Posted Apr 16, 2010 6:00 AM CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Evidently colleagues of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. were aware of his loyalties from the moment he joined the court.

In the second of a two-part interview with the Philadelphia Daily News, Alito tells how he was welcomed to the court by the Phillie Phanatic, a mascot that he had met once before in a memorable encounter.

On the first meeting, Alito told the newspaper, he threw out the first pitch at a Phillies game on Father's Day 2006. “I had been very physically close to the Phanatic at that time and I could tell that [the] on-the-field uniform is fragrant, as you would expect,” he said.

The second meeting was at Alito’s welcome dinner, arranged by the court’s then-junior justice, Stephen G. Breyer. Toward the end of the dinner, Breyer announced a special guest. “He opened the door and the Phillie Phanatic came in and gave me a big hug,” Alito recalls. “And it was great.”

This time, though, there was a difference. “When he came here he smelled like a flower,” Alito said, “so either he got [the costume] dry-cleaned or he has his traveling suit.”