Two decades after he walked off the field for the last time as the original Phillie Phanatic, David Raymond is still showing off his moves and teaching mascots everywhere how to bring their A game.

That first chance internship and $25-a-game has transformed into a larger-than-life career operating as Raymond Entertainment Group out of a home office in West Grove with two part-time employees that grossed almost a million dollars and profited $100,000, according to a recent feature in The New York Times.

“It’s been a wonderful business, and I get to show people how to have fun, which is what my first boss told me to do in the first place,” Raymond said in the article.

The mascot consultant still teaches how to achieve the right combination of happy, cocky and shy, and his expertise has helped with baseball’s minor league Albuquerque Isotopes’ creation of Orbit, the NHL Dallas Stars’ Victor E. Green, the NBA Miami Heat’s Burnie and the minor league baseball Toledo Mud Hens’ Muddy and Muddonna, among many others.

“When you put on that mascot costume, your biggest mission is to make people have fun,” he said. “You can do things in that costume you wouldn’t do on your own, but that is exactly what you should be doing.”

Read much more about Raymond’s Phillie Phanatic experience and the journey it has taken him on in The New York Times here.

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Top photo credit: DSC07431 via photopin (license)