How Milwaukee’s silly sausages became one of the most beloved spectacles in baseball

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The Milwaukee Brewers are deadly serious about their baseball this season.

Finishing with the best record in MLB, they’re hoping that this will be the year they can finally win a World Series after clinching a spot in the Fall Classic on Thursday. But this is a franchise that doesn’t always take itself too seriously, and the bright lights of October will help showcase one of the most wonderfully ridiculous servings in sport: The slapstick sixth-inning sausage race.

It’s exactly as absurd as it sounds. Human runners, wearing 7-foot-tall foam costumes with goofy faces and colorful features depicting a Bratwurst, Polish, Italian, Hot Dog and Chorizo, race each other around home plate on the warning track. The comedically top-heavy sausages, which can easily topple forwards into the dirt, temporarily take center stage as the baseball players gaze on in amusement from their dugouts, sometimes wagering on the outcome.

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But from the very first race in the summer of 1993, these sausages have sizzled and arguably helped to modernize the most traditional American pastime.

“I think the things that become iconic and popular are things that the fans adopt, as opposed to something forced on them,” Brewers’ President of Business Operations Rick Schlesinger explained to CNN Sports. “This was a perfect example of something innocent, a little silly, whimsical, but, you know, quintessentially Wisconsin.”

Dating back to the 1800s, the state of Wisconsin was a popular destination for European immigrants, and they brought their love of meat and beer with them. The town of Sheboygan, just 60 miles north of Milwaukee, claims to be the “Bratwurst Capital of the World.” When the baseball team came along in 1969, the Brewers’ name indicated that they’d be leaning into their community’s roots.

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A quarter of a century later, local graphic designer Michael Dillon pitched the idea of a live-action sausage race to the team’s then-Vice President of Operations Gabe Paul Junior, but he says the notion of it seemed so obvious that everyone was probably thinking it.

The team had already animated a cartoon film of three anthropomorphic sausages running across the Milwaukee skyline on the big screen and when they were seen to arrive at the gates of the stadium, the characters would race across the scoreboard as digital dots.

Paul initially dismissed the suggestion – “I don’t think that’s going to fly,” Dillon recalled of their conversation – but he subsequently changed his mind. The Brewers wanted a special event to mark the return of the Brewers’ legend Paul Molitor, who had recently moved to Toronto, and a sausage race was it.

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Dillon said he quickly made the giant costumes out of foam rubber, contact cement and spray paint, and turned up to race in them on June 27, 1993.

“When we put them on, we couldn’t stand up inside County Stadium,” he told CNN Sports, “We had to walk bent over with people holding them in front of us. When it came time for the sausage race, the gates opened up, we ran out and you cannot imagine what happened.”

He says the roar of the crowd was deafening: “I mean, I was inside a tube of foam rubber, but I could hear this enormous sound.”

In honor of his German grandfather, Dillon wore the “Brett,” the bratwurst costume with his green lederhosen. His business partner of Italian descent Dan Necci took “Guido,” the Italian chef, and his employee Jeff Paul, Gabe’s son, took the Polish sausage, “Stosh,” in his striped rugby jersey.

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Visibility inside the sausages was limited.

“Oh my god,” Dillion exclaimed, “the hole to look out of was maybe, like, eight inches, and when you ran it bounced up and down, you couldn’t see where you were going, I ran into one of the other sausages.”

Dillon said that because of the need for secrecy, they had only practiced running in the costumes once before the big day, they weren’t really prepared for the physical and navigational challenges.

“Anyway, we ran across the field, I won, and the home plate umpire was pissed about it. He said that it was making the sport into a joke,” Dillon added.

Dillon returned to his design studio with the costumes, wondering what would come next. A few weeks later, the Brewers called to say they wanted another race and when it started becoming a more regular event, he donated the costumes to the team and let them get on with it themselves.

Knowing now what the race would later become, he told CNN, “My friends hound me that I should be getting money, but no, it’s fine. I had fun doing it and it has enriched my life, and that’s enough for me.”

