Dismiss the effect of adopted Chesterton baseball team mascot ‘Cheddy’, a balloon-wrapped baseball, at your own risk but before doing so consider that the Trojans are 10-0 since welcoming him

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

If your son or daughter’s math teacher is looking a touch scruffy these days, worry not. You see, he’s a baseball coach and by nature they are a very superstitious lot.
“When we’re on a winning streak, I don’t shave and I don’t get a haircut,” Bogner said while lifting his cap.
How his baseball team looks at the plate, on the bases, in the field and on the mound is how a baseball coach is judged, not on how well-groomed he appears.
Chesterton’s baseball team is 4 for 4 in those areas of late and takes a 10-game winning streak into today’s 5 p.m. home game vs. Hobart.
A deeper look into the dugout, specifically into the equipment bag of senior reserve outfielder/pinch runner Logan Chestovich, reveals the team’s superstition that trumps all others.
His name is Cheddy, the homemade team mascot. Again, don’t judge him by his appearance, rather by the results the team has produced on the field since he was adopted as the team mascot.
Upon adoption, Cheddy looked like a pretty typical balloon.
“We were talking before the season about how we needed a mascot and thought it would be fun,” Chestovich explained. “We were on the way to Lafayette and there was a balloon in the (SPV) and we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, what if we just make this the mascot?’ So on our way to our first game in Lafayette, I drew a face on it.”
The Trojans, 3-3, at the time, won the game that night, 10-1 over McCutcheon and haven’t lost since. They are 10-0 since adopting their team mascot.
Stress often accompanies responsibility and the case of Cheddy is no exception. Perhaps because of overexposure to the sun, Cheddy grew ill and was shrinking, so the players did what teenage boys always do when illness strikes: They found the nearest mom to nurse the mascot back to health.
In this case, that was Lisa Czarniecki, mother of senior Rob.
Mrs. Czarniecki stuffed a baseball inside the smiley balloon, tied a knot at the bottom and in so doing extended a life, and in turn a winning streak. It’s amazing what modern medicine can accomplish when winning streaks are at stake.
“Cheddy’s 10-0 and Cheddy’s going to keep streaking,” Chestovich said.
The players gained the inspiration for the name from a Rodney Dangerfield moment. During the Lafayette road trip, a coach called ahead to a restaurant to ask if it could handle a party as big as a high school baseball team and was told it could. The players shared that upon arrival they were turned away.
The mascot’s name is based loosely on the name of that restaurant, which to them serves as a reminder of how rejection feels and in sports the ultimate rejection is a loss. They don’t want to publicize the name of the restaurant, no longer an option for team meals.
“Cheddy will always be in Logan’s bag,” Rob Czarniecki said. “He’ll go everywhere with us. We’re 10-0 with him. Is there a correlation?”
No one dares put that to test in a sport as superstitious as baseball.