MLBWeird But True

If You Honestly Thought The Saga Of The Missing Brewers Sausage Was A Joke At First, Rest Assured: You’re Not Alone

by Glenn Davis | 4:27 pm, February 28th, 2013

UPDATE: USA Today has much more on all this. Marketing stunt? With that many bad puns in the “ransom note,” hard to discount the possibility.

The original post is below.

I dunno, I just… I hadn’t been following it that closely. One of the Milwaukee Brewers’ sausage racing costumes went missing, and there was a mustard-based reward for finding it? “Hmm, clever viral marketing thingy, I guess,” I thought without ever actually looking into it. I had other things to write about. I brushed it off.

Then I saw this morning: the sausage was returned. All was right with the world. “Ah,” I thought. “It seems the Brewers’ cute little stunt has reached its conclusion.” And then… I actually read the story:

Guido, the Klement’s racing Italian sausage costume last seen a couple weeks ago adorning a bar hopper in Cedarburg, was returned Wednesday night after a day of media focus.

The hot sausage reportedly was dropped off at TJ Ryan’s bar in Cedarburg.

Wait a second…

Two men – one wearing a hoodie pulled tight over his face – lugged the larger-than-life link into the bar just before 8 p.m. Wednesday, plopped him on a bar stool and warned staff, “You did not see anything,” said bartender Jen Mohney.

“Like I didn’t just see two guys plop a sausage on a bar stool,” Mohney said.

Mohney said the two left in less than a minute and she immediately called police.

The theft of the $3,000 costume was no laughing matter for the Cedarburg Police Department. Whoever it was from the department who answered a phone Wednesday night dryly responded to questions, saying, “I’m not allowed to comment on an ongoing investigation.”

The costume was stolen during the city’s annual Winter Festival.

You mean to tell me that this… this was a real story not dreamed up by one of the more creative souls in the Brewers’ marketing department?! Someone actually stole the damn sausage costume! This is great! And why was I so stupid that I didn’t even bother to read the story before this?! Surely, though, I couldn’t be alone. Others were just like me and paid the story no mind because it couldn’t be real. …Right? Let’s do some Twitter searches. “brewers sausage hoax”… hmm, nothing. “brewers sausage prank”… hmm, nothing there either. Seriously, am I the only idiot? Wait a second… “brewers sausage marketing”…

#MKE – Do we think the missing sausage was a #Brewers marketing stunt?

— St. Martin Ale Beer (@AbbeyStMartin) February 28, 2013

Well, it took long enough, but finally, someone on the same wavelength. Wait, maybe there are more… “brewers sausage joke”…

I honestly thought the missing Italian sausage costume was a joke! Being him back he’s family!!!! You know we’ll kick some butt. #brewers

— Bleacher Babe (@BleacherBabe8) February 27, 2013

Well, I feel a little less dumb now. Thank you, @AbbeyStMartin and @BleacherBabe8, for proving I’m not too crazy. And if it does turn out that this was a giant stunt (highly unlikely at this point, but I’d put nothing past this story), or at the very least if it winds up falling into that murky “Golden Tate unlawfully being in a bakery that just happens to have a business arrangement with the Seahawks” territory, well… who’d be the crazy one then?

Getty photo, by Jonathan Daniel