A couple of years later, the Brewers added a fourth link, “Frankie Furter,” a hot dog in a baseball uniform, and by the end of the 2000 season, when the team was preparing to move to a new stadium across the road, the video animation was dropped and the sausages began racing during every home game.

In 2006, on the team’s first ever Cerveceros Day to celebrate Latin heritage and culture within baseball, “Cinco” the Chorizo made his debut in a sombrero. However, the spicy sausage wasn’t permitted to race full-time until 2007, because MLB prohibits the introduction new mascots during a season. Even in the bizarro world of meat racing, there are still rules to abide by.

Over 30 years later, the event has transcended the Brewers, parodied and imitated in equal measure.

More than half the teams in the league have their own versions of the mascot race – for example salmon in Seattle or presidents in Washington, D.C. – and Milwaukee’s famous five have been featured twice in commercials for ESPN’s SportsCenter show. In one, the sausages spoofed Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls, chasing panicked employees through a narrow office corridor.

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The Brewers prefer not to say who runs in the costumes, saying mostly they are franchise employees, members of the “Brew Crew,” but they admit that several players have competed and people with connections might be allowed in, too. In 2011, the Brewers’ then-first baseman Prince Fielder told the New York Times, “My wife’s done it. My two boys have done it. My wife’s cousin came and actually tore her A.C.L doing it. She took it like a champ.”

The Brewers have embraced the sausages to the point that the race results are tallied along with their gameday reports, but the sausages have also been the subject of police reports and made national news.

In 2013, the $5,000 Italian costume, went missing for two weeks until it surfaced at bar in Cedarburg. According to the bartender Jen Mohney, two men dropped the costume on the premises and told her, “You did not see anything.”

She called the police as soon as they had left, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Like I didn’t just see two guys plop a sausage on a bar stool.”

According to the 46-page police report, the officers responding to the call at TJ Ryans noted the tire tracks in the snow and evidence of a speedy getaway, plus a ziplocked bag with a note inside.

“Sorry I’m such a sauced weenie,” it read. “You probably think I am the wurst. I started feeling the heat as the police began to ketchup by connecting the links. I know it was a greasy move so here I am.”

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Guido has been a magnet for controversy; a decade earlier he had been knocked to the ground when the Pirates’ first baseman Randall Simon took a swing at him with his bat from the visitor’s dugout, causing both the Italian sausage and hot dog to fall. Inside the costume, the 19-year-old University of Wisconsin student Mandy Wagner was laughing, and she still thought it was funny even when she learned of Simon’s involvement as she was being treated for a scraped knee at the first aid station.

Nobody was laughing after the game, though, when Simon was arrested and booked for misdemeanor battery. Although he was never charged with a crime, Simon was suspended for three games, fined $2,000 by MLB and ordered to pay $432 by the sheriff’s department.

Speaking about the incident to MLB.com in 2022, Wagner recalled the police visiting to take pictures of her injured pinkie and a “Good Morning America” news crew reporting live from her backyard.

“They were criminalizing him,” she recalled, “and I didn’t feel like that was fair. I didn’t want to be a part of that.”

Simon called to apologize and signed the notorious bat for her, she was also treated to a free vacation in his native Curacao. Headline writers had a field day, calling it “The Great Link Stink,” and so did the merchandise vendors who began selling T-shirts with the message ‘Don’t Whack our Wiener.’

Since the sausages began racing, the Brewers have only made it to the postseason eight times and their only World Series appearance came much earlier, in 1982. Now, there doesn’t appear to be any weak links, and both their players and their sausages could be ready for the heat of the biggest stage.

Courtesy Michael Dillon

Reflecting on the sausages’ enduring success, Michael Dillon says he still feels an emotional connection.

“Oh, my babies,” he exclaims, whenever he sees them, and he always talks to the mascots at games.

He didn’t see the original costumes again until he was commissioned to design the Miller Park logo, and they were under a pile of stuff.

