johnny Thunderbird tweeted from it. And he tweeted the most effusive praise of his governor.
Then, the year started turning. Governor Cuomo went on that book tour, and Johnny Thunderbird thought he better wipe a few of the most laudatory tweets off the timeline. The year turned further. Nursing home reports started to come out. Johnny Thunderbird’s deletion searches got more detailed. “@JohnnySJUnami Cuomo best” and such. Wiped them out. Eventually, these last few weeks arrived, and Johnny Thunderbird had to pull the trigger. Some accounts were deleted. A day was spent next to an ice machine in the basement—the biggest ice machine MSG has—doing nothing but deleting tweets. Oof. Johnny, don’t get ahead of yourself like that again.
And speaking of ice…
Ice Trails
Johnny Thunderbird isn’t some uneducated foam-based hulk. He went to mascot school. And in mascot school, they have a weird affinity for Hansel and Gretel. Sue ‘em. Johnny Thunderbird was worried about how much popcorn was in the building. But he knew he had an endless supply of ice. Did this cause him to slip as he found his way back to his corner? Of course. But they were comical mascot slips, the kind mascots do professionally.
Talking to Security Guard Ghosts about the Yankees
Baseball season still happened. And if I know one thing from the press entrance at MSG, it’s that if baseball’s happening, you will hear about the Yankees. And if I know two things from the press entrance at MSG, the other is that I would guess a large number of those security guards choose to haunt MSG when they die. Since mascots transcend mortality, Johnny Thunderbird was far from alone. Except for when he doubted Gerrit Cole. No fun chatter for him for a whole week after that.
Trampoline Practice
You better believe Johnny Thunderbird was getting his dunks on.
