Scandal!

Portland Pickles Let Mascot Do a Twitter Takeover—Hilarity Ensues

Um, what is that green shaft popping up in our feeds?

By Margaret Seiler January 13, 2022

A figure seated in an armchair, wearing a baseball uniform, with the face obscured and the word CENSORED covering the blurred area

Timber Joey might have the logs and the wood, but Dillon T. Pickle has been the most phallic local mascot since his elongated green frame first trotted out onto the field at Walker Stadium in 2016.

That’s why it was somehow fitting that on January 12, during a very brief mascot takeover of the Twitter account for amateur wood bat team the Portland Pickles, the smiling, silent six-foot pickle in a baseball uniform “accidentally” posted a poorly framed selfie with the caption “new phone who dis,” showing a fuzzy, green cylindrical something or other that could have been emerging from Dillon's pants. 

The team’s powers that be swept in immediately to suspend the social media event, citing what could be "misinterpreted as a disturbing image" and claiming the protruding pickle part was a thumb.

Pickles GM Ross Campbell assures Portland Monthly that the team has launched "an internal investigation to find out who is responsible," and that concerned citizens should watch for more information today. (More Twitter likes and shares will surely follow, no small feat for a team whose opening day is still five months away.)

Tagged in Dillon's post were multiple companies that fall into the beans and/or franks category, as well as public figures named Popper, Wiener, etc. Slim Jim's corporate account offered a thumbs-up in the replies.

Now, if this had been Hillsboro Hops mascot Barley, whose genitalia is more easily imagined as something akin to Derek’s wind chimes on The Good Place, we would be scandalized. But Dillon, a onetime presidential candidate who has been known to drape his long frame over a velvet couch with that come-hither look, has always seemed to have more in common with Otto, the inflated pleasure seeker from the film Airplane!, than he does with Barley, or an anodyne figure like Kermit the Frog.

While it’s trashier than Gritty’s Kim Kardashian–inspired water bottle/Champagne pop and both more and less prurient than the Timbers’ legendary response to a 2019 Netflix Twitter post asking "what’s something you can say during sex but also when you manage a brand twitter account?"—“We have two DP slots open”—the Pickles' social media stunt/inspired bit of offseason fan engagement is right up there with those classics.

 

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