Let’s get one thing straight: Patrick Pettiti no longer considers himself a runner, despite the fact that he participated in the Boston Marathon in 2008, and even the original Athens race from Marathon to The Panathinaiko Stadium in 2010. Because the bottom line is, that hobby has fallen by the wayside in recent years, as he’s been focused on scaling up his fast-growing startup HourlyNerd, a marketplace for one-time consulting projects that he co-founded with fellow HBS alumni Rob Biederman and Peter Maglathlin. Pettiti, who is also co-CEO of HourlyNerd, won an Alumni Impact award last year — an honor BostInno will be bestowing once again at the annual State of Innovation event on June 16 (nominations are now open). But though he may not be lacing up his sneakers and hitting the pavement too often these days, at one time, he had a full-time stint as a professional mascot, running the President's Race at every Washington Nationals home game. That’s right, he was one of these guys.
Pettiti, who grew up on Dorchester and attended MIT undergrad, moved to D.C. for a consulting job at Booz Allen Hamilton after graduation. After hearing one of the annual radio ads for the Presidents Race — a popular promotional event held at every Nationals home game in the fourth inning — his friend dared him to apply. Somehow, Pettiti was one of the four picked.
He chalks a lot of his being chosen not to athletic ability, but personality.
“You have to sit under a stadium all day with these guys — and the cheerleaders — so they were looking for people who weren’t crazy to be around,” he said. “But they still want you to be able to act like a lunatic on the field.”
Those who run the race are dressed in costumes and giant foam caricature heads that resemble former United States presidents found on Mount Rushmore, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft. Pettiti wasn’t assigned a particular president for the season, and says it would change for basically every game. He participated in 40 games over the span of a couple years. That’s not the only surprising quirk Pettiti has up his sleeve, either. The entrepreneur also happens to have a semi-secret obsession with Medieval Manor, a Middle-Ages themed dinner theater in Boston’s South End that he stumbled upon with a friend who happened to know one of the minstrels. In addition to a slapstick comedy show, tickets also include a 6-course feast you eat with your hands and endless pitchers of beer. The first time he stumbled upon the joint with a friend, he admits the bottomless brews got the best of them. Since then, Pettiti says he's visited Medieval Manor about 30 times, and the staff now recognizes him whenever he stops in. His penchant for the experience has even inspired a long-term dream: to open his own Medieval dinner theater chain. More on that in the video below.
Image of President mascots at Washington Nationals game via Flickr/Creative Commons (courtesy of Alyson Hurt).
