This Phillies Fan Was a Great Sport After Mascot Pelted Her with a Hotdog

The hotdog is a meat of many questions. Is it a sandwich? Is it actually appetizing to put ketchup on? Is it really possible to eat 69 of them in ten minutes if you just dunk them in water and swallow them whole? But now, finally, we know the answer to one nagging hotdog mystery: If one is wrapped in duct tape and shot out of a cannon, will it hurt if it hits you in the face?

Unfortunately, Kathy McVay had the misfortune of finding that out—and she's being a pretty great sport about the whole thing. According to ABC6 Philadelphia, McVay, a big fan of the Philadelphia Phillies, was seated behind home plate at Monday night's game, watching the team take on the St. Louis Cardinals. At some point between innings, as is tradition, the Phillies mascot—the Philly Phanatic—emerged onto the field atop one of those John Deere gators, wearing a full-blown chef's outfit. He was there, following custom, to send some hotdogs hurtling into the stands—which sounds like a fun thing to witness, but is really just a sad way to waste some perfectly good hotdogs.

"When I tell my brothers, they started laughing," McVay told NBC10 Philadelphia. "You think you would get hit by a baseball," she continued, chuckling to herself, "instead of a flying hot dog."

The Phanatic, by the way, is an aggressively beloved creature in the City of Brotherly Love, even if no one apparently has any idea what the fuck he is—an out-of-shape bird? Some sort of mutated Beanie Babie? A vacuum-mouthed terror? Whatever his true identity, he is green and fury and looks as if he once had the ability to fly, before he got so large. And, up until this point, he was a trustworthy amorphous blob who never once, according to ABC6, hurt anyone with a projectile hotdog before.

But now he reportedly feels very bad. Because when he pointed his fateful weapon and fired toward sweet Kathy McVay, the hotdog (wrapped in duct tape to keep it from exploding upon impact) drilled her straight in the eye.

"The next thing I know he shot it in our direction, and bam! It hit me like a ton of bricks," McVay told ABC6 Philadelphia. "My glasses flew."

After going to the emergency room for a CT scan, she learned, thankfully, that she didn't have a concussion.

"I have a small hematoma in my eye," McVay said. "And mostly, it's going to get worse before it gets better. It's going to go down the side of my face."

As for the Phillies, the organization has reached out, offering her free tickets to any future game. And McVay has stressed that she's not taking any legal action. And, like the tough Philadelphia sports fan that she is, she kind of finds the whole thing funny. She told ABC6, "It gives people a good laugh, and if that makes somebody chuckle, then that's fine."

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