By John Branch

    TOLEDO, Ohio - In Dave Raymond's world of foam and fur, seven-foot fish have arms and legs, bears dress like Roman soldiers, and the ultimate fan - or Phanatic - is a long-nosed, wide-bottomed green shaggy being of indeterminate origin.

    Googly eyes, gigantic feet and hollow heads are serious business for Raymond, the original Phillie Phanatic, who now creates mascots for others, at a cost of $40,000 or more.

    That is why he was on a conference call this month with executives of the Toledo Mud Hens, a Class AAA baseball franchise preparing to start a minor league hockey team called the Walleye next fall. The discussion involved eye shapes, tummy thickness and the practicality of three-fingered hands for a fish mascot. A critical question was whether a giant yellow walleye should wear hockey shorts or go bare-bottomed, even if a fish does not really have a bottom.

    "There may even be an argument down the road for different heads for different expressions," Raymond said from his office in Newark, Del., where his father, Tubby Raymond, was once the University of Delaware football coach. "That's a big leap. But if the character is really successful, then investing in heads for different attitudes - that's never been done before. How do you feel about that, Tom?"

    Tom Sapp, who makes his living designing costumes, was on the telephone, too, from Atlanta.

    "Well, we've had removable eyelides before," Sapp said.

    Team executives nodded. And so it went for nearly 90 minutes.

    Outside the fifth-floor window, Fifth Third Field, the home of the Mud Hens, was covered in an icy glaze. Inside, the table was covered in cartoonlike mascot renderings.

    Raymond's company, Raymond Entertainment Group, delivers more than a costume in a box. It has five full-time employees, and a couple of artist and a veteran costume maker. The process of researching, drawing, designing and constructing a custom costume that costs up to $18,000 takes a year or more. Raymond then trains the performers who will step inside the character and educates the executives who will promote it.

    It is a far different program from the one Raymond stepped into as a Phillies intern in 1978. The team paid him $25 a game to wear the Phanatic costume ("I loved it when I saw it," he said) and, without fanfare or introduction, entertain the notorious Philadelphia fans. At an Eagles game in 1968, fans threw snowballs at a young man wearing a Santa suit.

    "It was never going to work," Raymond recalled.

    Yet the Phillie Phanatic remains a Philadelphia icon and one of the country's most recognized mascots. Raymond spent 16 years silently bringing the costume to life.

    Ironically enough, we're the antithesis of what the Phillies did," Raymond said during an interview in his office.

A Performer's Energy

    Almost by accident, the Phillie Phanatic, like the San Diego Chicken starting in 1974, helped sports marketers realize that a mascot could be more than a diversion during lulls in a game, but an attraction in itself. Most colleges and professional teams have since adopted costumed mascots to patrol the stands and make community appearances.

    Yet Raymond says they are widely undervalued. He is an animated talker, channeling most of his performer's energy into a saleman's enthusiasm. At 52, with a full head of dark hair, he is still fit enough to climb into costumes on ocasion.

    Raymond sees them not a mascots but as character and brands. He also sees them from the inside out, as a performer would.

    In his view, the characters should hae a neutral facial expression, so the performer conveys emotion through mannerisms - waving arms, shuffling feet, a shaking head. They should allow movement - arms loose to throw, legs free to run, hands flexible to grasp. Large heads may be funny, but they limit the stunts a mascot can do.

    The costumes should be built to hug because they will be hugged, and made to last because they will be abused.

    And performers should be well trained, unlike Raymond in 1978. He conducts boot camps where mascots work on expressing emotion. Among the goals: projecting sadness and having a convincing argument.

    The harder part is getting to that point.

Audition Sells a College

    East Stroudsburg University, with 7,200 students and 22 Division II sports, sought bids from about 10 mascot companies in the spring of 2007. It chose Raymond, despite the $40,000 cost, after he borrowed a bear costume and barged in on the mascot committee's meeting with the university president.

    East Stroudsburg had gone years without a costumed mascot. In 1995, as public sentiment nationally shifted against team nicknames that could be considered racially offensive, the university retained the Warriors name but shed its longstanding American Indian imagry. Leaving Warriors to the imagination frustrated alumni who saw the change as a bow to political correctness.

    East Stroudsburg eventually sensed it was missing the embodiment of a warrior. Raymond's company pitched a wolf, a bear and a frontiersman to represent the campus in the Pocono Mountains near the Delaware River

    "We're not getting rid of the concept of Warriors," Doreen Tobin, the vice president for student affairs, said September. "But we're also not going back to the Native American concept. We're going to do what's best interest of the entire community."

    Focus groups liked the brown bear, wearing Roman-style garb in red, a team color. After slight changes - an eye shield was removed and a cape added - the design was sent to Randy Carfagno. He builds Raymond's costumes in a cluttered Manhattan studio between assignments for Broadway shows and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

    The nine-member mascot committee - representing the faculty, alumni, students and the athletic department - met weekly for most of a year and kept deliberations secret. In September, 10,000 red buttons were distributed, reading: "Who's Your Mascot? Coming to ESU 10/4/08." A rumor spread that it would be a squirrel.

