The manager who got ejected ... then returned as the team mascot

Managers being ejected? That's nothing new.

Mascots being ejected? That's also, somehow, nothing new.

But what about a manager being ejected and then returning as the mascot? And not just returning, but performing a dance to "Louie Louie" out on the field to inspire his team to victory?

"You know, after looking at that picture again last night, I looked at my wife," former Spokane Indians manager Tim Flannery told me in a phone call. "We've been married 43 years and she's been with me all the way through -- Minor League managing, trying to get by, living in other places and stuff. I looked at her and I go, 'How could your mother and father ever let you marry me?'"

Tim Flannery has been around the game of baseball pretty much his whole life.

He played for 11 seasons with the Padres, from 1979 to 1989. He was a coach with the Padres organization from 1996 to 2002. He was a broadcaster for the team in 2005, and then, maybe most famously, became third-base coach for the Giants from 2007-14, winning three rings with San Francisco.

But his most entertaining moment -- and one of the more entertaining moments in pro baseball history -- happened back in 1993 when Flannery was managing the Spokane Indians.

The Class A short-season affiliate of the Padres was taking on the Bellingham Mariners, a heated cross-state rivalry in Washington that always kept both teams teetering along the top steps of the dugout.

"We kinda had a little bit of bad blood with them," Flannery remembered. "Our guys knew at that point that we had to win or they were probably gonna win the league."

And once the game got going, that bad blood got a little bit ... more bad.

A Mariners runner crashed into the Indians' catcher during a close play at the plate. Tensions got high, but both benches stayed put.

One problem: Flannery's pitcher that night was Greg Keagle.

Flannery described the future Detroit Tigers reliever as a "gamer" and, at times, because he was so young, a "hot head." Keagle would be looking to protect his catcher, maybe even on the very next pitch he threw.

"We already had a warning on both sides," Flannery said. "So, I went to the mound and I said, 'Look, we'll take care of this some other time. Do not hit him.' I said it like three times. The very first pitch, he drilled him."

The benches cleared and Flannery got tossed.

Spokane's manager retreated up to his office, which was just a set of stairs above the home dugout. And he was still very much heated about the entire incident -- particularly because he was forced to leave the game with his team losing by four runs.

"I'm pacing," Flannery told me. "I'm frothing at the mouth. And about that time, that anteater, or that dinosaur, or whatever, was in between a break. And he came near my office."

(Otto, Spokane's mascot, made his debut that season and was technically known as a Spokaneasaurus. Whatever that means).

"I was out of mind," Flannery continued. "And I go, 'Let me have your suit.'"

Otto didn't put up much of a fight -- he probably saw Flannery frothing at the mouth and figured he should oblige. The manager slipped into the hot, smelly, hairball-filled costume and headed back down the stairs. He snuck back into the dugout and sat on the bench to watch how the game might end. Sounds a bit like something a certain Mets manager would do a few years later, only this was more than a simple mustache/glasses disguise.

Eventually, the other coaches and players sensed something was off -- especially when "Otto" put up the sign to his outfielders for no doubles defense. They realized who it really was. Then, during the seventh-inning stretch, the Indians watched their manager -- decked out in the furry blue Spokaneasaurus giddup -- do what mascots get paid to do.

"'Louie Louie' started going on, so I bolted out around home plate and did a full routine to the 6,000-7,000 people," Flannery, a touring musician in his spare time, laughed. "I had the crowd rockin'."

As he was coming off the field, Flannery decided to let his wife -- who was sitting with her mother next to the dugout -- in on the secret.

"I said, 'Hi, honey, hi, honey,'" Flannery told me. "And she goes, 'Oh my god.' To this day, she said she laughed so hard she peed her pants."

Flannery's players, pumped up by his performance (and perhaps a little frightened into playing better by this blue managing monster), came back to win the game against the Mariners. It was a wild, emotional victory.

But unfortunately, Flannery couldn't stick around for high-fives.

"I sprint as fast as I can back up to the office to get that thing off because the umpires come right back up there after the game," Flannery said. "I had all that off, I looked like I was still in my long johns and I played like I was still really mad when the umpires came. I think we were making $18,000 a year managing in the Minor Leagues, I couldn't get suspended."

Umpires, league officials and other teams never figured out it was Flannery inside the mascot costume. There weren't many TV cameras around the Spokane Indians in those days to catch it. There was no social media. As Flannery put it:

"The Minor Leagues, there's nothing like it."

One intrepid journalist did somehow hear about the moment, though: Tim Kurkjian. And in his final column of 1993, he awarded Otto (and Flannery) the ultimate honor: Sports Illustrated Mascot of the Year.