HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – Forty years ago, the Huntsville Stars’ first team was loaded with talent, which produced a movie-like season. But what’s a movie without a little fun?
Charlie Crute, the first groundskeeper at Joe Davis Stadium, is a guy who likes to have a little fun. Crute began pulling a prank on the players and the Stars’ staffers. This is how the legend of the mongoose began.
“Charlie had a wooden box, he called it where he kept his mongoose, and that mongoose was a piece of fur pelt of something attached to a string attached to a spring, spring-loaded,” Rick Davis, the first voice of the Stars, said. “When you pulled the door open, when you bent down and looked in, he would pull the string, snap the spring and this thing would fly out so everybody thought it was a mongoose.”
The mongoose scared the players so bad, especially the likes of Luis Polonia and Stan Javier that they ran out of their cleats.
Crute said he got the idea from a friend who pulled it on him. The prankster fell in love with the prank so much that he replicated it. Crute said the mongoose has been around for over 50 years.
“He’s been all over town, Florida and other places too. He’s not just local, it’s a good trick if you can really build it up and get people up to it,” Crute said.
Today, the mongoose still lives. Crute showed News 19’s Josiah Elmore the famous prank. You can view it in the video player above.
The post Starstruck: The Legend of the Mongoose appeared first on WHNT.
