Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Pete Rose said she was “bigger than any one player” in baseball during the 70s and 80s. Morganna the Kissing Bandit became a legend in sports for running onto baseball fields and kissing players during games.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, it's Amartinez. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias when important world-changing events are happening. That is where the Up First podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen Up First from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry Searer too sitting in for Dave. And this is Short Stuff. Kind of sports related, but real pop culture to tell you the truth.

Yeah, because if you grew up in the 70s and 80s and you were a sports fan, in particular a baseball fan of Major League Baseball here in the United States, then no doubt at some point you either saw on the news or saw live during a game a woman run out onto the baseball field and chatted up for a moment with a professional baseball player and then kissed them on the cheek, and then run back to the stands waving, at least for a while, until she started getting arrested for doing this. And that was Morgana, the kissing bandit. Yeah, apparently she was born Nancy Lee Rose in Louisville, Kentucky.

She started lying about her age at a very young age, as we'll see, because she had a very difficult, really rough adolescence. But she became so famous for this during the 70s and 80s that at one point, Pete Rose said that he considered her bigger than any one baseball player in the whole game. Like she was really, really famous for this. She was on Letterman, she was on Carson, and she was an exotic dancer by trade, by profession. And I saw her act, I saw it described as part nudity, part comedy, which is kind of tough to pull off,

if you ask me. But one of the things in addition to running on to baseball fields that she was known for, that was very attention-getting, was her bust. She was extraordinarily buxom. Apparently she had a 60-inch bust that required an eye cup. And so that, combined with running onto the field at sporting events and kissing players,

it really captured the attention of the American public. Yeah, and you know, that's not the kind of thing we usually highlight when we're talking about women on the show, but you can't ignore that with Morgana the Kissing Bandit, most notably because it comes up later in a potential defense in court, which if you're wondering how in the world does that work, then you'll find out in Act Two. And I think the fact that we mentioned it just goes to show how much you can't ignore it. I hope so.

She was introduced to baseball by her grandfather, who raised her. You said she had a rough childhood, which very sadly she did. She was a runaway at age 13. She was unhoused for a while. Eventually she became an exotic dancer as a teenager. And in 1969, at Crossley Field during a Cincinnati Reds game, when she was 17, she was with a

couple of friends sitting near the field level. And the baseball players were checking these girls out because it was 1969 1969 and that's what you did when you were a baseball player. You get a little bored in outfield and look to the stands at Teenage Curls, I guess. And everyone was sort of, you know, the players were sort of paying them some attention except for Pete Rose. And they were like, what gives with this guy? And her friend said, hey, I bet you I'll give you five bucks if you run out on the field and, you know, confront him, which she did. Pete Rose played outfield at the time before his move to the infield. She ran out there. Yeah.

I didn't know that. Which part? I always seem, the outfield part. Yeah, yeah. He was an outfielder at first, but he played everywhere, but I think shortstop and catcher and pitcher. Anyway, Pete Rose had a brief chat with her. He was endorsing ballpark Frank's hot dogs at the time and she said, hey, I buy those hot dogs.

I gave him a kiss on the cheek. He said, you're nuts, you're going to get in trouble. But she didn't at the time. She went back to her seat and security didn't come by. And she watched the rest of the game with her friends. And a sports writer in Cincinnati the next day dubbed her the Kissing Bandit. Yeah, and a great example of her sense of humor,

she said later that her career started with a bet from her friends, and Pete Rose's career ended with a bet. got caught bettting. Hundreds of bets. Right. Yeah. I say we take a break and we come back and talk a little more about Morgana and her prolific career. Let's do it. Hey, it's Amartinez. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias when important world changing events are happening. That is where the Up First podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories. You can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen up first from NPR on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug. All right, so Morgana is kissing athletes all over the place. She's getting more and more famous. I mentioned that she did this with most of the sports, but baseball was her number one love. But she would show up at a NASCAR race.

She'd kiss an NBA player. She'd go to an NFL game. She went to NHL games. She kissed a horse or a jockey, but she did this at a horse race once. Apparently, George Brett sort of got back at her in a playful way when he showed up at the club where she was dancing and jumped up on stage and kissed her.

Yeah, he got it twice, I think, right? I don't know. Yeah, I think he might have been one of the only ones that she got twice, which is why he got her back. And like I said, she was prolific, right? I think between 1969 and 99, pretty sure this was Sports Illustrated who came up with this stat, she kissed over 50 athletes,

not to mention managers, umpires, and mascots, including the San Diego Chicken, who just keeps popping up again and again in stuff you should know episodes lately. RG And I think this one was from our friends at Grunge. They said that her presence often doubled the number of fans in the stands. She was really well known, and she would announce where she was going, what games she was going to attend,

and people would just show up. Because you wanted to see that kind of thing in addition to a game. So, there was, from what I can tell, and correct me if I'm wrong, there was a love-hate relationship with her, because she would disrupt games. But at the same time, she would fill, you know,

double the attendance at a stadium when she said that she was going to a game, you know? Yeah, it was this weird cultural moment in time where someone got really famous for doing something just sort of unusual and something that a lot of people did. Like, these days when you see somebody run down on a field, especially since the stabbing of Monica Sellas on the tennis court years ago.

