If he falls, that mat aint doing much: The inside story of the night Sharkie got stuck

Sharkie hung from the rafters, 40 feet above the ice surface at San Jose Arena. He was helpless. He couldn’t go up, and feared an unexpected descent. It was March 12, 1999, and the San Jose Sharks’ beloved mascot was in trouble just before the game against the rival Red Wings was set to start. The man inside the costume was afraid of heights and while he dangled, his extremities numbed.

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Fans watched in wonder, and maybe amusement. Broadcasters and reporters, high up in the arena, saw the spectacle at eye level. Players first joked about it, then worried he might plunge to his death. And inside the costume, Sharkie sweated and waited for help to arrive.

This is the tale of the harrowing 20 minutes that might have signaled the end of mascot-related stunts in sports arenas. Might have.

Jason Minsky, Sharks director of event presentation: Detroit won the Stanley Cup the year before, so we were going to do a little skit where we lowered a Detroit Red Wings banner, Sharkie rappels down next to it, tears it down, and then finishes his rappel.

Sharkie: It was a cardboard tube with a bedsheet that was painted to look like a banner that was then tied up to the roof. It wasn’t anything that was like, super dangerous or something that would get in the way. Unfortunately, there was a little bit of swing in the rope that night, and my leg straddled the cardboard tube.

Minsky: In trying to get himself out of that mess, (Sharkie) gets into a bigger mess where the banner actually gets caught up in his rappelling gear. In trying to free himself, he just makes matters worse.

Sharkie: When they released the line, the banner dropped over my head, I swung forward to get it off of my head, and at that time my jersey got stuck up into the figure-eight, which is the metal mechanism that the rope winds through to allow you to stop yourself.

Terry Campbell, head rigger, San Jose Arena: I was on a follow-spot (spotlight) that night. So my job was to pick him up with the spotlight as he slides down the rope. So he slid halfway down the rope, and I’ve got my light on him, and he just comes to a stop.

Minsky: Remember, this is his first year doing Sharkie. I was Sharkie before he was. I remember when we were training him on how to rappel, it was very clear that he is afraid of heights.

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Sharkie: To be honest, I’m afraid of heights. That was the first thing that really went in my head: Am I really stuck this high in the air? Once I realized what had happened, and I saw that the shirt was pulled up and I was all jammed up, I basically pulled the end of the rope around the other side of my body and tied myself off.

Randy Hahn, Sharks play-by-play announcer: You think at first that’s part of the routine, and then after awhile everybody’s waiting for him to finish with the routine, and it becomes apparent that he’s caught. He’s stuck. It was bizarre. I was working with Steve Konroyd, the former NHL defenseman at the time. Now we’re in two modes — first of all, you’re concerned that the guy’s going to fall, right? That’s the first concern, for his well-being. Then it became kind of apparent that he wasn’t going to fall, he was just stuck. Now we’ve got to keep talking about this, because we’re on the air live.

Minsky: I’m ice level in between the penalty boxes at the scorer’s table. I see it happening, and the first thing that goes through your mind is, ‘Oh, crap.’ … The skit has already gone to hell, but can he safely rappel down once he gets out of it?

Then the phone rings, and it’s Greg Jamison, who at the time is owner, president and CEO. “Jason, what are you going to do?”

Eric Gold, chief engineer: We heard a call from over the radio that Sharkie was stuck. So basically I ran — we didn’t take the elevator, we ran up the stairs, back when I was in better shape. We realized what we were up against, so ran back down, got some harnesses and some rope, and things of that nature. Didn’t know really what we were going to do at the time.

David Pollak, sportswriter, San Jose Mercury News: I remember being in the press box, and since the press box is in the rafters, looking straight ahead and seeing the crew up there trying to figure out what to do.

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Minsky: We’re trying to get the Tank Patrol to get the crash pads out onto the ice (for a) worst-case scenario. There’s two locations of crash pads — at one there’s two pads, and the other there’s like 20. They go to the place where there’s two, and they bring two out. I remember being on the radio (saying), “Get the other pads!” Two wasn’t going to do anything.

Patrick Marleau, Sharks forward: The funniest thing was they brought pads out and put them on the ice underneath him.

Mike Ricci, Sharks forward: It doesn’t take an engineer to know that if you come down from there, that mat ain’t doing much.

Pollak: I remember Scotty Bowman and Darryl Sutter are the coaches, and you look down and they just want to play hockey. They have their arms folded across their chests looking very similar — not scowling, but not happy to be in the the middle of this, either.

Minsky: You start seeing the players’ reactions. Scotty Bowman. Mike Ricci’s reaction is hilarious. Looking at him, you can see the words “dumbass” going through his head.

Ricci: That does sound about right, yeah. I thought, that’s the first time I’ve seen this. It was funny at first, and then we were like, “Holy shit, if he goes down, it isn’t going to end well.”

Plus, Darryl Sutter was the coach. Darryl is about being prepared, so you’re trying to stay focused so he doesn’t see you laughing and joking around a little bit. But sitting there for 15 minutes looking up at this guy all tied up — I think that was the hardest part, trying to stay like you’re intense and not really paying attention thinking about the game, but really looking up and going, man, this is not good.

Marleau: (Sutter) wasn’t too happy. He wanted the game to get going, that’s for sure.

Hahn: I remember looking down at Scotty Bowman. Here’s the greatest coach in the history of hockey and the game is delayed because there’s a mascot stuck in the rafters. This is an old school, Original Six guy who never had mascots back in the day, so that was funny.

