Remembering Morganna, The Kissing Bandit

Craig Calcaterra

May 17, 2013, 12:30 PM EDT

It’s hard to remember a time when someone running out onto the playing field at a sporting event would not be chased, pummeled or tased. Or that we, as a society, wouldn’t find it uncomfortable and problematic for someone to run up to another person and give them an unsolicited kiss.  But the 1960s-80s were a very different time and place. A time and place that could produce Morganna, the Kissing Bandit.

People my age and older remember her. For those who don’t, all you really need to know is that she was an extremely buxom woman who would run out onto baseball diamonds — later in life it was more of a shuffle than a run — and plant one on various ballplayers. Pete Rose was her first target. Many others would follow. As would appearances on late night talk shows, “celebrity” panel game shows and in various places around our then comparatively barren pop culture landscape.

If you want to know more about her, go watch this mini-documentary about her. Which I found really interesting, even if I liked it somewhat better when I knew absolutely nothing about her apart from her strange, random appearances at now mostly-demolished baseball stadiums back in the era of big hair and plastic grass.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MORGANA THE KISSING BANDIT?

 

 

For nearly three decades, Morganna Roberts, known as the “Kissing Bandit,” ran onto baseball fields and arena floors with her buxom features on display. She famously kissed stars such as Pete Rose, George Brett and Nolan Ryan, becoming MLB’s unofficial mascot and bringing levity to the game. But despite her willingness to flaunt her 60-inched chest and embrace celebrity on late-night shows with Johnny Carson and David Letterman, little is known about Morganna and how she rose to fame. And in a society where celebrities never vanish — see The Apprentice or Dancing With The Stars — why did Morganna just disappear? That’s the mystery of Morganna