Day Sweats: A horrifying afternoon as Sam, the 1984 Olympic Eagle mascot

I’m going to keep this brief, because why would one otherwise humiliate oneself with a longer story for which no one asked.

In the summer of 1984, I had just completed my freshman year at American University in my hometown, Washington, D.C. I went to AU because it was the only school of my four choices my family could afford, and they could only afford it because I could live at home instead of in the dorms.

So, off to Spring Valley I went, a part of town I had never set foot in until the first day of classes in the fall of 1983. The year went about as you’d expect: a lot of drinking (the legal age at the time was 18), a lot of cramming for finals at 4 a.m., followed by more drinking, finding fast friends working at the school newspaper, with whom I did more drinking.

Part of my ability to pay for school was by doing work-study in AU’s athletic department. I would spend 15-20 hours a week in the athletic department office, working in sports information: doing press releases, calling local TV and radio stations to see if they’d come out to cover our plucky teams, keeping stats at soccer and basketball games. Grunt work, but no heavy lifting.

Among the folks who worked in athletics was a guy named Joe Zok, the bowling coach, who looked and sounded exactly like a bowling coach named Joe Zok would look and sound. We all groaned at the antics of our awful 6-22 men’s basketball team and eagerly covered the much-better women’s team.

Our sports information director, Terry, was a fun guy to work with who didn’t take himself or the job that seriously. He had a number of side gigs as well as being AU’s SID. One of them was doing PR for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Because the 1984 Summer Olympics were going to be in Los Angeles that year, it was a job with some juice. Americans were excited about the Olympics being in the States, and with the Soviet Union expected to boycott the Games in retaliation for the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980, the likelihood of U.S. athletes cleaning up and winning bushels of gold medals only heightened the fervor. So, Terry did event planning locally for USOC events in town, and it being D.C., there were a number of events.

One day, Terry called. USOC wanted to do a promotional event at a Sears store (Kids, ask your parents what Sears was) on Wisconsin Ave., with USOC’s mascot for the Summer Games, Sam the Eagle. That had to be the quickest ideas meeting in history: Well, uh, what should the mascot for the Summer Games being held in the United States be?

A platypus?

A walrus?

Um … how about an Eagle?

Works for me! What should we call it? Ferdinand? Linda?

Uh … how about Sam?

Done! Let’s get to Xenon!

“You wanna be Sam the Eagle?” Terry asked me.

You mean, dress up as the mascot?

Yes, Terry said.

It was summer in D.C., which meant the temperature would be somewhere between 85 and 95 degrees, with a jillion percent humidity. And putting on a mascot costume, even in an air-conditioned department store, didn’t seem to be a good use of any of my summertime hours.

“Uh, probably not,” I said.

“I can get you $200,” Terry said.

I was making $68 a week take home as an usher at the National Theatre, telling amazingly well-preserved fossilized patrons where their tickets were in the orchestra. (No, gramps, it’s the third and fourth seats in the row, not the second and third.) So, even to my alcohol-puddinged mind, $200 for three hours’ work would be mathematically worth it. Done, I told Terry.

I arrived at the Sears on an ungodly humid Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the costume arrived on time as well.

Everything they tell you about wearing a costume is true. The smell is indescribable — and that was before I put it on. If you’ve ever covered hockey regularly, you’re in the ballpark. It’s hard to do it justice with the written word. It’s really uncomfortable. Sam’s head had to weigh 15-20 pounds, which doesn’t sound like much until it’s on top of your head, grating into your brainpan. And Lord, it gets hot in there. I can’t recall what I was wearing, but all of it was soaked with sweat within 20 minutes. And yet, after about 15 minutes … you get into character.

Sam, of course, couldn’t say anything; that went against the Mascot Code. But he was all too happy to shake hands with kids, pose for pictures, and otherwise act like a loon in the hardware department.

It got to be kind of fun, actually, pantomiming joy and horror and happiness. Sure, kids tried to look under the grillework to see if there was an actual human inside, but for the most part, this was easy work, with a couple of C-notes at the back end waiting for me.

And then, she walked in.

She was a classmate of mine at AU, a year ahead of me, she worked at the paper, she was incredibly funny and good-looking and wrote really well, and I had a massive crush on her. In fact, the previous few months had been involved in my futile and unsuccessful attempts to get her to go out on a date with me. I took the rejection like a man and moved on.

Oh, who am I kidding; I didn’t move on at all! I wallowed in self pity. I stared out windows. I played “Against All Odds,” over and over again, on my stereo. It was terrible. All of which was going through my brain as she walked into Sears.

So, here, you have two choices, as a mascot.

One, ignore the girl on whom you have a massive crush, let her get her can opener or set of radials or whatever the hell it was she came into the Sears to buy, and keep posing for pictures with the little brats and their grandparents, who probably have tickets to see “42nd Street” that night at the National.

Two, violate the Mascot Code, open your beak and speak. It did not occur at the time to the part of my cerebral cortex (it has since been disconnected) considering all this that initiating a conversation with a woman on whom you have a massive crush while wearing a Sam the Eagle costume would likely not endear her to me, or make her any more likely to go out on a date. Did I mention I was sweating, heavily?

She was 50 feet away. Then, 25. Then, 10.

“Hello, (name redacted, because why should she be dragged into this any further?),” I said.

She paused, as any sane person would, having suddenly heard their name come out of a 15- to 20-pound plastic head of a bird mascot.

“Uh, hello,” she said, after a beat or two. “Who are you?”

A last-second escape route! I could have literally made up any name and/or story: “It’s Felix! I grew up one town over from you!” “Hey, don’t you remember Stan, from lifeguard class?” And she may have bought it. But, the cerebral cortex, evil in its intent, overpowered what remaining dignity I had left.

“It’s … David,” I said.

A look of perplexment on her face, followed by … was it horror? Bemusement? Pity? Had she figured out how many times I’d played “Against All Odds” that quickly, in her head?

“David … from The Eagle?” she said. (The school paper was called The Eagle. AU’s teams were called the Eagles.)

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

It’s hard to remember the conversation that followed – people sometimes have to, I hear, black out their most embarrassing moments and their most ridiculous decisions in life, as a means of coping. Soon after, she went on about her day, and I continued sweating.

The shift soon ended, and I went home, with the $200 the only salve to what had turned into a nightmare. I waited for Terry to hand me the cash. And waited. And waited. The money, of course, never came.

Terry did get me a set of beer mugs, festooned with the Sam the Eagle mascot on them. They didn’t seem worth the humiliation, though it was a fine set of mugs.

Epilogue: The Crush and I actually did go out on a date that summer. We went to see “Purple Rain.” We never became an item, though we did become, and remain, dear friends. A few years ago, in passing, I said to her, “Remember when I dressed as Sam the Eagle?” or words to that effect.

“Who’s Sam the Eagle?” she said.

I thought she was kidding. She wasn’t.

I retold every excruciating moment of that day in 1984. And she didn’t remember it. At all.

“Oh my god, really?” she asked. “I can’t believe I don’t remember that. Isn’t that somewhat of a relief on your part?”

Actually, no. Actually, the fact that I dressed up like an Olympic mascot and humiliated myself in front of a girl that I had a huge crush on, and that I got next to no compensation for it – and that, 30 years later, the episode had made absolutely no impression on her whatsoever, or was in any way memorable to her – brought a certain horrifying symmetry to the entire episode.

(Photo: Getty Images)

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