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Big eyes, cream colored face, a wide smile, fur–Rascal is a friendly<\/em> river monster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tuesday of last week was the Harrisburg Senators’ home opener. It was bitterly cold–40 at game time, with a wind chill around freezing. I said on Facebook this wasn’t my first Opening Day in winter coat, scarf, and gloves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Rascal was… different<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n Rascal’s face had changed!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was yellow! It was thinner! That wide, friendly smile was not so wide, and its smile felt more… forced<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n And the furry forehead! Rascal — the real<\/em> Rascal — has no forehead!<\/p>\n\n\n\n What was this creature, this False Rascal? Is he Rascal–or fiend from Hell?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Sorry, Ra’s al-Ghul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Senators lost to the Richmond Flying Squirrels opening day. I did not stay for the entire game. It was just too damn cold, and I had to work in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was back on City Island today. And which Rascal would I see?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why, it’s the Real Rascal! Wide smile! Cream face! No appreciable forehead!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Senators won Sunday’s game, with the Squirrels and the Senators trading the lead several times. The Senators took a two run lead into the ninth, the Flying Squirrels loaded the bases with one out, and a double play ended the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The False Rascal<\/a> was, I think, using a costume head from the “Rascal and His Junior Rascals” bit of between-innings fun where Rascal leads a couple of children, wearing Rascal costumes, onto the field and they do hijincky things for a minute and a half. The Junior Rascal costumes sorta<\/em> look like Rascal, but they’re a bit more yellow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, the False Rascal may have been wearing a larger-sized Junior Rascal head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Either that, or there’s a dimensional corridor to a Mirror Universe on City Island and we should call the False Rascal “Lazarus.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Baseball teams have fun, cool mascots. For example, in Harrisburg we have Rascal, a river monster from the Susquehanna River. We took this selfie in August 2015 when the Washington Nationals’ Racing Presidents were in town. Big eyes, cream colored face, a wide smile, fur–Rascal is a friendly river monster. Tuesday of last week wasContinue reading “The Curious Case of the False Rascal”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":34401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[89,22,214,973,5222,42],"class_list":["post-34399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baseball","tag-batman","tag-harrisburg-senators","tag-minor-league-baseball","tag-ras-al-ghul","tag-rascal","tag-richmond-flying-squirrels","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/IMG_20250408_181437.jpg\")
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