Tracking proCanes -John Routh - Part I

proCanes.com is continuing our “Tracking proCanes” feature with former University of Miami Ibis and Maniac, John Routh. John performed as Sebastian the Ibis and the Miami Maniac from 1984 – 1992 and 1983 – 1993 respectively. John played an integral part in establishing the aura and championship mentality of both Hurricane Football and Baseball and was the mastermind in developing and creating both the Ibis and Maniac characters into what they are today. His on-field antics and skits are remembered by not only Hurricane fans, but fans across the nation and were often copied but never topped. John is still heavily involved with University as he is on the Executive Committee of the UM Sports Hall of Fame and can be found at most Hurricane sporting events, you just need to know who to look for now that he isn’t in costume. Read Part I of our four-part series with John Routh below.

Part I:

proCanes.com: So, what are you up to now?
John Routh: I’m on the Executive Committee of the UM Sports Hall of Fame. I am one of 20 members. I do a lot of work for that and I sell sports merchandise on eBay. As a matter of fact this morning I sold a Master’s Golf tournament flag for $700. I bought it for $20 about ten years ago. I’m a pack rat so I’ve got a lot of UM and Marlins memorabilia, I’ve got stuff everywhere. I haven’t even touched the good stuff yet.

pC: Does it hurt to part with the memorabilia?
JR: Well I haven’t parted with the good ones yet. But with the flag, when I found out what it was worth I was like damn.

pC: So how did you end up at UM in the early 80’s?
JR: I grew up in Columbus South Carolina, graduated from the University of South Carolina and my last two years there I was “Cocky” the Gamecock. So it was the 1981 season when the director of the NCAA Championships Jerry Miles came to our baseball regional and saw me perform. He said if South Carolina made the regional to bring me out there. So I went out and worked just the four Carolina games in ’81, of course Miami was there and I got to meet coach Fraser. In ‘82 Miami came up and played South Carolina in Columbia for a four game series in early April. So I worked the crowd that game and I actually got Miami involved in one of the skits. Coach Fraser let us do this John Wayne routine where I tossed a hand grenade in the dugout and all the Miami guys went flying out and the crowd went really nuts. So, they [Fraser] arranged it for me to come down in May of ‘82 before I actually graduated and perform at the Florida State series as the Maniac. They basically created the Maniac after seeing me work. You know coach Fraser’s attitude was South Carolina has a mascot, why can’t we? And at that time the Athletic Department and Baseball Office were kind of all on their own so they did they’re own thing. People asked why did you want your own mascot, but Fraser wanted his own mascot and actually a funny story a couple of years later once I was down here in ’83, they wanted to work it out for me to do football also. The quote I heard when they approached Schnellenberger about it was that he said I was a baseball guy and I was not worth being his mascot. Because of the two egos of the coaches and the programs being separate that is how the Maniac came into being.

pC: You didn’t create the Maniac?
JR: There was a booster, Jeff Warner, who helped Fraser raise the money and he designed the costume after the Philly Phanatic. After ‘82 I think the first guy that did it was a former player that was getting ready to go to the minor leagues, and then they had a staff member who supposedly all he did was hug women in the stands. He did one game and that was it from all the complaints they got. There was also a female student that did it. In the yearbook there’s a picture of me with her. When I came down that weekend to do the Florida State series I got a photo with her because I’ve seen it in one of the old IBIS Yearbooks.

Basically, Fraser wanted to hire me so I came down in ‘83 and did baseball the first year and I had to work it out to do football but it didn’t work. So I came back in spring of ‘84 to do baseball again and by that time Schnellenberger left so we worked it out and by that time my first game as the Ibis was also Jimmy Johnson’s first game.

Another funny story! The first game was the Kickoff Classic in New Jersey and of course for Johnson it was his first game so he’s new to the thing too. So I went to “Shorty” the equipment manager and said do you mind if I dress in the locker room? I’m sitting there putting on the orange tights and Jimmy Johnson walks by and says: “who are you?” and I say “hey coach I’m John Routh, I’m your mascot” and he goes “do they always dress in the locker room?” and I quickly said “yes sir, that’s Miami’s tradition!” So, the tradition for the next ten years was that I dressed in the locker room. Quick thinking helped me get my dressing room which really helped me in the future because it helped make the Ibis bigger because I got to personally know the guys [football players]. They knew me personally, I traveled with the team, I dressed in the locker room.

pC: So you didn’t dress with the cheerleaders because that’s more of the tradition now?
JR: Right. Several years later in one of the games I kind of got dehydrated, so I’m cramping up in the bathroom floor and Craig Erickson is grabbing my legs and Steve Walsh had my arms trying to stretch me. They changed right outside the bathroom door so you know I got to be friends with them, and hear what they say, like “you saw what the Ibis did?” and I would hear that, so that really helped to build up the image.

pC: I’ve gotten a feeling that from just talking to older players, if I say Sebastian they automatically say John Routh, or they describe his personality as crazy. It seems like they knew the Ibis a lot better than players today. Plus I think you had a lot more liberty to do things back then.
JR: Oh definitely. I think mascots really came into their own being. You know mascots have been around for years, but with ESPN they made it more popular and there really weren’t any rules and you could get away with anything. I knew most of the referees and they knew I was out there to have fun and I was a professional not just some student.

pC: So it was a full-time paying job?
JR: Right, I was the only paid college mascot in the country. That’s what Fraser envisioned. I would work down here for a few years and then hook up with a major or minor league time but I was having such a good time and we were winning in football and baseball. It was one of those things that I thought would be 6 months to a year. It was one of the most unbelievable ten year periods in history.

