A chat with ‘Kissing Bandit’ Morganna, 72.
Morganna Cottrell, a busty blonde known as “The Kissing Bandit” because she ran onto major league baseball fields to kiss unsuspecting players, is still puckering up at the age of 72.
“Put your cheek up against the phone,” she told a reporter during a recent interview. “Ready?”
Then came the sound of a big kiss. Twice.
“I gave you two ’cause I really like you,” she said.
Morganna still adores baseball, too, and amid the World Series, she is celebrating her major league debut, so to speak. According to Morganna, it was in 1969 that she ran onto the field during a Cincinnati Reds home game and kissed Pete Rose on the cheek. Other players such as Nolan Ryan and George Brett would follow.
Officially retired from the Kissing Bandit act since 2000, Morganna retreated into obscurity. But during a rare interview, she discussed a variety of subjects, including the arrests, injuries and her comeback tour.
Actually, there will be no comeback tour.
“It was fun, but there’s a time and place for everything, I think,” Morganna said while noting she suffered a cracked knee cap, a broken tailbone and three cracked ribs at the hands of security. “You know, sometimes the rent-a-cops get a little carried away. That’s just part of it. That and the jail is just part of it.”
Morganna said she was arrested 19 times for running onto fields uninvited. She’ll be safe from trespassing charges during the World Series because she will be watching the Washington Nationals-Houston Astros matchup on TV from her home in Ohio, where she lives with her husband, Bill, and her dog, Bella.
Every December, the couple head to Florida.
“I go to the gym almost every day,” she said. “I love to work out. I always have, my entire life. I don’t shop. I hate to shop. I don’t like spending money and I don’t like trying stuff on, so everybody says, ‘Boy, did your husband get lucky.’
“Years ago for my birthday, he said, ‘Where do you want to go for your birthday?’ I said, ‘Costco, because I love their hot dogs.’ ”
However, Morganna says she takes good care of herself these days.
“I want to live to be 200 but not look over 100,” Morganna said. “But I’m not having plastic surgery because that’s when you look 200 when you’re 200. Nope, what you see is what you get.”
Baseball got its first glimpse of Morganna a half century ago during a Reds home game she said she attended with two friends.
“And it seemed like all the Reds were looking our way and spittin’ tobacco, which was a compliment back in those days,” Morganna said. “Now they chew bubble gum or sunflower seeds. But they all seemed to notice me and my two girlfriends, except for Pete.”
Enticed by “double-dirty dare” from her friend, Morganna recalled, she ran onto the field and headed for Rose.
“I remember at the time he was doing commercials for Ball Park Franks,” Morganna said. “I ran up to him and said, ‘Pete, I buy your hot dogs.’ And he turned to me, and I remember exactly what he said, ‘You crazy blanking broad.’ But he used a big word, ‘Are you out of your blanking mind?’
“And then I gave him a kiss on the cheek and I ran off and that was about it for that that romantic moment.”
Dozens of moments followed on major league baseball fields, although Morganna eventually branched out to basketball, football and hockey.
“And hockey, I don’t know how when they get hit in the face and have to be sewn up almost every game they can still stay so handsome,” she said. “That’s the weird thing in hockey.”
Almost 20 years after retiring, Morganna said, she still gets fan mail. The thought of it triggered a memory.
“That’s like when I kissed Pete Rose Jr. at a minor league game. I said, ‘Tell your Daddy, ‘Hi,’ and ‘I’ll try to hang in there and not get wrinkled before there’s a Pete Rose III.’ ”