Mascots and Misdemeanors
One sausage. Two crimes. All the Wisconsin.
Welcome to Project 3.18, a free weekly publication where a fan-first writer tells strange and surprising stories from baseball history and culture.
Today we’re serving up some beer-broiled true crime from Wisconsin, where a great time occasionally tips into self-parodying scandal. Today is the 13th anniversary of one such misadventure, centered on a famous ballpark sausage. We’re going to tell that story, but the thing with ballpark sausages is, having one isn’t enough.
Having two might be too many, but that’s a problem for later.
Being from the Chicago area (Wisconsinites have a name for people like us but we’re not going to repeat it), we have fond memories of Randall Simon. When an August 2003 trade brought the part-time first baseman and pinch-hit specialist to the suddenly contending Chicago Cubs, Simon seemed like a genial bench guy and, more importantly, he brandished a clutch bat. He helped the Cubs make a deep playoff run and we fell in love with baseball for good.
Outside of Chicago’s North Side, Randall Simon is better remembered for an unprovoked attack on a sausage. He had worried that would happen, and he was right.
On July 9, 2003, Simon was with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who were in Milwaukee playing the Brewers. At the end of the bottom of the sixth inning, the score was tied, 1-1, and it was time for a beloved local tradition: the Sausage Race.
A staple of Brewers’ home games since 1993, the Sausage Race—do we really have to explain this?—featured four costumed contestants, Italian Sausage, Polish Sausage, Hot Dog, and Bratwurst, running a V-shaped race along the Miller Park foul lines. People get so into it that the Brewers maintain a sausage leaderboard1 on their website.
The race took place between the sixth and seventh innings. On the night of July 9, Randall Simon, due to pinch hit in the seventh, was waiting by the top of the Pirates’ dugout fence, watching the race and holding a bat. The four runners passed third base and headed for home. They were bunched closely together but one contestant, Italian Sausage, had pulled slightly ahead.
The people inside the sausage costumes were not—how do we put this?—professionals. The racers were typically members of the Brewers’ on-field promotional staff, part-time employees who helped with fan-engagement work during the games, with the occasional surprise guest.
That day the part of Italian Sausage was played by a 19-year-old University of Wisconsin student named Mandy Block. It was her second summer working as an on-field promotions assistant. A veteran of a dozen or so prior contests, Block, five feet, three inches tall, was wearing a seven-foot costume that limited her peripheral vision and did strange things to her center of gravity. She preferred to run as Italian Sausage because she liked the mustache.
In that day’s race, taking a meandering route that felt right for the character, Block ran on the outside, closest to the Pirates’ dugout fence. As the group approached the dugout, Simon loomed, his bat still up in the air. “I saw the bat before I got to him,” Block said. “I thought he was just going to fake me out.” As she passed Simon, Block seemed to lean in his direction, perhaps offering a little head-fake in the spirit of improvisational comedy.
“I thought at the moment they were trying to play with us,” Simon said the next day. “They were running right next to the players.” As Italian Sausage ran by, just inches away, Simon brought his bat down on the back of the foam costume. “I was just trying to give a tap for her to finish the race.”
“It wasn’t that big of a blow,” Block said. “I think it’s just because I’m so small and it’s such a big costume that I tumbled.”
Italian Sausage went down, taking Hot Dog, portrayed by another promotional assistant, Veronica Piech, with it. Inside, Block was slow to get up. The nearby Pirates, including Simon, didn’t move. They might have initially thought the racers were performing a scripted pratfall.
Inside the costume, Block hadn’t seen or felt Simon’s “tap.” At first she thought she tripped. One of the other runners that day said the fact that Block fell didn’t mean that Simon had hit her hard. “These things are so top-heavy that it doesn’t take much.”
Block wasn’t hurt, but the Sausage Racer’s Handbook had not covered rising from the prone position. “The reason I couldn’t get up right away is because I couldn’t get up.” Showing true character, Polish Sausage abandoned the race and went to Block’s aid, but it took a minute. The handbook hadn’t covered how to kneel, either.
