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TRAININGDAY

June 22, 2003 3:43 am

RICHMOND--Look at that poor dog lying so lifelessly.

Without a bark. Without a breath.

His tongue's scraping the carpet and there's no water or puppy chow in sight. Those droopy brown eyes could make a flea change its mind.

So why is Cosmo's owner so happy, sitting on a tabletop a few feet away in a room that reeks of drying sweat?

Why is Joby Giacalone telling six young men how good it feels to don dog fur?

"I think most people would hate it because of the smell, the heat and the eyes on you," Giacalone says. "But when I'm in costume, all of a sudden I can dance."

Welcome to Mascot Camp, where silence is expected, idiocy is encouraged and beer-spilling is lauded.

Twenty-two years ago Giacalone, the camp director and founder of Charlottesville-based Mascot Consulting, was cut from the baseball team at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C.

He hated being a fan, and he really hated seeing his ex-girlfriend gallivant around town with the man who portrayed the school mascot, Joe the Bear.

So before a basketball game one autumn afternoon, Giacalone and his buddies snatched the furry getup. With three pillows strapped around his waist to give the bear a belly, Giacalone had quite a day.

He danced with toothsome cheerleaders and hugged tiny toddlers. He slid headfirst across the hardwood floor. He loved it.

Once the game ended, the wife of the school president approached Giacalone, who figured the show was over.

"I did the cardinal sin of mascoting. I took my head off," Giacalone says, shaking his permanent noggin. "I took it off right in the middle of everybody and explained who I was. She said they'd never had a mascot as funny as I was."

Giacalone was hired as Joe the Bear for his final two--er, four--years of college, and the fervor grew with each performance.

During his ho-hum stints working for the Census Bureau after graduation, Giacalone always knew he couldn't fail with a tail.

In 1989 he saw a flier in a pizza shop inviting hopefuls to become the mascot of the Charlotte Knights AA baseball team. A couple of months later, Giacalone was making $25 a game as Homer the Dragon.

In 1994, he reached the big leagues as Dinger the Dinosaur of the expansion Colorado Rockies, and stayed for two seasons.

In his undercover career, Giacalone has signed a little girl's detached prosthetic leg, been crushed beneath a four-wheeler and had his dragon head filled with Ben-Gay. And he wants to tell these campers all about it.

Six costumes are scattered across the carpet of a second-floor room at Virginia Commonwealth University's Sports Backers Stadium.

With all eyes on him, Giacalone holds court wearing plaid shorts and an "I'm 40, make your joke and move on" cutoff T-shirt.

Paul Ward and Jay Lehmann share the duties of Utica College's mascot, Trax the Moose. They made the eight-hour drive from upstate New York to attend the two-day seminar.

Andrew Hill brought Titus the Tiger--a sinewy ensemble--with him from Shady Spring High School in West Virginia, and Jon Albers is the Potomac Valley Panda.

Finally, there are the two Richmond locals. Fred Adkins, 21, has been the Richmond Braves' Diamond Duck for three seasons and Jamie Hogan is Kickeroo of the Richmond Strikers minor-league soccer team and the 'Gade for the former Richmond Renegades of the East Coast Hockey League.

Hogan is the camp's pseudo assistant director. He's 35, married, and wears a knee brace that looks straight from a Terminator film.

Three summers ago, he was filling in for an absent Kickeroo at a Strikers game, and admittedly knew nothing about the craft.

For 20 minutes, Hogan did everything he'd ever seen a mascot do, then the skies opened up and the game was canceled. In that short stint, though, he'd earned the suit full-time.

At a charity event soon after, Hogan was in the Kickeroo costume, dancing with a young heart-transplant patient. Tony Markel, the owner of the Renegades, was touched and hired Hogan on the spot.

Hogan--who says his IQ drops by 50 points once the head goes on--has been hit by a Zamboni three times, punched in the groin and threatened with a lawsuit after falling onto a fan and breaking three of the man's ribs.

He spent two days working for a Major League Soccer team, and was rewarded with a plastic cereal bowl.

But he keeps coming back. The crayon drawings on his refrigerator at home--gifts from children he has entertained--make him remember why he does it.

"Kids bring everything back into focus," Hogan says. "It's easy to forget being a mascot isn't an all-about-me occupation."

Tonight, after several hours of discussion and instruction, the campers will perform at a Richmond Braves game.

Giacalone sits them down and offers some invaluable morsels.

