The Moon Mammoths were welcomed to Minor League Baseball on Saturday night with the Erie, Pennsylvania Double-A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers rebranding for four games this season.
The Erie Seawolves were chosen by comedian John Oliver and the staff of his HBO program “Last Week Tonight” from among 47 teams who submitted pitches after the late-night talk show host praised the goofy spirit of minor league baseball and wanted to contribute in some manner.
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Oliver threw out the first pitch for Saturday’s game versus the Chesapeake Baysox. He was also a celebrity bat boy and PA announcer, sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and sat in with the broadcast team. Additionally, Oliver presented a race between mascots Fuzz E. Mammoth and Louie, the green Baysox mascot, and also worked as a Moon Pie vendor during the game.
The Moon Mammoths lost to the Baysox, 6-5, in front of a record crowd of 7,070 at UPMC Park. (By the way, the Baysox have their own alternate brand identity as the Oyster Catchers.)
Erie was chosen after an email listing 11 reasons why the team should be chosen, including “The SeaWolves play baseball nowhere near the sea” and “We have the least creatively named mascot in MiLB. His name is C. Wolf. Seriously.”
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Per Oliver’s conditions, the Seawolves had to unconditionally accept the rebranding proposal, with no input in the name, mascot or theme night to be created.
“Minor league baseball is clearly both incredibly special and inescapably stupid in the very best way,” Oliver said on the May 4, 2025 episode of his show.
“I love all of this,” he added. “The way the world is now, I’d argue that we all badly, badly need this.”
Why the “Moon Mammoths”? Oliver and his staff wanted to create a brand identity that somehow told some of Erie’s history to set it apart from other minor league baseball cities.
“Erie did stand out to us as being, you know, uniquely eccentric. And I say that as both a compliment and an insult, which is the biggest compliment there is,” Oliver said, via the Associated Press.
The Seawolves have previously held humorous theme nights including “Alternative Facts Night” in 2017, during which the team celebrated the 2016 championship that it never actually won. Currently, the team boasts four of the Tigers’ top minor-league prospects on its roster, including 2023 first-round pick Max Clark.
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The Moon Mammoths were inspired by George Moon, who found a bone measuring three feet long while scuba diving in Erie County’s Lake Pleasant in 1991. The bone was discovered to be the shoulder blade of a prehistoric mammoth. Subsequent dives after Moon’s find recovered 80 percent of the creature’s skeleton, including both of its tusks.
Moon caught the ceremonial first pitch from Oliver on Saturday.
“If you had bet me 34 years ago on something like this, I would have not taken the money, I would have lost,” Moon told Pittsburgh’s KDKA. “This is great. I love it for Erie. It is great for the community, for the ballpark, for everybody around.”
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The Seawolves will play three more games as the Moon Mammoths on Aug. 19, Sept. 12 and Sept. 13. After that, it’s up to the team to decide whether or not to keep the mascot that Oliver referred to as “our furry child.”
