The Sad Story of the Unauthorized Mascot Getting Sued by the Chicago Cubs

John Paul Weier couldn't understand why the Cubs didn't have a mascot. He grew up in suburban Glendale, attending the team's spring training games and watching the team on WGN. In high school, his family moved to Sterling, a few hours west of Chicago. Living in Wrigleyville before the 2007 season, he decided to take matters into his own hands: He became the Cubs mascot.

"As a Cubs fan, I wondered why they never had a mascot," he told the Chicago Reader in 2007. "It'd be a good thing to have: They're a very popular team, a very marketable team. And so this season I decided to go ahead. It was something I wanted to do and I figured it might pay out."

Before the 2007 season, Weier put the bear suit and a giant Cubs jersey with "BILLY CUB" and the number 78 on his credit card. Maybe Billy Cub was a good luck charm: The Cubs rebounded from a 96-loss campaign to win the first of consecutive NL Central crowns. Weier, then 25, told the Reader he made $200 to $300 in tips at night games and $100 at a day game. Don't tell a newspaper how much you make at your all-cash job, Billy!

That season, Weier stood outside the Cubby Bear, a Wrigleyville bar. He originally intended the Cubs mascot gig as a way to make some cash—it paid his $600-a-month rent—and promote his self-published football fiction, 4th & Inches. ("This is probably the best American novel since the Great Gatsby," reads the lone Amazon review. "Weier channels Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Grisham and even Walt Whitman in what should be a must read for every high school English student.")

Weier strapped on long-sleeved body armor—with pockets for ice inserts—and his bear suit and started posing for pictures and collecting tips near the start of the season. By September, being Billy Cub was his main job. He had a petition with 587 signatures asking to make him the team's official mascot and claimed he had a meeting with the team at the end of the year. The Cubs wouldn't confirm or deny the meeting, but John Paul Weier's side gig had morphed into his personality. Friends called him "Billy" even when he wasn't wearing the suit.

The Cubs have foundered since 2008, when they had the best record in the NL but were swept in the Division Series for the second straight year. They lost 101 games in 2012 and appear headed to a second-straight last-place finish this season. But the team's misfortunes haven't stopped Weier from expanding his empire. In 2013, he had several guys in Billy Cub mascot suits posing outside of Wrigley Field. (He split the tips with them 50/50.) When Ryan Glasspiegel of the Big Lead wore the Billy Cub suit last season, he made $246 over his two shifts. Being Billy Cub was no longer Weier's full-time job, but it was still a passionate side gig.

But the Cubs weren't happy with Billy's success. Weier has said the Cubs offered him $15,000 to relinquish all claims to the character and to give the suits to the team. Last year, the Cubs served him with a 100-page cease-and-desist order, alleging that he engaged in "unabated Mascot Activities." The day after he was served with the C&D, Weier claimed an Cubs executive came up to Billy Cub and berated him. Since Billy Cub doesn't talk, the interaction was one-sided.

"Basically I told them if you can't come to an agreement with what I can wear and continue to do this, then take me to court and sue me," Weier told NBC Chicago. "What I want from them is to be the official mascot, and what they want from me is to be gone and no one to remember I was ever there."

And the Cubs are now trying to eradicate Billy Cub, filing a lawsuit on Friday against John Paul Weier, Patrick Weier (his brother), and three unnamed employees who wear the Billy Cub suit. The Cubs' suit claims people confuse the mascots with official team employees and that the character has made "rude, profane, and derogatory remarks and gesticulations to patrons, ticket holders, fans or other individuals located in the area of Wrigley Field."

Billy Cub further rose the Cubs' ire when, earlier this season, a man wearing the suit punched a patron at a bar who had removed the mascot's head.

The suit identifies this fighting Billy Cub as Patrick Weier. "This behavior is wholly inconsistent with the enjoyable fan experience we try to create at Wrigley Field," Cubs spokesman Julian Green said last season.

There's one other wrinkle: This offseason the Cubs introduced Clark, an incredibly lame bear with no pants that was widely mocked and photoshopped into compromising situations. Clark the Cub was made by Vee Corp, which also produces Sesame Street Live; Alison Miller, now the Cubs' senior marketing director, previously worked with Vee on making the Honey Nut Cheerios bee edgier. (For example, the bee recently dissed Grumpy Cat. Just another brand making hip internet references!) Clark is so lame the Cubs have tried to dodge criticism by repeatedly pointing out the mascot was meant for kids. No shit.

Regardless of its lameness, the Cubs say some confused the bear's bar fight with the actions of Clark. That sounds possible. It seems clear lots of fans know the mascot is an unofficial one, though. The uploader of Billy's infamous punch says the man harassed Billy Cub for a while, trying to trip him three times and attempting to start a fight. When Glasspiegel wore the suit, he endured all sorts of abuse—including taking three or four smacks to the head. "There were some people who didn't seem to grasp that I was a human being inside a suit," he wrote. This type of fan behavior doesn't happen to real major league baseball mascots. When the Phillie Phanatic's head was stolen, it was sitting on a table. No one would dare steal the Phillie Phanatic's head when he's wearing it.

Clark the Cub doesn't charge money for photos, and perhaps soon that will be the only mascot Cubs fans will have. But you have to feel for the poor guy in his early 30s who isn't in it for the money and just really wants to be the official mascot of the Chicago Cubs. Everyone has their own American dream, and Weier's was creating a small empire out of wearing a bear suit in the summer. But it may be crushed. The Cubs are demanding the suits be "deliver[ed] for destruction." Add Billy Cub to the endangered species list.

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