First off, it's essential to stay in character. With a few rare anomalies, mascots can't talk. So even if a 14-year-old kicks your butt or a 40-year-old flicks a cigarette butt, don't say a word.

Also, Giacalone says, referees and umpires have all the power. They can boot you from an arena, no questions asked. So be their friends.

Finally, remember that being Cletus the Cow doesn't make you a cash cow.

"Until you find that organization that's ready to commit," Giacalone says, "you've got a job selling refrigerators."

The younger campers take note. Returnees such as the Diamond Duck and Kickeroo just nod. They know the drill.

"The coolest thing about being a mascot," Adkins says, "is that you can do the most offensive things, and nobody cares."

Giacalone has planned a simple synchronized on-field dance for the baseball game, and it's time to practice.

Before they put those suits back on, though, Giacalone grabs some Downy freshening spray and douses each mascot head.

Sweat and artificial fur are not an aromatic combination. The temperature inside the costumes reaches 25 degrees above room temperature, making it uncool to be uncool.

"I drank water for two days straight before I came here," Hill, or Titus the Tiger, says. "The heat is definitely the toughest part, and it can smell pretty bad in there."

With bodies on and heads off, Giacalone flips on a tiny boom box as a techno tune chirps.

The dance steps are simple--a poor man's Electric Slide.

But when you have little or no lateral vision and your feet are the size of dinner plates, nothing's easy.

In fact, the Potomac Panda quickly realizes his paws may be too big to navigate the stadium, and he decides to meet the group later at a Kickers game.

With the steps masteredOK, with the steps practicedAdkins takes off the Diamond Duck costume and takes the group for a quick stadium tour.

He knows the layout like the back of his webbed foot, but it hasn't always been pretty.

"I'll be a mascot until I die," Adkins says, "or until I kill myself doing it."

He's been clotheslined by a drunken fan. He's been thrown into a wall. He's rolled down an aisle of stairs and pretzeled an ankle jumping off the dugout roof.

Ah, the dugout roof.

One of the most dangerous spots for a mascot. It's tough to get onto, tough to get off of, and you're a sitting, well, a sitting duck for peanuts and popcorn and whatever else a fan may toss.

Giacalone tells the trainees they may want to stay off.

"If you get hit in the moose costume up there," Lehmann says, "you're swinging all around and you're going down."

Gathered in a small air-conditioned dressing room, the guys down a few bottles of water and suit up.

Since the two Utica boys--Lehmann and Ward--share Trax the Moose, Giacalone lends his Cosmo the Sheepdog outfit to Lehmann.

"This is my first big show," the 17-year-old says. "I don't really know what to expect."

Well, kid, expect some kids. Young ones.

The night starts with some birthday parties on the deck near left field. There are 53 children on sugar highs hopping and running around picnic tables.

When the mascots come strutting down the walkway--and yes, all mascots have a strut--it's mayhem.

Little boys grab at tails. Little girls reach for hugs. Wailing babies are scared to death of the animals that dwarf their fathers.

Thirty-six minutes before the first pitch, the Diamond Duck signals to his cohorts to wrap it up. But not before a small boy, no more than a year old, reaches his tiny hands out to touch Cosmo the Sheepdog.

"Those are the moments you sometimes lose track of," Giacalone says, watching proudly as he leans against a post in street clothes. "If we could all be children forever, wouldn't that be heaven?"

The crew later reassembles in the bowels of the stadium for a break. They take off their heads. Their beet-red faces are soaked.

It's a muggy night, and Giacalone is concerned for the rookies. But they're having a ball.

"You should see the kids ask for my autograph," Ward says, holding Trax the Moose's head in his lap. "It takes like 10 minutes for me to write it. I keep stepping on people in the aisles, though."

A few minutes after the game starts, the mascots return to the stands and go their separate ways.

When the second inning ends with a soft fly ball, it's showtime.

As the furries bound onto the field, the techno beat suddenly fades and a gravel-voiced PA announcer starts an on-field contest between two children.

With the music playing softly, the two kids are racing to put on a Braves jersey and hat and run to home plate to win a prize pack.

Meanwhile, the campers dance, but the eyes of parents and children and hot-dog vendors are on the cute youngsters in their oversized clothes.

Giacalone is befuddled at the timing. Why, he wonders, hadn't the contest taken place in an earlier inning?

His troupe's performance was scheduled by stadium officials, and then basically stomped upon. After a minute of grass time, the mascots climb back into the stands and head to the dressing room.

"That was a classic screw-up," Giacalone says. "What can you say?"

Well, when you're a mascot, you can't really say much of anything.