“Someone took them when they were being thrown away and they ended up being sold on eBay, which is where the new Wisconsin Cultural Historical Museum found them and purchased them,” he said, noting that the costumes will soon go on display.

Interest in the sausages shows no sign of abating. Dillon also says that he’s going to be profiled by author Russell Florence in a book about 100 people who have changed the face of baseball, adding that he can see a direct link between the risible race and the highly successful sports and entertainment brand The Savanah Bananas.

But he could never have imagined any of this back in the spring of 1993.

“It’s just a fluke,” he explained. “They have personalities, they have nationalities,” everyone in the community feels as though they have a sausage to root for.

Now retired from the McDill agency that he founded, Dillon says that he’s still invited back by the Brewers, and he’s thrown out the first pitch on the 20th and 30th anniversaries of the inaugural race.

“Miller Brewing was my biggest client, we had some phenomenal jobs that were high profile, I published some travel books and got interviewed by the BBC, but that pales in comparison to this,” he said. “The one thing that everyone remembers me for is the racing sausages!”

Note: This story was originally published in 2025 and has been updated.

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密尔沃基酿酒人队对本赛季的棒球比赛极其认真。

他们以MLB最佳战绩结束了本赛季，周四锁定世界大赛席位后，希望今年能最终赢得世界大赛冠军。但这支球队并不总是那么严肃，十月的耀眼灯光将帮助他们展现体育界最滑稽有趣的环节之一：第六局的香肠赛跑。

这听起来确实荒诞至极。一群穿着七英尺高泡沫服装的“真人”——这些服装造型滑稽，五颜六色，分别代表德式香肠、波兰香肠、意大利香肠、热狗和西班牙辣香肠——在棒球场的警戒带上绕着本垒板赛跑。这些头重脚轻、滑稽可笑的“香肠”很容易向前倾倒在泥地上，它们短暂地成为了比赛的焦点，而棒球运动员们则在各自的休息区里饶有兴致地观看，有时还会打赌比赛结果。

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但从 1993 年夏天的第一场比赛开始，这些香肠就迅速走红，可以说帮助美国最传统的消遣活动实现了现代化。

“我认为那些成为标志性和流行事物的东西，都是球迷们接受的，而不是强加给他们的，”酿酒人队商务运营总裁里克·施莱辛格向CNN体育频道解释道。“这（指酿酒人队的活动）就是一个完美的例子，它天真无邪，有点傻气，异想天开，但你知道，它完美地体现了威斯康星州的特色。”

威斯康星州的历史可以追溯到19世纪，当时它是欧洲移民的热门目的地，他们也将对肉类和啤酒的热爱带到了这里。位于密尔沃基以北仅60英里的希博伊根镇自诩为“世界香肠之都”。1969年，当棒球队成立时，球队的名字“酿酒人队”（Brewers）就表明了他们将扎根于当地的文化传统。

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四分之一世纪后，当地平面设计师迈克尔·狄龙向该队当时的运营副总裁加布·保罗二世提出了举办真人香肠赛跑的想法，但他表示，这个想法似乎太显而易见了，每个人可能都想到了。

该团队此前已制作了一部卡通短片，片中三根拟人化的香肠在大屏幕上奔跑穿过密尔沃基的天际线；当它们到达体育场大门时，这些角色会以数字点的形式在记分牌上飞奔。

保罗最初拒绝了这个提议——“我觉得这行不通，”迪伦回忆起他们的对话时说道——但他后来改变了主意。酿酒人队想举办一场特别活动来庆祝球队传奇人物保罗·莫利托的回归，他最近搬到了多伦多，而香肠赛跑正是他们想要的。

乔纳森·丹尼尔/盖蒂图片社

迪伦说，他迅速用泡沫橡胶、接触胶和喷漆制作了这些巨大的服装，并于 1993 年 6 月 27 日穿着它们参加了比赛。

“我们穿上它们之后，在县体育场里根本站不起来，”他告诉CNN体育频道，“我们只能弯着腰走路，有人帮我们提着它们走。到了香肠赛跑的时候，大门打开了，我们冲了出去，你无法想象发生了什么。”

