Phillies affiliate will honor the Squonk, Pennsylvania’s sad, wrinkled, pig-like creature
The squonk is said to roam the state’s dark forests with low self-esteem.
No one really cares if minor league baseball mascots and uniforms make sense.
But now that Phillies’ fans are crying into their light beers (look at their record), their Lehigh Valley triple-A affiliate’s transformation from the IronPigs into the Squonk on June 6 checks a few boxes.
The Sqonk is, arguably, Pennsylvania’s only cryptid (some say Bigfoot roams the Commonwealth), and it’s been rumored to inhabit the state’s dark hemlock forests with low self-esteem.
The Squonk is reportedly so ugly — like the Phillies’ hitting — that it cries puddles of tears. Some say the Squonk resembles a black bear with mange, or a pig with wrinkled, pimply skin, which might be the opposite of an IronPig, but a pig, nevertheless.
Bottom line is that it’s weird and funny, a perfect alternative uniform for a chill Saturday in June against the Rochester Red Wings at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown.
“By highlighting the classic Pennsylvania folk legend, the IronPigs hope to show the Squonk that, despite its own self-loathing nature, it too can be loved and will be found beautiful by the IronPigs fanbase,” the team said in a press release.
History of the Squonk
There has been a small crew of Squonk devotees determined to drag the lowly beast into the limelight. Last summer, The Inquirer visited Johnstown, Cambria County, before the third-annual Squonkapalooza, a music, arts, and crafts festival held at a former bottling plant turned artist hub.
“My motto is like ‘Pennsylvania is home, and sadness is all we know.’ That kind of thing,” said Johnstown native Joe Fogle, the festival’s organizer. “For Squonkapalooza, you think about a lot of the issues we have nowadays: health issues, mental issues. The Squonk is kind of a representation of that status.”
The Squonk, according to legend, appears to have originated with lumbermen in Pennsylvania’s vast north-central forests. It first appeared in a 1910 book called Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts by forester William T. Cox.
“The Squonk is of a very retiring disposition, generally traveling about at twilight and dusk,” Cox wrote. “Because of its misfitting skin, which is covered with warts and moles, it is always unhappy; in fact it is said, by people who are best able to judge, to be the most morbid of beasts.”
The Squonk has made a few pop-culture appearances since then. Rock nerds Steely Dan mentioned the Squonk’s tears in its 1974 song “Any Major Dude Will Do.” Genesis has a song called “Squonk,” too.
According to the IronPigs, there may be a possible Squonk sighting at the game on June 6 if fans shower the teary pif with “enough love and support.”
For tickets to the June 6 Lehigh Valley Squonk game, click here. The team is also selling Squonk merch here.
