Just in case you haven’t already heard, as of this writing, the Detroit Tigers are the best baseball team in the American League, if not all of Major League Baseball. They’re current record is 53 wins and 32 losses, just half a game behind the MLB best Los Angeles Dodgers, and a stunning 12 wins ahead of their AL Central rivals. At nearly the midway point of the 2025 season, they’re practically a lock for the postseason (knock on wood), and their World Series odds seem to get better day by day. It’s an exciting time to be a Detroit Tigers fan, made more exciting by this dynamic, all-star Detroit Tigers team.
From the start of the season, back in April, with each and every extra-base hit, every double hit by a Tiger, the Tigers celebrate by making a sawing motion across their arm. At first, it was a mystery to most what this meant, until it was revealed to all that they were making a reference to the Bone Saw McGraw character in the 2002 Sam Raimi directed Spider-Man film, played by none other than “Macho Man” Randy Savage.
Being a fan of both the Tigers and professional wrestling, and especially Randy Savage, it makes me smile from ear to ear every time I see the Tigers perform the Bone Saw celebration, like they’re doing something special just for me, and thanks to how many extra-base hits they’re recording this season, I’m smiling a lot.
And it’s catching on, too. Now it’s common to see fans perform the Bone Saw celebration out in the stands at Comerica Park, and it’s even resulting in some new Bone Saw merchandise.
Just today, I saw that Champagne Athletics has released a Bone Saw t-shirt, featuring the logo of a saw crossed with a baseball bat on the front, and a wrestler performing the Bone Saw celebration on back, as it says at the link, “Featuring a vintage-style illustration of our fictional Detroit wrestler mid-celebration on second base – rocking navy and orange tiger-striped gear and the iconic bone saw motion.”
The shirt design is unauthorized, so it can’t officially name Randy Savage or the Detroit Tigers, but you catch the drift.
Official Detroit Tigers merch isn’t hard to come by, but if you’re in the market for official Bone Saw McGraw merchandise, that’s a different story.
If you’re a super fan of Bone Saw McGraw, Randy Savage, and/or Spider-Man, you can currently bid on Randy Savage’s film worn Bone Saw McGraw Spider-Man costume at Heritage Auctions. The current bid sits at $9,250 with 15 days to go.
And that’s about all for official Bone Saw McGraw merchandise!
The closest thing I could find is a Topps trading card from the 2002 Spider-Man film trading card set, but even with that, Bone Saw isn’t pictured on the card, he’s just quoted on the back, while Spider-Man is shown in his wrestling gear, in ring, on several trading cards.
No trading cards, no action figures, no official merch for Bone Saw (that I can find).
It seems like it would have been a no-brainer to make some official Randy Savage/Bone Saw McGraw merchandise, back when Spider-Man was released in theatres around the globe, but perhaps it was trickier than I think.
Part of the challenge, I assume, may have come from licensing the likeness of Randy Savage, who portrayed the character of Bone Saw, but whose likeness remains inseparable from the character. Savage not only portrayed Bone Saw, he was/is Bone Saw, and perhaps the cost needed to license and market his likeness on trading cards and action figures was too much, at the time.
It could also be that the filmmakers didn’t foresee that Bone Saw would become such a cult character, and therefore didn’t predict a market for Bone Saw merchandise.
It could also be that Bone Saw McGraw was essentially a one-off character. As I’ve written about in the past, and is relatively common knowledge, the character of Bone Saw didn’t appear in the Spider-Man comic books. In Amazing Fantasy #15, the comic that features the origin story of Spider-Man, and includes his iconic wrestling match, Spider-Man wrestles a character named Crusher Hogan, who has made a number of small but not trivial appearances in Marvel comics over the decades.
Bone Saw McGraw, however, never made a Marvel comic book appearance, other than a couple movie tie-in comic books, but even still, this version is clearly not Savage’s Bone Saw.
There is also a Doc Sawbones, another Marvel wrestling character, who made a few minor appearances, but he’s not the same character as Bone Saw McGraw, even if his name is similar.
I highly doubt that I would spend this much time thinking and writing about Bone Saw McGraw if the character wasn’t played by Randy Savage, but that’s the kind of appeal he has. Anything and everything that Savage was involved in, whether it’s his portrayal of Bone Saw McGraw, his role as Slim Jim spokesperson, or his short lived minor league baseball career, has resulted in a cult following, spawning homage/knockoff merchandise.
My pockets aren’t deep enough to bid on Randy Savage’s film worn Bone Saw McGraw Spider-Man costume, but I can afford a bootleg Bone Saw shirt.
Eat ‘em up, Tigers.
