The toy rat with glowing red eyes and mean plastic fangs reminds Thomas Ready of the year Christmas came early.

Ready, who’s played Santa for more than two decades, once went dressed for the part, clad in red sweatshirt and pants, to a Halloween party. The revelers, lacking a proper award for his costume as St. Nick’s surrogate, awarded him the rat as a trophy.

The man was as inconspicuous as a tall, broad-shouldered fellow wearing a zebra-striped shirt and black short pants could be walking across the Valle Field parking lot. He had the earnest look of a Boy Scout troop leader preparing to take youngsters on a long hike, but he was on his way to the football field complex’s east gridiron to referee Sunday afternoon Vigo County Youth Football League third- and fourth-grade games.
Even after the big fellow took the field with his refereeing partner and began tossing his yellow flag and …