As the mascot for the San Antonio Spurs from 1983 to 2004 , Tim Derk — also known as the Coyote — was constantly looking for ways to make the live biz experience better for fans . In addition to dancing , antagonizing musician , and engaging with attendee , Derk did what many mascot do to raise morale : He gave the gang barren stuff .
Shirts , chapeau , and other apparel were thresh about out on a regular basis , though the giving werelimitedto the ability of a mascot ’s throwing weapon . Which intend that fans seated in the upper bleachers did n’t get much of anything , except maybe a nosebleed .
Derk and the other mascot used vast rubber bands to incite shirts to those mass seat higher up in the stand , but even those had limited reach . Then , in the 1990s , Derk and his peers decided tobecomeapparel arms dealer . They designed and fabricated a monumental , 90 - pound sterling casting - iron pipe 4 feet in distance that used the pneumatic precept to crucify T - shirts into the melody and into the blazon of sports fan .
Once Derk lather it on for an appearance during a game as “ Rambote , ” summercater would never be the same again .
The T - shirt carom can be retrace back to Britain during World War II , when sailor boy on commercial-grade freighter ships were give vulnerable after their anti - aircraft artillery had been rerouted to war vessel . Desperate to protect themselves from enemy attempt , the sailors adopted a weapondevelopedby the Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development . Dubbed a Holman Projector , it could hit projectile out of a tube using steam from the ship ’s boiler .
Sailors usually lobbed grenade in this manner , but when they were n’t under unmediated menace — which was most of the sentence — they loaded the gas pedal with less - deadly ammunition , like potatoes . WhenWinston Churchillobserved a demonstration and someone forgot the grenade , operators used beer nursing bottle or else .
Without a wartime steam kettle , people still felt up a motivation to found rocket . Contemporary “ spud launcher ” use compressed gas , ordinarily C dioxide , that isdeliveredinto an air tank . When the induction is pulled , the gas is released all at once , and the vigor shoots whatever ’s in the drum . That can be a potato , a paintball shot , or a ramble - up T - shirt .
Derk was intrigue by the concept of the spud launcher and adopt it for clothing . When he begin brandishing his T - shirt cannon , other mascot quicklyfollowedsuit . Kenn Solomon , also known as Rocky the Mountain Lion — a mascot cheer on the Denver Nuggets — had a Quaker build him one after figure Derk ’s . Solomon also got ask in selling them commercially . Pretty soon , the gadget was in heavy use across the NBA , MLB , NFL , and NHL establishment , farm little and lighter with each passing year . Once 90 pound , the cannon now count as niggling as two punt .
This thymine - shirt arms subspecies grew to include multi - barrel guns like Big Bella , a 600 - pound behemoth whichdebutedin 2012 at a Philadelphia 76ers game and could fire 100 shirts every 60 seconds . Not to be outdone , the Milwaukee Bucksintroduceda triple - barrel accelerator powerful enough to propel singlet and jacket . The Army ’s football team built a tiny T - shirt armoured combat vehicle .
Despite having a comparatively innocuous payload , these guns have not always brought joy to attendee . In 2018 , a mascot named Chip at the University of Colorado - Boulder suffered an injury when a T - shirt cannon malfunctioned , shootinghim in the mole . ( The video , of course , went viral . ) That same yr , a fan key Jennifer Harughtyclaimedthat Orbit , the mascot for the Houston Astros , shot her with a T - shirt and shatter her finger , necessitating surgery . In 2019 , Alex Swanson was at Citi Field for a New York Mets secret plan andallegedthat a shirt hit him in the eye and bump him unconscious . Both sued the respective teams .
Derk surely had no melodic theme there would be the periodic mishap , nor could he have predicted someone might misappropriate the gun for other design . In 2019 , a fair sex refer Kerri Jo Hickman wasarrestedafter being catch while adjudicate to deliver contraband — cell headphone , battery charger , ear buds , and drugs — by shoot it over the fence of North Folk Correction Center in Sayre , Oklahoma , with a T - shirt carom .
