Alternative Fats: Baseball Team Announces New Pig Mascot

SAINT PAUL, MN — For the 25th season of Saint Paul Saints baseball, the independent club not affiliated with Major League Baseball has chosen a pig mascot and given it a unique name. A spokesperson said Wednesday the team has White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Kellyane Conway to thank for inspiring this year's pig's name: Alternative Fats.

"When you’re a franchise like the Saints sometimes you need to SPICE it up, but this name is no CON and we’re doing it our WAY," the team said in a statement:

Alternative Fats will enter the field each game like no other pig before him, with a white ground covering draped from his mansion-style pigpen to home plate for the billions of Saints fans to shower him with love and admiration. Alternative Fats will be so HUUUUGE it will make all other pigs jealous. Alternative Fats will go down in the pantheon of the greatest mascot names in the history of sports and we know a thing or two about great sports mascots. Welcome to the Saints Orwellian version of Animal Farm.

Conway coined the term "alternative facts" during a January interview with Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet The Press." According to the team, Alternative Fats was chosen out of a record 4,124,862 entries, including Boar’d of Trump, Ham Jong Un and Pigimir Putin. Minnesotans wanting to show off state pride pushed for Mary Tyler Boar and Super Boar LII.

"But in the end 'two plus two equals four, partly cloudy, partly sunny, and a pig is a boar,'" the team said. "That’s Alternative Fats."

During the previous 24 seasons, the Saints have had a pig mascot with a unique name, including:

• Little Red Porkette
• Pablo Pigasso
• Stephen Colboar
• Kim Lardashian and Kris Hamphries
• Mackleboar
• Brat Favre
• Slumhog Millionaire
• Boarack Ohama
• Notorious P.I.G. – Piggy Smalls
• Kevin Bacon

Team mascot history

When the Saints moved to Saint Paul in 1992, the club's sister team in Florida was having success with a golden retriever mascot, and the Saints wanted to capitalize on that success. Libby Veeck, the wife of Saints owner and President Mike Veeck, discovered in a book she was reading that Saint Paul was known as "Pig’s Eye" after a man named Pierre "Pig’s Eye" Parrant. The pig mascot was born.

Image via campero, Flickr, used under Creative Commons