Bratwurst, played by a 16-year-old running in his first race, turned and momentarily surveyed the carnage. Unsure what else to do, he ran for the finish line, earning an uncontested victory. Block didn’t hold it against him. “Somebody had to win.”
Simon belatedly moved to help the fallen sausage, but by then it had been on the ground for more than five seconds. Polish Sausage got its comrade back up and the two headed for the finish line. Mandy Block might have just lost the most notorious race in sausage history, but she finished under her own power.
Randall Simon was booed when he took his at-bat in the top of the seventh. He grounded out and wondered how bad things were about to get.
Block and Piech were extracted from their costumes and assessed by medical staff. It was only in the first-aid station that Block learned the reason for her fall. Band-aids were applied to a few scrapes while Block, to whom laughter came easily, laughed about the situation. From that first moment, her message to the world was that she was fine and Simon’s tap had been an improvisational mistake.
“I don’t think he did it intentionally,” she said the next day. “I think he was doing it as a joke.” The costume had made it look worse than it was. “I am little and I didn’t take the blow very well.”
The problem for Randall Simon was that nobody but Block seemed to want to laugh. Deputies from the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office approached him after the game. He had not even taken off his mustard-yellow throwback uniform when the officers took him to a police substation at Miller Park. One report said he was handcuffed in this process. The player was arrested and processed for a misdemeanor account of battery and ordered to report to a district attorney’s office the next morning to give a statement.
A Brewers executive vice president called Simon’s action “one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever seen inside or outside a ballpark. It sickened me to see it.”
Bud Selig, baseball’s commissioner and part-owner of the Brewers, said the league was reviewing the incident. He added that Simon’s conduct was “anathema” to baseball’s brand of family entertainment.
Replays of Italian Sausage going down led off every sportscast in America. Once Block identified herself, reporters and late-night talk show producers began calling with such intensity that her family had to unplug their phone. It was a full-on media circus, and while smoked meat jokes abounded, the coverage seemed to leave the door cracked for outrage. More than one account suggested Simon’s motives were, at best, “unknown.” Newspapers ran photographs of the player emerging from the DA’s office, subjecting him to something approximating a perp walk.
Block was dismayed. She talked to a few reporters, trying to extinguish the rumors that she had been hurt or that Simon’s tap had been malicious. “I’m just a sausage, guys,” Block told an interviewer from Michigan. It was an unusual way to plead for sanity. “It’s not a big deal. I’m fine.”
Detectives visited her home to photograph her scraped pinkie. The district attorney called. Reporters taped segments on the edge of her yard. She stopped talking.
“After a week, I realized it was a narrative that I had no control over,” she told Matt Monagan of mlb.com in 2022.
There was a certain story they wanted and I resonated with the funny part of it. I understood the part where you had to be more serious and understand we don’t hit people with costumes on. But I didn’t really want to play into that other story so much because it was getting into uncomfortable territory. They were criminalizing [Simon] and I didn’t feel like that was fair. I didn’t want to be a part of that.
After interviewing Simon and at least one sausage, the district attorney’s office concluded that while there had been plenty of poor judgement, there was no intent to injure. He was cited for disorderly conduct (fair enough) and fined $432. The reputational costs of the sausage-tap were far greater.
Simon was a journeyman major-leaguer without many blue-chip baseball moments to his name. Now he had one, and he knew it. “It’s a lesson,” he said. “As a player you don’t want those types of things that might change your career. This might change not only me, but every other player in the big leagues. From now on, I’m going to be checking before doing those types of things.”
Simon wanted to apologize. Mandy Block wanted the bat. A Pirates public-relations person put them in touch, and Simon promised to leave her the same bat that had brought her down, autographed. A tourism organization in Simon’s native Curaçao offered Block an all-expenses-paid trip to see the best of their country. She took her mom.
