Scandals & Feuds ·
A Bat Swing, a Sausage Race and the Fallout
Randall Simon’s swing brought fines and a suspension. The woman inside the costume found the fall funny—and later recalled an apology, a signed bat and a free trip to Curaçao.
On July 9, 2003, Mandy Block was running past the Pittsburgh Pirates’ dugout at Miller Park inside the Milwaukee Brewers’ oversized Italian Sausage costume when Pirates first baseman Randall Simon hit it with a half-swing of his bat. Block, a 19-year-old team employee, fell. A woman in the hot dog costume stumbled over her and fell, too. Both were treated for scraped knees.
The race took place between the sixth and seventh innings. In an interview years later, Block—then identified as Mandy Wagner—described the difficulty of running inside the seven-foot suit. At 5-foot-3, she supported it with a harness; it was top-heavy, awkward to maneuver and hard to see out of except straight ahead. “I don’t know when the bat hit it, it was kinda behind me,” she recalled. “I just fell. I literally thought I fell on my own accord.”
Wagner said she got up and finished the race before going to the stadium’s first-aid station. She put bandages on her knee and pinkie, reassured Brewers staff that she was all right and watched the replay on a television monitor. “I started laughing. I saw it for the first time and thought it was really funny,” she said.
Simon was arrested after the game and booked for misdemeanor battery. Prosecutors decided not to file criminal charges; the sheriff’s department cited him for disorderly conduct and fined him $432. On July 11, Major League Baseball imposed a three-game suspension and a $2,000 fine. He did not appeal.
Simon said he had intended a playful tap, not to knock anyone down. “That wasn’t my intention in my heart for that to happen,” he said the day after the incident. “I was just trying to get a tap at the costume and for her to finish the race.” The Pirates said they did not condone his behavior. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig called it “wholly unacceptable.”
Block did not want Simon charged with a crime. “It was just a few scratches,” she said that Friday. “I’m fine. I think the whole thing is funny.” She and the other woman asked for an apology and an autographed bat. Simon supplied two signed bats, and a Brewers spokesman said the women would receive them after Friday night’s game.
The attention was harder for Wagner to laugh off. In her later account, late-night programs contacted her so persistently that she disconnected her family’s phone lines. Detectives came to photograph her pinkie, and Good Morning America did a satellite broadcast from her backyard. “After a week, I realized it was a narrative that I had no control over,” she said. She understood that hitting someone in a costume was wrong, but did not believe Simon had meant to harm her.
Wagner recalled that Simon later called to apologize. The Curaçao Tourism Department also offered her a free trip to the island, Simon’s home country. She accepted and took her mother. The bat became another souvenir. “I got this cool bat, I have this story to tell my son, I have this book of newspaper articles,” she said.