Job's Fine, But Falls Are Beastly -- Being A Mascot For A Professional Sports Team Isn't Always Fun And Games - Unless You Enjoy Crashing To The Floor After An Errant Slam-Dunk Attempt Or Having Your Tail Pulled By Obnoxious 10-Year-Olds.

Rocky, the cat-like mascot for the Denver Nuggets, is pulling a reluctant woman out of the stands to dance. Squatch, of the Seattle SuperSonics, is climbing over the railing and chasing, on all fours, a small child up the stairs. Harry the Hawk, of Atlanta, is twisting his beak and faking an elbow to a guy's face.

Razzmatazz of the CBA's Tri-City Chinook, a Tasmanian devil/bulldog hybrid obviously created by radiation poisoning, is rubbing a bald man's head. Now he's kissing an usher. Now he's stealing a Sonic dancer. Now he's walking along the court while a player shoots free throws, incurring the glare of Kendall Gill.

Basically, it's a Saturday Morning Cartoon Nightmare at a recent game at the Seattle Center Coliseum, where nine mascots have gathered to celebrate the birthday of the Sonic mascot. One mascot per 14,250 spectators is enough fun for most adults; nine of them, set loose on a serious basketball crowd, amounts to terrorism. People flee for the concession stands, which just may be the goal.

Ultimately, a sports fan can't get away from them. Mascots are almost everywhere these days, except in the most traditional sports towns. The NBA likes the shtick enough that 17 teams now have mascots, with more on the way every year and more than enough applicants to fill the jobs.

"There's one guy I can think of who's probably called just about everyone in this room," said the Houston Rockets' Booster, afterward in a makeshift dressing room for mascots. "It's some guy out of California who dresses up as a raccoon."

Overhearing Booster, several mascot-people bellow, "YES!" They know of the raccoon, who phones some of them every month, although he's not affiliated with any particular team.

"It's just sort of an independent thing, I guess," Booster said.

The fact that there's a man somewhere out there in a raccoon suit, with no team, points to contemporary reality: Being a mascot is glamorous stuff. You get to clown around, jump on trampolines, hug the most attractive members of the audience, act like a buffoon even - and no one knows who you are. You go home and watch ESPN use your dunk as a lead-in to its nightly sports report.

If you're really lucky, like Squatch, you get invited to the mascot-dunking contest on All-Star weekend, where your career can really take off with a performance that captivates TV audiences.

Yet, gone are the days when being a good mascot was as easy as mugging for small children who think you're real. Increasingly, and particularly in the NBA, parents can no longer afford to buy tickets for kids, leaving mascots to entertain an older, more sophisticated crowd.

"Adults know you're a man in a monkey suit, basically," said Squatch, whose identity is classified information.

Modern-day NBA crowds want smart skits, free trinkets, constant action, but more than that, daredevil dunks, Squatch said. Squatch recalls the boos when he was introduced, in January 1993, and how he senses he won them over a month later when he completed a front-flip dunk.

"I think Seattle wanted something comparable to the Gorilla," Squatch said of the longtime Phoenix mascot. "Until I surpassed the Gorilla athletically - and I have far surpassed him - it was tough."

The Gorilla was the first of five Arizona State University gymnasts to go on to mascot careers in the NBA. The others are at Charlotte, Indiana, Houston, Phoenix and Seattle, giving Arizona State more mascots in the NBA than players. They're also the only five who can do front-flip dunks.

Squatch, who in his previous life was a six-time NCAA All-America gymnast and U.S. national champion in the floor exercise and vault, still struggles on occasion with his skits. But then, until he tried out for the Squatch job in 1992, a mascot career had never occurred to him. He said he planned to go into coaching, teaching "or maybe owning a latte cart."

Not so with Rocky. The Nuggets' mascot said he grew up in Las Vegas dreaming of following in the webbed footsteps of The (San Diego) Chicken.

"I'd watch every move and see what he'd do," Rocky said. "I used to go to games and take notes. . . . I lived it."

Squatch, who goes about his work in a 15-pound suit that cost $5,000 to build, said the worst part of his job is physical - tumbling on the hardwood floors, which leaves him with an assortment of injuries.

He tried to dive chest-first onto the floor in one of his first games, like a plane landing at Sea-Tac, but instead he stopped on a dime. He had to leave the game with a mild concussion and blood dripping from his nose. In a display of true grit, he returned for the next game several days later, his ears still in pain.

The Tacoma Tiger once fell off a dugout, right on to the steps.

"There was a silence as the players looked at me, until one of them finally said, `Are you OK?' " the Tiger said.

Then there are the children, who can be particularly dangerous. Mascots agree that pre-teens are the most difficult, as they're too old to be intimidated by the mascots yet too young to resist violence.

"We had a draft party once and it was free to the community," Booster said. "Well, I got caught in the stands without my assistant and before I knew it I was surrounded six feet deep in a circle of little 14- and 15- and 12- and 10-year-olds. And they went ballistic. I was getting punched and pulled."

"Or," Rocky said, "they'll have their parents in there with the younger ones, going, `Pull his tail! Go pull his tail!"

The little indignities come with the territory. The drunkard yelling, "Sit down, idiot!" The mandatory autograph sessions where a player gets $5,000 and you get nothing. The player who looks at you not as a joker, but a joke.

Respect is not given easily to fake animals, except by maybe mom and dad.

"My parents live in Phoenix, so they know all about the Phoenix Suns Gorilla," Squatch said. "When I got this opportunity, they thought it would be great. They saw the Gorilla and wanted that to be me."

And to think some parents want their kids to be doctors.