It's Beanie Ball! -- Mariner Mascot Wasn't Main Moose For These Fans

There are different kinds of devotion to the Beanie Babies, the cute, stuffed toys that are all the rage right now. Ditto for the Seattle Mariners, the sometimes-cute baseball team that was all the rage some time ago.

But what kind of devotee might you attract if Beanie Babies and Mariners came together in the same place? And what if the Beanie Baby happens to be Chocolate the Moose, a new member of the growing Beanie family?

That's the experiment the Kingdome and the Mariners carried out yesterday, when they gave away 10,000 of the stuffed animals to Beanie Baby fans aged 14 or younger, some of whom may or may not have also been Mariner fans.

The event drew 43,831 people to the game and turned the Kingdome parking lot into a scene of preschoolers, coolers and strollers. Evident were the varying levels of devotion to Beanie Babies and baseball.

Some, like Wanda David and her two grandsons, Daniel and Brandon, ages 12 and 11, of Lynnwood, spent the night in the Kingdome parking lot just to be the first in line when the gates opened. But was it worth it?

"Now it is," Wanda David said, clutching one of the Babies. "During the night, you could have asked me, and I could have said no."

Others put a lot less effort into their prize.

Kristie Bissell of Clyde Hill, and her children, Betsy, Bradley and William, ages 13, 10 and 5, got in line at 10:30 a.m. yesterday, a half-hour after the giveaway started. All three children managed to get a Beanie Baby. They admitted to not being obsessive about Beanie Babies.

"We just like the giveaways," Kristie Bissell said.

Despite the hype preceding the giveaway, the lines for the dolls dwindled long before the dolls ran out. Kameron Durham, assistant director of ballpark operations at the Kingdome, said the last doll was given away at 12:45 p.m., 20 minutes before the scheduled start of the Mariners' game against the Baltimore Orioles.

It wouldn't be a baseball game - or a Beanie Baby giveaway, for that matter - without scalpers and street merchants. Matt Pearce, a Pullman resident, was in town selling Beanie Babies to fans outside the Kingdome. He also was trying to coax people into selling him the certificates that came with the Chocolate the Moose dolls.

"The certificates are worth a lot more," Pearce said. "We buy them for $15, sell them for $50, so we get a profit of about $35."

That's a profit margin of 233 percent, for those who care. Which explains why Monique Spearman, a 10-year-old from Seattle, said she would rush home to put her new Beanie Baby in a plastic bag - tags, certificate and all.

"They are not a playing thing," the young entrepreneur said with a grin.