About a month after his ill-fated attempt at prop comedy, Randall Simon was traded to the Chicago Cubs in a fringy, “why not?” type of deal. There is nothing to indicate the trade was motivated by Pittsburgh’s desire to distance itself from the perpetrator of the Italian Sausage Job, but the change of scenery helped him. In 33 games as a Cub he was three times more useful than he’d been in 90 games for Pittsburgh, earning the appreciation of yours truly for his genial attitude and some clutch late-season hits.
On September 6, Simon, now a Cub, made his return to Miller Park. The fans saw through the disguise and booed him lustily during his first plate appearance. They probably weren’t happy to see him hit a two-run home run in the third, or a diving catch in the sixth. Then came the Sausage Race.
Mugging for the cameras, his Cubs teammates restrained Simon in the dugout while the manager, Dusty Baker, guarded the bat rack. A few minutes later the scoreboard announced that Simon was treating a randomly chosen section of Miller Park fans to Italian sausage sandwiches. He paid his fine before the Cubs left town and never got in trouble again.
We only wish we could say the same thing about Italian Sausage.
(Wis)Content warning: The next story contains extremely high levels of Wisconsin. Readers unfamiliar with Wisconsin should take breaks and are advised to drink lots of water.
It wasn’t the crime of the century. It wasn’t the crime of the decade, the year, or the month. But today is the 13th anniversary of what was at least the crime of the day on February 16, 2013.
For the Famous Racing Sausages, the early Aughts a Golden Age. Randall Simon had not played in MLB since 2006, and, as he had predicted, other players learned from his experience, and gave the sausage racers a wide berth. The race was more famous than ever. Knock-off races popped up in all corners of professional baseball, but the sausages were supreme. They ran, they waved, and they did promotional work.
We should explain that last one. The sausage costumes were technically owned by the race’s sponsor, which at that time was the Milwaukee-based Klement’s Sausage Company. The costumes were made available to the Brewers for every home game, but when they weren’t competing, Klement’s rented them out.2
Thanks to capitalism, anybody so inclined could host one or more anthropomorphized meats at their next work or community gathering. Anywhere between one and five costumes could be rented (for a modest per-sausage fee) but performers were not included.
Organizers of a Winter Festival in Cedarburg, Wisconsin rented at least two sausages to make appearances on February 16, 2013. Volunteers suited up that morning and worked an outdoor event.
Later that evening, at least the Italian Sausage costume was brought to another event, a fundraiser for the new Curling Club facility on the Cedarburg Fairgrounds. A big crowd turned out and whoever had brought the costume concluded that the hopping party didn’t need a Very Special Guest after all. They left their rented sausage costume unattended in an unsecured back room. Never do this.
Around 7:45 p.m., eyewitnesses said Italian Sausage did make an appearance, walking right out a side door and into a cold, clear Midwestern night. It was surely a crime of opportunity, but it was a crime. The Italian Sausage costume cost $3,000, and its cultural value was beyond price. The police were called.
Regular readers will recall that we have reported on more than one Stupid Baseball Crime in this space, and most SBCs have historically gone unsolved, even when the perpetrators are burgling major-league dressing rooms or air-dropping sacks of flour onto in-progress Dodgers games. Given the somewhat lesser stakes of this particular SBC, we braced ourselves for yet another clean getaway.
We had drastically underestimated the resources, the determination, and, perhaps, the relative availability of the Cedarburg Police Department.
It helped that a seven-foot sausage costume stood out. And for these thieves, being seen was in fact the point. Around 8:45, eyewitnesses reported the sausage moving south, when it was spotted at another bar, T.J. Ryan’s, among a group of individuals consuming cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon lager, a choice of beverage that told police the thief was a local.
The bar’s eponymous proprietor, Tim Ryan, described a confusing scene. “He was kind of…he started dancing3 with some of the women patrons,” Ryan said.