他说，人群的欢呼声震耳欲聋：“我的意思是，我当时在一个泡沫橡胶管里，但我能听到这巨大的声音。”

为了纪念他的德国祖父，迪伦穿上了“布雷特”的服装，也就是香肠的装扮，搭配绿色皮裤。他的意大利裔商业伙伴丹·内奇装扮成“圭多”，也就是意大利厨师；他的员工杰夫·保罗，也就是盖布的儿子，则穿着条纹橄榄球衫，装扮成波兰香肠“斯托什”。

约翰·费舍尔/盖蒂图片社

香肠内部的可见度有限。

“我的天哪，”迪伦惊呼道，“那个可以往外看的洞大概只有八英寸宽，当你跑的时候它会上下弹跳，你根本看不到你要去哪里，我撞到了另一根香肠上。”

迪伦表示，由于需要保密，他们在正式比赛前只穿着服装练习过一次跑步，因此他们并没有真正为体能和导航方面的挑战做好准备。

“总之，我们跑过球场，我赢了，主裁判对此很生气。他说这把这项运动变成了笑话，”迪伦补充道。

迪伦带着服装回到设计工作室，琢磨着接下来该怎么办。几周后，酿酒人队打电话来说他们想再办一次比赛。后来比赛逐渐成为一项常规活动，迪伦便把服装捐赠给了球队，让他们自己负责后续事宜。

得知这场比赛后来的发展后，他告诉 CNN：“我的朋友们一直劝我拿奖金，但是不，没关系。我享受比赛的过程，它丰富了我的生活，这对我来说就足够了。”

几年后，酿酒人队又增加了第四个香肠，名为“弗兰基·弗特”，这是一个穿着棒球服的热狗。到了 2000 赛季末，当球队准备搬到马路对面的新体育场时，视频动画被取消了，香肠们开始在每场主场比赛中赛跑。

2006年，在球队首个“啤酒节”（Cerveceros Day）——旨在庆祝棒球运动中的拉丁裔传统和文化——当天，“辛科”（Cinco）这根香肠头戴墨西哥帽首次亮相。然而，这根辛辣的香肠直到2007年才被允许参加全赛季的比赛，因为美国职业棒球大联盟（MLB）禁止在赛季中期引入新的吉祥物。即使在肉类赛跑这个奇特的世界里，也依然有规则可循。

30多年过去了，这项赛事已经超越了酿酒人队本身，被模仿和戏仿的程度不相上下。

联盟中超过一半的球队都有自己的吉祥物赛跑活动——例如西雅图的鲑鱼赛跑或华盛顿特区的总统赛跑——而密尔沃基著名的五根香肠吉祥物曾两次出现在ESPN体育中心节目的广告中。其中一则广告中，这些香肠模仿了潘普洛纳的奔牛节，在一条狭窄的办公走廊里追逐惊慌失措的员工。

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酿酒人队不愿透露参赛者的身份，只说他们大多是球队员工，也就是“酿酒人队”的成员，但他们也承认有几位球员参加过，而且一些有关系的人也可能被允许入场。2011年，当时酿酒人队的一垒手普林斯·菲尔德告诉《纽约时报》：“我妻子参加过。我的两个儿子也参加过。我妻子的表妹来参赛时，竟然撕裂了前交叉韧带。但她表现得像个冠军。”

酿酒人队对香肠的喜爱程度已经到了将比赛结果与比赛日报告一起统计的地步，但香肠也成为了警方报告的主题，并登上了全国新闻。

2013年，一套价值5000美元的意大利传统服饰失踪了两周，直到最近才在锡达堡的一家酒吧出现。据酒吧招待珍·莫尼说，两名男子把这套服饰丢在酒吧里，并告诉她：“你什么都没看见。”

