Job title: Mascot

Companies that hire them: Nearly every professional hockey, baseball, basketball, and football team has a mascot.

How to find out about openings: Sign up for email job postings with talent groups like Raymond Entertainment Group in Newark, Delaware, which recruit, screen, and recommend mascot wannabes for various sports teams.

How much you might earn: In the bigger leagues, full-time mascots can expect a base salary of $35,000 to $55,000. Part-timers make about $150 per hour.  

Useful skills: Experience in dance, stage performance, and improvisational comedy is expected, as is moderate athleticism.

Number of jobs in the U.S.: Raymond estimates there are about 425 professional hockey, baseball, basketball, and football teams in the country, and around 95 percent of them have mascots. Altogether, there are only about 90 full-time spots with professional sports teams. That number doesn’t include minor-league teams or corporate and academic mascots, however.

Chris Bergstrom wears a custom-made suit to work. But it’s not pinstripe, seersucker, or herringbone. It’s a bright green, full-body, 15-pound outfit featuring an orange nose and eyebrows, four-fingered paws, and a navy baseball cap and white shirt emblazoned with Boston Red Sox insignia.

As Wally the Green Monster, the fuzzy mascot for Boston’s beloved but beleaguered baseball team, Bergstrom rallies the crowd at Fenway Park at 81 home games per year. On top of that are play-offs, away games, and more than 300 other Wally appearances—everywhere from local hospitals to company conferences to private birthday parties, weddings, and bar and bat mitzvahs.

“In real life, I’m quiet, laid-back, and don’t say much,” says the 26-year-old, who played Little League baseball growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts, 40 miles outside Boston. A sports lover, Bergstrom took a job with the Worcester IceCats during high school and happened to fill in for their regular mascot one day. He never looked back. “I put that suit on, and I’m a different person,” he says. He joined the Sox part-time in 2000 and went full-time in 2004, a year after graduating from Worcester State College with a degree in business. For Bergstrom, being a mascot “is the closest thing to being a pro athlete without being an athlete.”

He may not be swinging a bat or chasing fly balls, but his game-time antics—romping through the field and dugout and frolicking with fans in the stands—require serious stamina, especially during the summer months, when temperatures inside the suit can be 20 to 30 degrees higher than out in the open air.  

Office hours aren’t exactly a breeze, either. In 2002, the Red Sox team was sold to a consortium of new owners that placed an emphasis on entertaining families, not just the notoriously hard-core Sox fans. Wally was given a larger presence both on and off the field, and Bergstrom built up a schedule of several hundred U.S. appearances per year, up from 50 in 2000. The proceeds from merchandise sales and outside appearances fund the $60,000 to $70,000 annual mascot budget, which in turn helps pay Bergstrom’s salary.

“There’s no such thing as a weekend off,” says Bergstrom, who sometimes works as many as 80 to 90 hours a week, including acting as an official member of the team’s community relations department. He thinks he has about 10 years left as a mascot. The job’s physicality will eventually take its toll, and Bergstrom’s back is already starting to feel the strain of the weighty costume.

But for now, the work is worth the occasional twinge of pain. “You get a thrill in front of 37,000 people every night,” he says. “I feed off of that.”

Typical Game Day Schedule

11 a.m. Wake up.

Noon to 2 p.m. Answer emails and return phone calls about future appearances.

2 to 3 p.m. Travel to Fenway Park from Worcester, Massachussetts.

3 to 5 p.m. Arrive at Fenway and prepare for the game with some light stretching. The routine is the same from night to night, so it doesn’t require much rehearsal. Bergstrom watches TV in his downtime.

5 to 5:30 p.m. Gates to the ballpark open.

5:30 to 6 p.m. Meet and greet with fans, sign autographs, and take pictures.

6 to 6:30 p.m. Take the field for pregame activities. Sign autographs and take photos with the groups being honored in the pregame ceremony.

7 to 11 p.m. Work the crowd, lead cheers and chants, and rally the audience for the seventh-inning stretch.

11 p.m. Travel home.