Watching the sausage leave at approximately 9:40, Ryan saw it wipe out in the icy, slushy parking lot. “He must’ve hit a patch of ice or snow out there,” Ryan said, ”being all big and tall as he is. He was laying out there for a while.” The person inside the costume was learning what Mandy Block had learned 10 years earlier—sausages did not land on their feet. At least this person didn’t have to learn on camera.
The sausage made it to one more venue, the Cedarburg Roadhouse, where it joined a local cover band for a few songs, revealing a skill the Brewers had never utilized.
After that first, eventful night on the run, the sausage dropped out of view. Jeff Vahsholtz, the Cedarburg police detective assigned to the case, said there were no leads despite the mountain of evidence accumulating on social media. “Either nobody’s saying or nobody knows.”
A week went by. News of the crime broke nationally, and the story was everywhere, turning up the heat underneath the missing sausage its kidnappers. Stuck at home, they were reduced to hiding the costume in a wood-paneled basement, wearing it to perform the then-popular meme-dance the Harlem Shake. There is video of this.
A mustard company offered a year’s supply of mustard to anyone who returned the costume. Not to be outdone, another Wisconsin-based company with the distinction of being “the world’s largest manufacturer of sauerkraut,” offered a year of…you guessed it. “[The racing sausages] are a statewide treasure,” the sauerkraut guy said. “This can’t go unpunished.”
An outraged columnist described the sausages as a cultural institution, “right up there with Vince Lombardi, Friday night fish frys, and brandy old-fashioneds.” What were the police doing? Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough.
With more public appearances out of the question, the perpetrators began looking for a way out. On February 27, two individuals wearing hooded sweatshirts pulled low over their faces entered T.J. Ryan’s with the costume. They left it propped next to the bar rail. “You didn’t see anything,” one of them said to the bartender.
“Like I didn’t just see two guys plop a sausage on a bar stool,” she said. She called the police, who retrieved the costume. A representative from Klement’s picked it up the next day. Italian Sausage was reported to be in “fair condition,” with its chef’s hat and bow-tie in place and superficial salt stains on its backside. The detective, Vahsholtz, declined to say if his department was still investigating the theft. Not only were they still investigating, they were closing in.
The Brewers were still in Arizona when the sausage was recovered, but their promotions team was ready to meet the moment. On March 8, the Brewers honored the recovered mascot with a bobblehead night. On April 3, before the third game of the regular season, Klement’s threw a party for their celebrity sausage. Fans who showed up to the tailgate-style soiree outside Miller Park got a free sandwich, two drink tickets, and free entry to the game between the Brewers and the Colorado Rockies.
That celebration might have been the end of the story if not for the tenacity of law enforcement professionals like Jeff Vahsholtz, who was determined not to close this particular case without an oversized collar.
On April 16, officials confirmed that a brother and sister, aged 32 and 26 (so, grown-ups), had been charged in connection to the case. They too eventually agreed to a civil penalty for disorderly conduct. They also paid Klement’s $858 dollars to cover the costume’s cleaning costs. Such was the price of 15 minutes of fame.
To paraphrase Randall Simon, when there’s a lesson, it’s good to pass it around. Here was another one worth remembering:
Never bet against the police in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
And whatever you do, don’t run afoul of the law there. No matter how fast you are, in Cedarburg, justice will inevitably catch up.
Belated congratulations to Bratwurst for winning the 2025 overall title.
If you’re in the Milwaukee area, the sausages are still available to rent. Just make sure the ceilings are at least 10 feet high, please.
We found a picture of this so-called dancing, but our Standards and Practices people wouldn’t let us share it. Let’s just say it wasn’t ballroom-style.
Hilarious!
A year’s worth of mustard as a reward? What is that, like a 12 ounce bottle?
This is why I love your stuff. Nowhere else would I find gems like this.
How’s the book coming along?
Why didn’t they steal the Oscar Meyer-Mobile to make a getaway? Believe it or not they had an ad on TV looking for a full time driver I was considering applying to.
🎶 I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener 🎶🎼…