他们离开后，她立即报警，并告诉《密尔沃基哨兵日报》：“好像我没看到两个家伙把一根香肠放在吧台凳上似的。”

根据这份长达 46 页的警方报告，接到报警后赶到 TJ Ryans 的警员注意到雪地上的轮胎痕迹和快速逃逸的迹象，以及一个装有纸条的拉链袋。

“抱歉，我真是个胆小鬼，”信上写道。“你可能觉得我糟透了。当警察开始把所有线索串联起来的时候，我才开始感到压力。我知道这是个卑鄙的举动，所以我才落到这步田地。”

迈克·麦金尼斯/盖蒂图片社

吉多一直都是争议的焦点；十年前，匹兹堡海盗队的一垒手兰德尔·西蒙从客队休息区挥棒击中了他，导致他身上的意大利香肠和热狗都掉在了地上。当时，身穿吉多服装的19岁威斯康星大学学生曼迪·瓦格纳正笑着，即使在急救站接受膝盖擦伤治疗时得知西蒙也参与其中，她仍然觉得这事很有趣。

然而，赛后西蒙因轻罪殴打被捕，大家都笑不出来了。虽然他最终没有被正式起诉，但美国职业棒球大联盟（MLB）还是对他处以三场禁赛、2000美元罚款，并责令他向警长办公室支付432美元。

2022 年，瓦格纳在接受 MLB.com 采访时谈到此事，她回忆说，警察来给她受伤的小指拍照，《早安美国》的新闻摄制组在她家后院进行了现场报道。

“他们把他当罪犯对待，”她回忆说，“我觉得这不公平。我不想参与其中。”

西蒙打电话向她道歉，并在那根臭名昭著的球棒上签了名，还邀请她去他的家乡库拉索岛免费度假。媒体纷纷报道此事，称之为“伟大的链接丑闻”，商品商贩也趁机兜售印有“别打我们的香肠”字样的T恤。

自从香肠赛跑开始以来，酿酒人队只打进过八次季后赛，而他们唯一一次打进世界大赛还要追溯到更早的1982年。如今，球队似乎没有任何薄弱环节，他们的球员和香肠都可能已经准备好迎接最高舞台的考验。

承蒙迈克尔·狄龙惠允

回想起香肠经久不衰的成功，迈克尔·狄龙表示，他仍然对香肠怀有深厚的感情。

每当他看到他们时，他都会惊呼：“哦，我的宝贝们！”而且他总是在比赛中和吉祥物们说话。

直到他受委托设计米勒公园的标志时，他才再次见到这些原版服装，而它们当时正被埋在一堆杂物下面。

他说：“有人在丢弃它们的时候把它们捡走了，结果它们被放到 eBay 上卖掉了，威斯康星州文化历史博物馆就是在那里发现了它们并买下了它们。”他还指出，这些服装很快就会展出。

人们对香肠的兴趣丝毫没有减退的迹象。迪伦还透露，作家拉塞尔·弗洛伦斯将在一本关于改变棒球面貌的100位人物的书中对他进行专题报道。他还补充说，他认为这场滑稽的比赛与非常成功的体育娱乐品牌“萨凡纳香蕉队”之间存在直接联系。

但1993年春天，他绝对想不到这一切。

“这只是个巧合，”他解释说。“他们有各自的性格，有各自的国籍，”社区里的每个人都觉得自己找到了一个可以支持的香肠。

迪伦现已从他创立的麦克迪尔广告公司退休，他说酿酒人队仍然会邀请他回去，他还在首届比赛的第 20 届和第 30 届纪念日上投出了第一球。

“米勒啤酒厂是我最大的客户，我们合作过一些非常棒、备受瞩目的项目，我还出版过一些旅游书籍，接受过BBC的采访，但这些跟这件事比起来都黯然失色，”他说。“大家记住我的，竟然是赛香肠！”

注：本文最初发表于 2025 年，现已更新。