    In late September, the committee had its weekley meeting at the Ahnert Alumni Center. Glass cases in the lobby held memorabilia featuring American Indian representations, some dignified and some caricatures. Raymond was a bundle of nervous energy as he his in the closet and put on the bear costume.

    "It's one thing to stuff it in a box and send it to them," Raymond said. "It's a different thing to have the character walk in the room."

    The committee members discussed the "reveal" for the homecoming game. They reviewed a script, and plans for a youth club and mascot-related merchandise. They had decided that the mascots signature would be the initial W in a circle, for consistency in autographs. Raymond taught the committee to ponder everything.

    The bear burst into the room. He danced. He saluted. He kissed the hand of a woman and waved a dismissive hand at men. Raymond's face was not visible through the muzzle, but his grunts were audible in the quiet room.

    Committee members smiled unsurely as they evaluated their mascot. The awkward silence was broken as their compliments slowly came, one piling on another. There was unanimous relief and excitement. Eighteen months of planning was about to go public.

    Later, at a hideaway far from campus, Raymond spent bout eight hours training the sophomores Stephanie Smith and Nick Borda how to be the mascot. They spent the first 20 minutes learning to put on the costume's overlapping pieces in the proper order.

    "I feel like Cinderella with the glass slippers," Smith said as her shoes slid into giant red foam boots.

    These days, the mascot - named Burgy, through 4,000 online votes - is well known at East Stroudsburg. Burgy has a decaled Honda CR-V, donated by a local dealer. A second costume is on the way, and a thrid performer is being hired to meet demand. Community appearances have been scheduled into April.

    The money and time "we're so worth it," said Brenda Friday, the associate director for university relations, who oversaw the mascot effort.

    "And we've only just begun to see the benefit of this," she added.

A Creative Fish Story

    That sentiment was echoed about 500 miles away in Toledo. Raymond re-created Muddy, the longtime Mud Hens bird mascot, for the opening of a downtown stadium in 2002. He helped introduce Muddonna, Muddy's friend, a year later.

    The two mascots combine to make about 150 appearances each year beyond the baseball games. their likenesses adorn souvenirs and advertising. They may be the most famous Toledo natives after the actor Jamie Farr, and the investment in the them has been recouped "many times over," said the team's president, Joe Napoli.

    "It's about a close to a no-brainer as a decision can be, to invest money into your character brand," Napoli added, sounding distinctly like Raymond. "What separates Frosted Flakes from all the other sugared cereals? Tony the Tiger."

    But creation has its complications. When the Toledo executives called last spring, they told Raymond that the new hockey team had been named Walleye, for a fish that grows to 42 inches and 24 pounds in the nearby Maumee River and Lake Erie.

    The team, reasonably, wanted a costumed fish. But Raymond argued against it.

    "I try to fight the 'it has to be a cow' perception," Raymond said. "Creatively, it kind of cuts you off at the knees."

    The Walleye issue, in part, was that fish have no knees, fish cannot walk. They do not have arms. What would the costume look like? How could someone bring a fish to life?

    Raymond said that many of the best mascots - the Phanatic, the San Diego Chicken, the Phoenix Suns Gorilla - have nothing to do with the team nickname.

    "I said, 'Let's start again'," Raymond recalled.

    He imagined a live walleye in a tank with a "Wall-eye"camera. Every time the team scored as the crowd cheered, the video scoreboard could show the live walleye. Here's Gill! The costumed mascot could be a friend of the fish, Raymond proposed, or better yet, an antagonist - a fisherman or a chef.

    The team executives loved both sides. They still wanted a costumed fish.

    On the morning of the conference call this month, the Walleye had a news conference at the aquarium of the Toledo Zoo. A zookeeper was summoned to the Lake Erie exhibit to determine which walleye was Wally, the name chosen by fans. It was the one with the notched fin.

    Photographers pressed against the glass for pictures. For the television cameras, Coach Nick Vitucci offered a fish tale: Wally had jumped from the Maumee River onto his lap and displayed the scrappiness of a hockey players. (One station called the team to ask if the story was true.)

    That afternoon's conference call turning into a brainstorming session. There was talk not only about the fish, but the potential for a second character, which Raymond said could become more interesting and famous.

    Maybe it could change outfits regularly, someone suggested. Maybe it could star in children's storybooks. Maybe it could appear not only for the Walleye, but also for the Mud Hens and the Bullfrogs, a future arena football team. "I love it," Raymond said.

    He did not like the idea, really, but the enthusiasm. The Walleye's first game is nearly a year away, yet there has been far more planning for the team's three mascots than there was in unveiling the Phillie Phanatic.

    "You're going where I want you to go," Raymond told the executives through the speakerphone. "But my advice would be to focus on the Walleye and see where the character goes."

    Everyone nodded. It sounded like a plan.