No, the Phillies’ first mascot wasn’t a dancing Dutchman and a rat named Chauncey

Philadelphia has certainly had its share of unusual sports mascots. Slapshot for the Flyers. Hip Hop for the Sixers. Pegasus and his crew for the Philadelphia Stars.

But a viral social media post by comedian John Kensil that’s been making the rounds on Twitter claims the city’s first sports mascots were a duo named “The Dancing Dutchman and his rat Chauncey.”

The first part of the tweet is correct — the Phillies do appear to be the oldest, continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in American professional sports.

The team was originally founded in 1873 as the Philadelphia Quakers in the National Association, which folded in 1875. The team joined the National League as the Phillies in 1883 after the Philadelphia A’s were booted for refusing to take a road trip (though they were still informally known as the Quakers for a number of years, according to Fred Leib and Stan Baumgartner’s book The Philadelphia Phillies).

However, there is no documented evidence the team even had a mascot in those days, let alone a duo that included a rat named Chauncey. The earliest known baseball mascot didn’t emerge until the early part of the 20th century in Chicago — a creepy looking, no-named “taxidermy project gone wrong” that Cubs players posed with in 1908 (though the bear only lasted a day, so it wasn’t really a mascot).

The photo Kensil shared is taken from a book written by Ossian Brown called Haunted Air, which features vintage photos of Halloween costumes from the 19th century.

“I like to experience each photograph as a magical event, frozen in front of me. I’m drawn to pictures with a mood that ‘oozes’ into the normality of the moment, and changes it,” Brown wrote in the book. “It’s important to me that there’s nothing to disturb this, no detail in the composition or in the models posture that could interfere with that magic.”

Obviously, the Phillie Phanatic is one of the most beloved mascots in all of sports, dating back to 1978 (and this season, he’ll ditch the wings and star eyes the team adopted due to a lawsuit). But prior to the Phanatic’s debut, the team had twin dolls wrapped in blue colonial jackets and tricornered hats known as Philadelphia Phil and Phillis. The big-eyed duo were introduced with the opening of Veterans Stadium in 1971 and lasted seven seasons before being phased out in 1978 to make way for the Phanatic.

» READ MORE: Phake Phanatic pens a goodbye letter as Phillies revert to the original design

“To be honest about it, they weren’t terrifically received,” Bill Giles, who came up with the idea for the animatronic duo, previously told the Inquirer.

You can still see the twins today if you purchase tickets to Storybook Land in Egg Harbor Township, N.J, where they’re displayed with a set of original Veterans Stadium seats between them.

» READ MORE: Before the Phanatic, the Phillies had animatronic twins