El Paso Locomotive Introduce Mascot and It’s … a Bat?

When the El Paso minor league soccer team announced it would be debuting its new mascot, I fully expected something along the lines of Thomas the Tank Engine. After all, the team name is the Locomotive.

The team crest resembles the front of a locomotive. Even its most dedicated and loyal supporters, the 8th Notch, is railroad-inspired. So, naturally, the mascot would be too, right? Nope.

What they unveiled instead is a bat. A bat that looks like Chuck E. Cheese and the Gremlin with the mohawk mated and had a baby.

His name is Ozzy, and he’s supposed to be a Mexican free-tailed bat, which I understand are common throughout much of western North America but whose largest populations winter in Mexico and summer in Central Texas.

But how does a bat tie into the team’s train theme?

Is it because they play the Ozzy Osbourne song “Crazy Train” repeatedly at all the home games and Ozzy the rock star famously bit off the head of a bat once? Or is it because fans are “the Locos” and people that are loco are bat-s**t crazy?

Why not some kind of train or train tie-in like a muscular conductor sporting a railroad hammer, a lecherous look, and a 70s porn-star mustache like Paydirt Pete and EPCC’s Tejano Jack?

Seriously, though, I do get it. Mountainstar wanted something cute and cartoonish to draw in the kids, you know like Chico, and -- more importantly -- that they can merchandise the *#@* out of.

Plush Ozzy Doll to go with your Plush Chico Doll anyone?