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Aaron Ward, Red Wings defenseman: Not only was Scotty bitching outright to everybody who would listen, he bitched to (assistant coaches) Barry Smith and Dave Lewis. Even though Scotty is coming down on us bitching, it was quite entertaining. We could see there were levels of Scotty escalating. It finally climaxed when Scotty started having conversations with himself on the bench about what was going on. He was talking to himself. “I can’t believe this. What are they doing to us?”

Ricci: (Both coaches) were kind of old school, just (wanted to) get the game going. I don’t know who said it, but I remember hearing somebody say, “Eh, just cut him down.” Those were pretty heated games, too. You get all jacked up, and you go out there and sit around.

Ward: The feeling on the bench transitioned to we might witness some guy die. The conversation went from “I wonder how they’re going to get him down,” to, “Oh my god, we’re going to witness a guy in a Shark outfit drop flat on the ice.” It wasn’t down in their end, it was right in front of us. We were going through all the possible scenarios of how this is going to end.

Kris Draper, Red Wings forward: We were kidding around saying you know what, he’s not really in the way, let’s just start the game. He was high enough that it wasn’t going to be a factor. If someone flipped the puck and went up and hit him just play it like it’s the scoreboard, blow it down and go from there.

Sharkie: The next thing for me was, how do I play this off and stay in character? How do I make it that people aren’t panicking? I knew in my mind that if I started to freak out that kids, families, people in the crowd, even our own staff would start freaking out. So I had to think to myself, how do I stay in character? How do I calm myself down? How do I make this funny so that it isn’t a nightmare for people to watch? There are times I’m chewing on the rope like I’m trying to free myself like a fish that was caught in a line, making hand gestures like scissors — because fans are pointing at you.

Campbell: I was hoping to untie and lower him to the ground, which would have been the safest thing to do. The height of the beam there is about 94 feet, and he was at 50 or 55. I would have preferred if it had been a situation that I had rigged. There would have been some wraps on the rope and I would have just untied it and carefully led him to the ground on his rappelling line, which was stuck in his jersey. But I took one look at this mess, and I am like, I am not touching this, I’m not cutting anything, I’m not untying anything.

Gold: The safety concern more than anything was obviously for him. He had been sitting there for 15 or 20 minutes. I think the circulation in his legs was gone by then. He was hurting. He was in bad shape. I’m really surprised that he left his gear on, but that’s Sharkie for ya.

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Minsky: I was absolutely worried. We were on the phone with the fire department wondering if we could get a fire truck through the Zamboni entrance with a ladder, and what does that look like?

Gold: It took quite a while to figure out a game plan and how we were going to either bring him down or lift him up. We decided to lift him up because he was hurting at that point. Basically it was a tug of war, but only on one end. There were six to eight of us who just got on a rope and just started pulling him up. With that many people, you could pull somebody up pretty easily if there’s no restriction. But it was a pretty tense moment.

Campbell: We lowered a rope down to Sharkie, and he tied it around chest and under his armpits, and took a wrap around himself, which is kind of a terrible thing. But to his credit, he tied something that obviously held. So that was pretty scary, because I didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

Pollak: They had all the folks up in the rafters trying to bring him up there, and they got him pretty close to the top but his head kind of didn’t clear the landing that everybody was standing on. Of all the people standing on that platform, I thought they were all men, but one figure jumps over the railing and it’s a woman, and she’s the one who puts herself at peril because she’s not on the platform.

Minsky: She jumps out on the catwalk, and she’s not tied to anything. She’s standing on a 94-foot high catwalk trying to pull him up from underneath.

Gold: Terry is one of our union local riggers, and they are fearless when it comes to that kind of stuff. She knew what she was getting into.

Campbell: You can see that he’s captured under the beam. And so I knew the only way to get him would be to get out on the beam and take ahold of the rope. That’s why I got out there. It’s what you call a mayhem rescue. I wasn’t on a harness or anything, but you can see I have like a death grip on the rail behind me.

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Sharkie: She went out and just put enough pressure on the rope to swing me out from under the beam so they could pull me up the rest of the way. If it was me, I wouldn’t go out there without a harness and a line.

Gold: We really didn’t know his condition until he got up there and took off his head and were able to talk to him.

Sharkie: When they got me up to the catwalk, I honestly couldn’t stand up. My legs were just numb, and asleep.

One of the first things I remember seeing was Greg Jamison, our former president, standing there. He had run upstairs to make sure everything was OK. So that was something that meant a lot when you look up and see the president standing there. His first words to me were, “You’re doing this again tomorrow.” We were playing back to back the next day against Ottawa, and I looked at him and I was like, “No, I’m not.” He actually said, “I know you’re afraid of heights, and if you don’t get back on the horse tomorrow, you never will. You’re doing this again tomorrow.”

Minsky: That was the truth. We all said that. The last thing you want is for him to now be scared. It was like, get right back on the horse. We all told him that.

Gold: For the team and the people that are working there still, or even the people working at the time, that’s one thing that you’ll always remember. … The game was secondary. It was somebody’s life, so we were pretty concerned.

Pollak: I’m not surprised it lives on only because it was so bizarre. It got a lot of attention, made national news coverage. They got a lot of mileage out of that moment.

Sharkie: It’s lived a life of its own for a long time. The one thing that still amazes me about that night is even today, you’ll have a kid that was like 5, 6, 7 years old (at the time) come up to Sharkie and say, “I was there that night you got stuck.” It’s something everyone remembers. It’s just this great little weird moment that the Sharks got to have.

(Graphic: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Getty; Elsa Hasch, Bruce Bennett, Rocky W. Widner / NHL)

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