At long last, the New York Yankees’ most famous assistant to the traveling secretary is getting his due recognition.
George Costanza,– the raging neurotic paranoid character played by actor Jason Alexander in the 1990s classic TV hit “Seinfeld” — will be honored with a bobblehead figure in his likeness as the Yankees celebrate “Seinfeld Night” on July 5.
The team announced on X on Friday that the first 18,000 fans who show up to watch the Bombers take on the Red Sox will get a free Costanza bobblehead.
“Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle… Costanza?!?” the club cheekily tweeted in announcing the promotion.
The plastic figure shows Costanza — the annoying best friend of co-star and series co-creator Jerry Seinfeld — in a batting stance atop a Yankee pinstripe base.
Around the base in white lettering reads “assistant to the traveling secretary,” a nod to Costanza’s fictitious job title during a multi-season plot arc where he worked for the team.
Alexander’s character was once famously vexed by ball-game giveaways in an episode where Jerry called in a bogus bomb threat to Yankee Stadium demanding fitted hats instead of snapbacks at an upcoming fan-appreciation night.
Of course, the laborious thankless task of collecting thousands of hat sizes fell to the bad-luck-prone Costanza, who in spite of his incompetence on the job managed to curry favor with late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner on the show.
Steinbrenner was often lampooned on the series, portrayed as buffoonish and prone to absurd flights of fancy. He was only ever seen from behind and voiced by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David.
Costanza’s wanton acts of disrespect toward the organization were a recurring gag on the series, as the Yankees emerged from the depths of an ’80s downturn to a ’90s dynasty.
In an episode in which he was trying to get fired, he showed up to a meeting wearing one of Babe Ruth’s original uniforms while messily eating strawberries.
Later in that same episode, he dragged the team’s World Series trophy from the rear bumper of his car through the stadium parking lot, decrying the “front-office morons” and declaring “your triumphs mean nothing.”
He also infamously introduced all-cotton team uniforms, appalled at their use of polyester for the iconic pinstriped pants and jerseys, “You know they used to make leisure suits out of this fabric?”
Predictably, as with all of the other initiatives he spearheaded for the team, the cotton jerseys were a disaster, shrinking after washing and inhibiting the players’ mobility.
Yankee legends such as Paul O’Neill, Bernie Williams and Derek Jeter all appeared on “Seinfeld” over the years.
Alexander was nominated for seven Prime Time Emmys and four Golden Globes for his portrayal of Costanza but lost out every time, often to co-star Michael Richards, who played kooky fan-favorite Kramer on the series.
