Pittsburgh Review

William Stiteler was on an Indiana Jones-like crusade. He had his artifact, and he believed it belonged in a museum.

At the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum last month, Stiteler tried to do a reverse museum heist and sneak his Mitch Keller Star Wars bobblehead into the collection. It was there where he got a notification that he had a new follower: The Pittsburgh Pirates.

Now his hometown team is one of the over 11,000 accounts who follow the Pittsburgh social media sensation known as “SaxBoyBilly18.”

For the uninitiated, the allure of SaxBoy may be hard to sum up in just a few paragraphs. His love of baseball and comedy stems from the 1997 “Freak Show” Pirates and 1992 film “Wayne’s World.” Those passions combine into a series of short videos that can range from sketches, heckling, song parodies, dancing, interacting with Pirate fans or the average man on the street and more. It’s part Wayne Campbell, part Bob Costas, part Eric Andre, part Weird Al, and above all else, part Bucco baseball.

“When people started noticing me at the games, which was pretty immediately. I was walking around outside the stadium and like 15 people noticed me,” Stiteler said at Dodger Stadium, decked out in a 2013 Clint Hurdle Manager of the Year t-shirt. “I was like, ‘Holy [crap], seriously?’”

Stiteler has been to almost every home game this season thanks to the Pirates’ Ballpark pass that offers a general admission seat for $40 a month. He took it a step further in May and began traveling on the road to see them in every city they play.

“You can do it very inexpensively,” Stiteler said. “... I was like, ‘You know what? Life is for the living. I’m gonna use credit cards and I’m gonna travel.’”

With proceeds from a Pirates merchandise resale shop he started -- plus withdrawing 10% from his 401K -- Stiteler began hitting the road. Sometimes it means sleeping in an airport to maximize his dollar; sometimes it means picking an Airbnb where he shares a room with six other people. But it’s in those environments where his cult status has grown and where he’s met players including his favorite player Keller.

“He’s hilarious,” Keller said. "Let's start a fund for him or something [if he’s traveling]. We gotta start something for him."

It’s on the road that he has produced some of his best work. Some notable moments include:

- While riding his rented city bike in Toronto, Stiteler accidentally stumbled into a race and was awarded a medal.

- During Milwaukee's Republican National Convention when Pirates were playing there, he went around telling people about the “rigged” decision to leave Keller off of the NL All-Star team.

“This is such a small insular stupid world; no one’s really taking the piss out of it,” Stiteler said about the Pirates fan sphere. “It was a very self-serious crazy run and I was like ‘I can get a little [like] Wayne here.’”

The videos have also been therapeutic for Stiteler who is open about being seven months sober as a recovering alcoholic. When younger he did comedy in New York while working as production assistant at CNN and The Newlywed Show but after seven years shifted to beer industry sales which led him deeper into drinking until moving to Mongolia worsened things.

“As addicts are known to do you change locations thinking that will do anything but I went to Mongolia where alcohol was cheaper available 24/7 and I didn’t know anyone,” Stiteler said adding how isolation became recipe for drinking all day.

He still followed Pirates overseas waking up at 7 am doing so until admitting needing help returning home reigniting passion combining baseball comedy providing new outlet now landing him on The Yak Baseball Bar-B-Cast aiming closer towards making this comedic brand career.

Stiteler plans continuing travels hoping next year going international backpacking Europe meeting Pirate fans wondering what videos would emerge then.

“I just kinda started this thing being like ‘Hey everybody -- notice me,’” Stiteler said concluding “And now they’ve noticed whether they like it or not.”