Oh yeah. This is all sort of scary stuff and you never know what someone's going to do. When Hank Aaron hit his home run, the guys ran down on the field and were patting him on the back. But that was sort of the first like, oh boy, what's happening here? Like these white guys are rushing the black man who broke the white guys record. Oh, is that what changed things that particular incident? Well, that was what first started. I mean Morgana came after this so it clearly didn't change that much Oh, okay

I think Monica Seles is what really really changed it because that was an actual act of violence Everyone else had good intentions, but these days when somebody rushes the field It's usually a protester and they usually get tackled in a pretty violent manner violence. Everyone else had good intentions. But these days when somebody rushes the field, it's usually a protester and they usually get tackled in a pretty violent manner and they won't show it on TV immediately. All cameras are directed to not show any of this stuff, so no one's incentivized to actually do this. But not back then, man. Everyone, like she was good for baseball, you know? She did have a few encounters with security that ended up pretty rough.

There was one, I think the 1970 All-Star game in Cincinnati, the Reds management put a bounty on her, 100 bucks to whoever could catch her, because she, I guess, had announced that she was coming. And they did catch her, and I guess they got her on the ground and the security started kicking her in the ribs. That's ridiculous.

Broke three of her ribs. Yeah, and you know, I said that's ridiculous because it's different these days. And it is a genuine security risk, because you never know what someone's gonna do, because the world is crazy now. Yeah. But back then, like everyone knew who Morgana was. Everyone knew she was going

to run out there. It would take less than a minute. She would kiss the player on the cheek, not even on the lips because she didn't like the chewing tobacco in baseball. And there's absolutely no reason to throw this woman on the ground and kick her for sort of a minor disruption. This is a different time. So if people are like, oh, I don't know, man, you can't do something like that. It's just different these days. Everyone knew her and knew she meant no ill will. Yeah, but despite that, I mean,

not just three broken ribs, she also suffered a broken kneecap once. She suffered a broken tailbone, all at the hands of security, but she just apparently shrugged it all off because I read an interview with her from not too long ago where she chalked it up to rent-a-cops getting carried, getting a little carried away.

So I think she just kind of took this as like, you know, it kind of goes along with it. It's going to happen from time to time. And she did get arrested quite a bit, but, you know, usually without incident. There was one incident in particular when she rushed the field at Astros game to kiss Nolan Ryan on the mound. He was on the pitcher's mound.

She was kissing him on the cheek. And she was arrested and she had to hire an attorney because she was called to defend herself in court, even though she didn't actually have to go through with it. It got far enough that she hired this one particular attorney. Yeah. This guy, his name was Richard Haynes. They called him the racehorse. And he was one of those sort of showboaty, would take wealthy clients accused of everything

from murder to embezzling and stuff like that. And apparently, one time in court, he zapped himself with a cattle prod to prove that it wasn't a lethal weapon. So he was that kind of guy. And this is where we mentioned that he used her bust size as part of the defense because he was gonna use the gravity defense, he called it,

wherein he would argue that she would just lean over the railings as a sports fan and that her, the weight of her bust would drag her over the rail onto the field. And I guess the court was like, oh boy, let's just drop the charges so we don't have to go through that. Yeah, I think the Houston Sports Association got involved. They're like, this is not a good look for Houston, guys. Let's just drop the charges so we don't have to go through that. Yeah, I think the Houston Sports Association got involved They're like this is not a good look for Houston guys. Let's just drop this so they did And that was the one time where she had to go to court was called the court But that just became part of her legend to the gravity defense

It's like you can't read an article about Morgana the kissing band in the gravity defense not get mentioned It's just part of her legend. Yeah, for sure. And one of the other things I saw about her that I wanted to mention, Chuck, was she was apparently very crafty. I saw it put that there was one time in particular, I think in 1986, she said publicly

that she was going to kiss Dom Mattingly of the Yankees. She was gonna go to New York for a game. And so everybody was on high alert in New York. And while they were doing that, she flew to, I guess, Seattle to kiss the Mariners catcher Steve Yeager. So she would use a little deflection and sleight of hand. She wasn't above that, which also, I mean, this lady was pretty cool.

That's right. Scotty Pippen of the Bulls was the last player to get that kiss, and that was in the early 90s. And then she was in the movie Kingpin, and as a cameo in 96, retired officially in 2000, even though Scottie Pippen was years before that. But I don't think we mentioned, she made millions of bucks off this persona.

Yeah. But eventually, you know, like all entertainers, even kind of oddball pseudo entertainers, has to leave eventually and really went underground. And it's hard to find a lot of recent information about her, even though we think she is still alive probably in her late seventies. But who knows, because she's never been very truthful about her even though we think she is still alive probably in her late 70s But who knows because she's never been very truthful about her age

They got anything else. I got nothing else great Well, here's to Morgana the kissing bandit one of the more interesting 20th century figures ever short stuff friends Stuff you should know is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio Friends is out.