I did baseball from ’83 to ‘93 and football from ’84 to ‘92. And actually that last year of doing baseball I had already gotten the Florida Marlins job so I worked that last year doing both games.

pC: So one story I remember is you sneaking a fire extinguisher into the 1991 National Championship Orange Bowl Game against Nebraska when the University was apparently told not to enter the game with the smoke.
JR: This was the Orange Bowl game and they requested that since Nebraska was technically the home team that we don’t do the smoke and I looked at it as it’s my job as the mascot to uphold tradition and so I actually went down to a place in town called Miami Fire Equipment and I told the guy I need to get a fire extinguisher that throws a lot of CO2 and they gave it to me and let me use it because I told them what I was going to do. He said” “yeah I’ll help you but we’ve got to keep it quiet.”

So what I did was I went to the stadium early because I knew all security in the stadium and the team had already set up all their equipment in their locker room so I had a big baseball equipment bag and I always walked in with props and stuff that I’d use during the games so the security guards didn’t look at it as any different. I had that set aside and hidden in the locker room and right before we were about to head out I threw it over my shoulder. I’d always lead the team out and walk next to coach Erickson and when they said “go” I would run out with them. I remember as I pulled the bag, coach Erickson looked at me like are you going to run with that bag? So, I opened the top so I could grab the handle but I didn’t want to pull it out yet. I wanted to wait for the guy from the TV who stood there to say “alright coach go!” So there was an Orange Bowl guy standing there with his jacket and coach Erickson looked over and went “oh lord, I know what you’re doing and I don’t want to see it.” The Orange Bowl guy looked over and went “I don’t know anything” and literally turned around and walked away. When the guy said “go” I pulled it [fire extinguisher] out and just started squirting. It was the neatest thing because that stadium has roared a thousand times but to hear it right then, it was as if we won the National Championship right then. The NBC guys did a little piece on it like 5 min into the game. It’s funny I have a tape of it and you hear the announcer, Don Cricket, going ‘Miami is not allowed to do their smoke tonight, but woah wait they’re doing it!’ Guys like Lamar Thomas came up to me afterward and said that really pumped them up.

On a side note to that though, I was doing the college world series as the Maniac and my contract was up and was due to be renegotiated and it was like a two year thing and they had always renegotiated. Well they didn’t renew me for the ‘92 season and I was told it was because several members of the College World Series Board of Trustees were at the game [1991 Orange Bowl National Championship Game] and were upset that I had done the smoke and so they didn’t renew me. That’s was coach Fraser’s last year, in ’92 so I went out to the World Series for the last weekend only and there were articles and letters written in the newspapers about me not being there for the whole tournament. So I went out for coach Fraser’s last weekend and when I came out there was this big roar and people were coming up telling me: “Maniac we miss you!” and that was the last time I was ever in Omaha. So doing the smoke in the game cost me the job in the College World Series.

pC: So talk about what happened to you at Florida State in 1989.
JR: It was ‘89 and it was one of those things of sitting around with friends, drinking beers and coming up with crazy ideas. It was the idea of they’ve got their flame and we’re going put it out, but I know I wouldn’t have gotten out of Tallahassee alive if I would have done it. So I was just going kind of go around the field and squirt at it maybe get close to the horse, but it was more just the fear factor of “is he gonna do it” just to kind of see what they would do. But I cannot tell you how many dozens of people have told me “man I was there when you grabbed the spear and broke it over your knee.” I never got out on the field!

Back then in Tallahassee the way the stands were, now they’ve got this built up over it and the team comes out of a tunnel, but back then there was a fence and you could go between the stands and they had students that manned it and when a team or equipment manager would come through they drew the gates out and you would go through. So, I had gone through there several times before the game once to get some water, to bring out props to the field and I also came out with the cheerleaders, so they had seen the fire extinguisher but nobody had said anything. So right before the game the gates drew open and I see coach Erickson coming around the corner and I’ve got this fire extinguisher which I got from the Coral Gables Fire Department. I’ve got the [fire] jacket and the [fire] helmet and I had the fire extinguisher and had just filled it up and coach Erickson is standing there and the guy from the TV goes “coach anytime” and so he says “let’s go!” So as I started to take a step somebody grabs me and as I tried to jerk away from him he’s cussing at me, “give me that fire extinguisher” and using a few other words. He spun me around and it was like face to face. It was a young looking guy so I assumed it was one of the kids that opened and closed the gate because when looking out of the eyes, the beak hid the fact that he was wearing a sheriff’s outfit! So, as I tried to jerk away from him, thinking it was one of these kids I’ve got the fire extinguisher by the handle and I squeezed it and apparently the spray of water shot him right in the chest. And since they had seen me struggling with him, other cops came over and in within seconds they had me up against the fence and as I like to say with one wing spread out this way one wing behind my back and one guy had an elbow up underneath my chin and the other had the beak and was literally jerking it trying to get it off. Of course I’m wearing a chin strap and it’s about to choke me! All of this is happening right in front of the Miami section and I can see cops reigning down and you could here the booing and trash is coming out from the Miami section, rightfully so!

