So I was surfing through some YouTube goodness here this afternoon, and I came across the following clip-- a 1984 commercial for the San Francisco Giants featuring... uh... Crazy Crab. Take a look:

WTF, am I right?

I have to admit, I follow baseball a lot, but had never heard of Crazy Crab before. The video didn't have all that many views, so I thought maybe I'd found some kind of hidden gem here. . .

Unsurprisingly, it turns out I'm just an idiot and have simply missed this entire phenomenon until now, but on the bright side, that also means I don't have to do any research into what the fuck happened to Crazy Crab-- I can just let my pal Richie Rich over at Home Run Derby fill us in:

"The Crab was a mascot the San Francisco Giants paraded out in 1984 as an anti-mascot to rival the recent influx of mascots into Major League Baseball."

"The fans would boo the Crab (when they weren’t throwing things at it), the players would abuse it with rosin bags and bats, and the Crab would give it right back on talk radio and taunt fans and management, even after it was retired in 1985 - barely a season after it had debuted."

In recent years, the Crab has experience a resurgence in popularity. According to HR Derby he threw out the first pitch at a game in 1999. Then, in 2006, he made a surprise appearance at a game:

And this past season he had got very own bobblehead. (Actually, as the video here shows, he has two bobbleheads-- a regular one and a "limted" edition one.)

He made yet another on-field appearance that night:

And yet, for some reason-- most likely because it's always awesome to demean a guy in a costume-- Giants fans still like to throw things at him. . .

Stay strong, Crazy Crab. Stay strong...