Mr. Met, the latest mischievous mascot

All it took was a lapse in judgment for Mr. Met to gain a big dose of notoriety.

The person in the funny-looking mascot costume of the New York Mets flashed a “middle” finger at a fan during a loss Wednesday night to the Milwaukee Brewers, and after somebody tweeted video of the incident it went viral online. The Mets quickly issued a statement saying the person behind the baseball head would no longer serve in that role. Not a surprise. “Just about every professional baseball position expects the employee to be able to handle a highly stressful environment with a lot of work and very little thanks and very little pay,” Erin Blank, who in her heyday as the Detroit Tigers mascot PAWS was rated as the best mascot in Michigan, said Thursday. “I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall to know what set the poor ball off.

“It can be a very, very rough job,” Blank said. “Obviously, the Mets fans are known for their depth of knowledge of baseball and their unflagging loyalty to the team. I can certainly appreciate the humanity of the mascot in the situation.”

It seems as if those who decide to don the get-up of team mascots often have a tendency to get a little mischievous — and more.

The Mr. Met of Wednesday night might be gone, but he won’t soon be forgotten. And neither will the devilish deeds of mascots before him.

Ted Giannoulas, a.k.a. the San Diego Chicken , was one of the first. His shenanigans often irked players — in 1979 Yankees outfielder Lou Piniella threw his glove and screamed at the cantankerous chicken on the way out to his defensive position during a loss in Seattle — and paved the way for copycats.