Mascot man of the 'ham

Paul Scheuermann might be one of the most recognizable faces in Birmingham for longtime residents and sports fans. Not because of his own face, but because of the many faces he has worn over the years.

Since 1975, Scheuermann has been a mascot for nearly every athletic team that has popped up in Birmingham. That list includes the Bulls, Stallions, Vulcans, Fire, Barracudas and the Barons for their first season back at Regions Field in 2013. He also has donned mascot suits for the Birmingham International Raceway, the NASCAR Winston All Pro Series and the All American Bowl.

“What’s cool to me is just everybody kept calling me every time the new sports come, that I was the guy,” Scheuermann said.

A Redmont Park resident since 1978, Scheuermann made his living as a design engineer for Southern Company and Alabama Power. But his path to becoming Birmingham’s best-known mascot started before team mascots became popular.

“To be honest, when I started mascoting in ’75, mascots were very rare, and even today I don’t think there’s any that I know of NASCAR mascots,” he said.

As a senior at Auburn University in 1975, then-22-year-old Scheuermann qualified for the cheerleading team both at Auburn and for the brand-new Birmingham Vulcans football team. He chose to cheer with the Vulcans and came up with a Vulcan costume. He would wear the costume a couple times per game, complete with a torch that shone red or green depending on who was winning.

“It was real popular with the fans, and it was cool because I got to wear the Vulcan mascot in the Hawaii stadium when we played Hawaii,” he said.

The Vulcans only lasted for one season before folding, but then Scheuermann got a call from the Birmingham Bulls hockey team. They needed someone to put on a bull costume and entertain the crowds both on and off the ice. The bull suit, which Scheuermann still owns, would become one of the most recognizable mascots of his career.

For about five years, Scheuermann was the Bull. He went beyond hugging kids and waving to the crowd, coming up with his own skits and stunts to perform at the rink. Whether he was pretending to eat the other team’s mascot or running around the stadium to entertain kids — without letting them get close enough to tackle him — the crowd went wild. 

“I just pulled all these stunts, and they’d never been done before. And I was making them up, and it worked and people loved it. So I just kept doing it,” he said.

At the time, the San Diego Chicken mascot was rising in popularity. It gave Scheuermann the idea for his own slogan: “Why have chicken when you can have steak?”

Getting his start

Scheuermann’s antics as the Bull had their roots in his childhood in Mobile, where his family frequently spent evenings at the roller rink and watched the annual Mardi Gras parades. His attempts to become a track and field star — which included setting up stacks of crates in his back yard — were Scheuermann’s first lessons in the stunt jumps that would later make him locally famous. 

His introduction to costuming started with a clown suit his mother made. With a little ingenuity, he used the costume to help sell doughnuts for a school fundraiser. “In 30 minutes I sold 30 dozen doughnuts,” he said.

Scheuermann’s persona as the Bull caught the eye of the Birmingham International Raceway, which invited him to take his stunts off the ice rink and onto the racetrack. Scheuermann found an equally enthusiastic audience at the Raceway and later at Talladega, and his stunts easily transferred from ice skates to roller skates. Scheuermann said many of the people who applauded as he teased drivers and jumped over crates had no idea the Bull was also a hockey mascot.

“There’s a whole different set of fans that know me from stock car racing that have no clue that I did hockey,” Scheuermann said. “I’d be talking to Bobby Allison and Dale Earnhardt, and they would get involved in your skits with you, and that was just awesome.”

Scheuermann has since worn many faces besides the Bull. He has been Zero the Fire Dog for the Birmingham Fire football team, Wicky Wood when the Barons played at Rickwood Field, the Legion Legend for the Birmingham Stallions football team and Barry Cuda for the Birmingham Barracudas Canadian Football League team. For the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Scheuermann was the official Sam the Eagle for Olympics promotion events in the South. In 2013, Scheuermann was Babe Ruff for the Barons’ first season at Regions Field.

On several occasions, Scheuermann was also called up for local teams that would fold after a few games or before any had been played at all, such as the Birmingham Bandits basketball team and the Birmingham Thunderbolts XFL team. “In my mind I never stopped being a mascot; the teams just kept falling away,” Scheuermann said.

Being a mascot also meant appearances outside of athletics, such as at the zoo or local hospitals. There, Scheuermann discovered why his characters were so popular.

“Every time you take the child by the hand, you get the parents by the heart,” he said.

Memory reel

With 40 years as a mascot under his belt, Scheuermann has collected a lot of good memories in his various suits. He said traveling to Hawaii with the Vulcans was a highlight, as was meeting celebrities such as Dale Earnhardt and a 17-year-old Wayne Gretzky.

One of Scheuermann’s vivid memories is a “bench-clearing” fight during a Bulls game, which left the ice rink and erupted in the hall outside Scheuermann’s changing room.

“They met in that 8-foot-wide hallway right outside my room. I had the lock ready, and I got a front row seat to one of the best damn brawls I’ve ever seen,” Scheuermann said. “I didn’t want to miss it, but I didn’t want to get in the middle of it.”

Scheuermann has collected a lot of physical memorabilia, too. Inside his home are albums of photos and newspaper clippings, cups, buttons, ashtrays and shirts from the different teams he has supported over the years. There are a few mascot heads around the house as well.

And if another Birmingham team decides they need a new mascot?

“I’d get my butt in shape and get out there as long as they’d have me,” Scheuermann said.