The Real Life Mascot
What is displayed before you and depicted in these images [and potential, video if I every get the time/even remember, to find one from the archives] is a tiger. How is this important? Well, this is no ordinary tiger, you see....this tiger- is the one and only Tommy Tiger {REAL LIFE! .....edition}.
He was a male Bengal tiger, weighing 450 pounds an' being at the nice age of 4 years old. As job of being the mascot, his duties included, but weren't limited to: attending games and being at homecomings (from what I've been told by some of the people in the archives and a person from the sports staff) as well as attending outdoor activates, at parades, and rallies.
Originally he was from a circus which, and I quote, "....found him [to be] so wild that he couldn't be trained." So presumably the owners then gave that Tiger to the Chase Wild Animal farm/compound that was located in Egypt, Massachusetts (that place/business, no longer exists as I tried looking for where it was located so that I can put it in a map, it apparently isn't possible trying to locate it anymore unless I go there myself to get its coordinates). That's when, the Chairmen Board of the Athletic Control, Lowell Berry bought him from said place and brought/donated him over here to Stockton California of where UOP is located; via plane. When he wasn't greeting guests at sports games or when there wasn't any other big-like events that didn't need him, he lived in Quonset D huts (said to be on campus(?)) with his keeper/handler Rodney Siefert in his (presumably, in his large cage) eating 10 pounds of horse meat a day.
He was found and reported to have died in his cage in Fresno of 1952 by unknown means. The attendees who were taking care him say that he was, (mentioned later to also) appear to be, perfectly healthy the evening before his death and there was an scheduled autopsy to find the cause. Yet I can't seem to, nor have anymore time to, find the results of that autopsy- yet due to the limited amount, or none at all, papers stating his cause of death. Though in the Pacific Review Spring 2002, it mentions of it being a suspected poisoning, though that part is of speculation, so its best to say that its still unknown to this very day.
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One of the filming locations that they used to film some scenes were shot at University of the Pacific, including one using one of their sports fields that goes by it's current name/title/moniker of Stagg memorial [football] field.
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The that field has gone through about 5 name changes and no longer exists. Plus some say that it was at located on the campus and some others say that/look like it was in another area. "What was it called before? It's history? What happened to it? etc etc" Well too bad! I can say that spending day after day night after night +10hrs trying to find anything about it leads me to more confusion and dead ends."
- If you look it up of where to stream the movie, Disney+ is not one of them. Strange, but to most reviews that it has, its mixed, so it may not have been the most received (likely it was neither liked nor disliked). And my opinion, it was boring af, but maybe you might like it. (if you want to watch it click this word)
Anyway, aside from that distasteful end, I've decided to add one more tib-bit, as it's still on the topic of live tigers. So Tommy wasn't the only tiger to have visited this university, his name was/is C.G. (see picture on to the left) who visited the campus in 1972 for the filming of Walt Disney Production's The World's Greatest Athlete {released in 1973} film/movie.
There's a lot everythings while I am/was trying to uncover anything of this, and it gives me a minor headaches (and lots of frustration) everytime and causes me to find nothing but a sh*t-ton of dead ends that apparently don't go any further or such.
So I'll shall give you, in bullets, of what I can tell you from what I can just make out that's barely concrete to tell ya: (see the list on the left below the image)
If you want to know the inner details and such, well I failed to provide it and it feels like I wasted too much time on this tiny bit. But I do still have the things that may lead to what may be useful, though I can't agree or deny that they may be useful to you; that's for you to decide and see for ya self. Those links are in that box, open it up if you'd like to see them: So here the links anyway: