John Oliver on hand, Moon Mammoths make debut to remember

ERIE, Pa. -- George Moon has to be the only person in history who scuba dove and discovered … a Minor League Baseball team.

It was 34 years ago this summer. Moon, a resident of nearby Summit Township, was exploring the depths of Lake Pleasant when he came upon a nearly three-foot-long bone.

“I thought it was a dinosaur bone,” he said. “But we ended up getting a hold of [professor] Jude Kirkpatrick from Gannon University, and he set us straight that it would have been a mastodon or a mammoth scapula.”

That’s how the Moon Mammoth was born.

And on Saturday at UPMC Park, it finally had something akin to a birthday party, hosted by Double-A Erie and its special guest, comedian John Oliver, whose wild idea to (temporarily) rebrand the SeaWolves as the Moon Mammoths came to life.

Wearing the black-and-purple Moon Mammoths jersey and hat designed by his “Last Week Tonight” staff, the HBO star threw out a ceremonial first pitch -- caught by Moon (well, actually, dropped, if we’re being honest … but at least he didn’t drop that bone back in 1991) -- prior to Erie’s 6-5 loss to the Chesapeake Baysox.

Oliver also emceed a midgame race in which the newly created Fuzz E. Mammoth (a large purple creature in astronaut gear) outpaced Baysox mascot Louie. He served as celebrity bat boy, PA announcer and even a Moon Pie vendor during a game that aired free on MiLB.TV. The jersey he wore will be donated to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s collection.

A sold-out crowd of a stadium-record 7,070 fans -- many of whom had lined up as early as seven hours prior to first pitch to receive a giveaway Moon Mammoth squishy -- ate it all up, along with some specialty food items like purple cotton candy, Mammoth Balls (deep fried pepperoni with cheese, covered with violet glitter) and Mammoth Ears (fried dough pastry topped with ice cream and purple sprinkles).

The whole experience was emblematic of what led Oliver here in the first place.

“[Minor League Baseball] is one of the great things that America has,” the England-born Oliver said. “If you’re lucky enough to have a Minor League team anywhere near you, support it.”

When “Last Week Tonight” recently became intertwined with MiLB, Oliver and his staff received more support than anticipated.

Oliver had become tickled by the idea of rebranding an MiLB team. He used his show to request submissions from teams willing to participate, with the stipulation that Oliver’s crew would have full autonomy over the name and logo.

He wound up hearing from more than 40 clubs.

“It felt like a nice fit with our show,” Oliver said. “Minor League Baseball is willing to try anything. That was proven by the fact that over half the league was willing to, sight-unseen, rebrand and put their trust in the hands of a group of people who are untrustworthy. That’s a bad decision. And it is that kind of bad decision-making that I love about Minor League Baseball.”

Once the SeaWolves, thanks to a humorous 11-point letter from team president Greg Coleman, won the honor of winning a “Last Week Tonight” makeover, the show’s producers did their own deep dive into the Erie area to search for inspiration for a new name.

“Erie did stand out to us as being uniquely eccentric,” Oliver said. “I say that as both a compliment and an insult, which is the biggest compliment there is.”

Two folkloric -- and obscure -- Erie stories were most appealing to Oliver’s show:

1. The Moon Mammoth, a story that got a fair amount of attention in 1991 and was the subject of a 30th anniversary retrospective piece in the Erie Times-News in 2021 but has otherwise faded into the background.

2. The Revolutionary War story of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne, whose coffin was opened 12 years after his 1796 death on Presque Isle. The body had not fully decomposed. So to honor his daughter’s request that the general’s body be moved to a family burial plot in Radnor, Pa., a doctor decided to boil Wayne’s body (gross, right?) to separate the flesh from the bones to more easily transport the bones.

“We definitely looked at the fact that you boiled Mad Anthony,” Oliver told a reporter from Erie. “Full respect for that. It felt almost too easy at that point. [But] the mammoth felt like something that would be extra surprising.”

The bigger surprise might be how well the Oliver rebranding has gone over here. Fans tend to become attached to their team’s identity, and this is actually the 30th anniversary of the SeaWolves. But Mammoth merchandise has proved a hot item online and at UPMC Park, where the line for the team shop snaked through the concourse for the entirety of the game.

“It’s nothing like I've ever seen,” Coleman said. “I've been in Minor League Baseball for 25-plus years. Yeah, I've seen high-profile player rehabs, things like that. But to see the reaction to this has been amazing.”

Coleman said he felt oddly confident that Oliver’s team would do the rebrand right and not put his franchise in an uncomfortable spot. He became even more comfortable when he learned “Last Week Tonight” was not requiring Erie to change its identity permanently. Rather, it will be at the club’s discretion as to how often the Moon Mammoth uniforms are worn.

(The Moon Mammoths will return for an Aug. 19 date against Harrisburg, as well as Sept. 12-13 vs. Altoona.)

“We’re sending our fairy child out into the world,” said Oliver, “and [the SeaWolves] are the custodian of it now.”

When Oliver unveiled the Moon Mammoth identity on the June 30 episode of “Last Week Tonight,” Coleman was there for the taping. Then, he had to decide how many thousands of hats and shirts to order with the new name and logo to offer up to fans, not wanting to get stuck with excess inventory.

Turns out, he didn’t have to worry.

“That next shipment can't come fast enough,” Coleman said.

Whether the Moon Mammoths will prove so popular that they more frequently replace the SeaWolves remains to be seen. But for one night, UPMC Park, which actually and coincidentally already had purple lettering in its logo to reflect the official font of the sponsor, seamlessly shifted to the Mammoths’ lair.

This “ludicrous idea,” as Oliver put it, turned out to be a good one.

“When you send an offer like this out into the world, there’s a non-zero chance no one is going to come back wanting to play ball,” Oliver said. “To have so many teams in the league express an interest was really edifying.”

No one has been more floored by the experience than Moon himself. Standing in the concourse prior to the game, decked out in a Moon Mammoths hat and shirt, amidst so many other purple-clad fans, Moon realized he discovered so much more than a bone that day in Lake Pleasant.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “When you see the superstars on the red carpet for the premiere of a movie, I’ve never put myself on any level with anybody like that. But now you’re the center of attention when people find out who you are. I’m gonna enjoy it for all it’s worth.”