The sergeant or whatever is yelling and screaming and I just kind of said, “you’re kidding right?” and oh, he blew up. One of the guys had the handcuffs out, and he was like “you’re disobeying my orders and you’ve got him all wet.” He was wet! [Laughter] He had this big old wet spot in the middle of his uniform. And so, literally I was about 5 seconds from going to jail, I guess they would have charged me with disorderly conduct or whatever but our cheerleader coach, Bill Rose, walks over to the officer and says, “um excuse me officer, what are you doing to our BIRD?” And it was kind of like ok, yeah wait a minute, this is a little…we’re arresting a guy in a bird costume. So they told me to empty out the fire extinguisher and they literally held me in the corner until Osceola did the spear thing. They then told me “if you put one foot on that field and we’re gonna arrest ya..” So we scored first on the first drive I think it was, and so I just stepped [on the field] and would step out and step back in and I just played with them the whole game and the Miami Herald photographer got a great photo of it and the picture ran in the paper I guess Monday but unfortunately we ended up losing the game.

I always learned from coach Fraser, you take a negative and make it into a positive and so when the picture ran in the paper and the Herald did a little story and Bernard Sliger was president of Florida State at the time so I just took a copy of the article and mailed it to his office. So I assume he thought it came from the Athletic Department and he wrote a letter to Sam Jankovich, who was the Athletic Director at the time blaming me essentially and saying the cops and everything they did was okay. He said, you know what if the horse had been spooked and it trampled someone on the sidelines. I’m thinking to myself, okay you’ve got a horse that’s got a guy sitting on his back who’s got a flaming spear who runs out in front of two screaming football teams with bands playing and 60,000 people screaming and a guy in a duck costume is going to come and scare him? [Laughter] So it was one of those things of trying to make a positive out of it, and it’s one of those things that goes down in the lore of the rivalry now.

pC: So talk about the relationship you had with the players? Would you be formally introduced to them?
JR: The first couple of years I lived on campus. That was part of my deal. I lived in dorms the first few years with the cheerleaders. I was living with the guys but the girls lived next door so seeing them on campus and in the locker rooms everyone got to know who I was. I became good friends with a lot of the guys, as a matter of fact, I was just on the phone with Gino Torretta. I see Craig Erickson a good bit as well. I mean a lot of the guys. When I went to the Marlins I kind of lost contact and everyone spread out. But when I was at the Alumni thing I saw a bunch of guys. I don’t keep in constant contact because they’re all spread out but yeah we keep in touch every now and then. I was probably closer to the baseball guys than to the football but still I hung around them Thursday nights at the Rat. We had a little corner up there particularly in the off season where all the athletes hung out. It was a lot of fun. It’s kind of like I say, I spent five years in South Carolina, ten years in Miami, so it was like being in school for fifteen years.

pC: You can’t beat that!
JR: Well that’s why I’m doing what I am doing now because it’s kind of hard to get a real job when you haven’t had one you’re entire life, so I tell people I’m trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. And I haven’t figured it out unfortunately.

pC: So how did it end in 92?
JR: Well the Marlins came into existence and I would have loved to have stayed at Miami but I never was really paid a lot of money. But my salary was never very large, a private school and all that. But I would travel during the summer and do minor league games as the Maniac. So I would make three times more than what the University paid me, during the summer. Well not three times, but I did relatively well doing the minor league games. I did between 25 and 35 games a summer. Like I said, I had a contract with a College World Series and I made money doing the occasional birthday or Bar Mitzvah around town, but when the Marlins came into existence I kind of looked at it as this might be only chance to make the big leagues. As a kid, I thought I’d make the big leagues as a third baseman but instead I made it as a fish. [Laughter] And it was kind of at a point too where Dave Maggart was the Athletic Director now and I could tell that he wasn’t interested in number one paying me much and that he also had this feeling that it should be a student which, I understand that but, for me I wanted to keep my job. I think one thing that was neat about it was that I really did want to move on, but there were a bunch of fans that kind of did a letter writing campaign to keep me and it was really a neat thing to realize that all the hard work I did for 10 years was appreciated. But it was kind of at a point where I said, I’ve been here for ten years and it’s time to try something else. So it was a career move, going from college to the big leagues. In hindsight if I had stayed at UM I probably would have had more visibility than Billy the Marlin, but I’m proud that Billy the Marlin became as popular nationally as he was, but it was one of those things that it was time to move on.

Come back tomorrow and read Part II of our interview with John Routh and see what he has to say about what it was like to be Billy the Marlin, how the C-A-N-E-S CANES chant started, the differences between Coach Johnson and Coach Erickson!