In honor of the Brewers' Chorizo Racing Sausage celebrating his/her/their/its 20th birthday this summer, I thought it would be fun to rank my top 5 MLB mascot races (mostly just because I love ranking things). I originally wanted to rank all 30, but I quickly realized that many teams have either a very lackluster race or none at all. The only rule I gave myself was that I could only rank races I've seen in person.
1. Milwaukee Brewers - The Famous Racing Sausages
As subjective and ridiculous as this list is, I don't think you'll get an argument from anybody on #1. It is the original live mascot race dating back to 1993, and has its origins on the old pixelated County Stadium jumbotron even before that. Probably best known outside of Milwaukee as the race that got Randall Simon fined for disorderly conduct.
2. Washington Nationals - Presidents Race
This is a bit of a sentimental pick for me. I attended many Nats games during their inaugural season of 2005 while living in DC, and thus got to see one of their first races, which like the Brewers' race began as an animated jumbotron race. The running joke for years was that Teddy Roosevelt never won a race, but that finally changed in 2012. Primarily the race features the 4 Mount Rushmore presidents, but there have been some other guest presidents mixed in here and there.
3. Pittsburgh Pirates - Great Pierogi Race
The Pierogis round out what are probably the 3 most iconic mascot races. This race started shortly after the Sausage Race and now features 6 flavored participants. There has been no retaliation yet on Potato Pete for the aforementioned Randall Simon assault as far as I know.
4. Cleveland Guardians - Hot Dog Derby
There are several teams that have pretty much the exact same race including Kansas City and Baltimore, but Cleveland is the first and the best so it earns the spot in my rankings. It's not so much a hot dog race as it is a condiment race, with the competitors being Ketchup, Mustard, and Onion. Incidentally, Cleveland's "world famous" mustard is the best condiment in all of baseball outside of Milwaukee's Secret Stadium Sauce.
5. Minnesota Twins - Race to Target Field
I was deciding between this and the Mariners' Salmon Run for the final spot, but I gotta be a homer on this one. This race was introduced upon the opening of Target Field in 2010 and features anthropomorphic representations of various Minnesota creatures, including Babe the Blue Ox, the Target dog, and a giant mosquito.
Honorable Mentions:
Cincinnati Reds Mascot Race - probably the one I've seen the most outside of the Sausages, and I have many fond college memories of this one.
Atlanta Braves "Beat the Freeze" - this isn't truly a mascot race, but it's better than everything else on this list so I have to mention it. The Freeze is a played by a professional track sprinter who races an ordinary fan from pole to pole along the outfield warning track, but the gimmick is that the fan gets about a halfway head start and still almost always loses.
touch with baseball when his childhood heroes Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, and Jim Gantner retired but the Great Home Run Chase of 1998 reignited his passion. As a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Erik became involved with the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity. With this group Erik traveled to Portland, OR and Baltimore, MD to work on construction projects and help the group raise $25,000 to partially sponsor a house in Milwaukee. Also at UWM, Erik met Peter Nagel. The two attended their first Brewers game together during Opening Weekend 2003. Despite their failure to ignite the coals at their first tailgate, the two had a blast and were soon making weekly trips to the ballpark. Erik has gone on to several colleges and changed careers several times, and has moved all the way out to New Hampshire, but has always stayed true to his baseball roots by holding part-time stadium usher jobs. To this day he looks back fondly on his incredible cross-country journey.