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Just sayin': Aside from Brutus, the San Diego Chicken may have been the greatest mascot of all time. For those that don't remember....
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Ray Kroc had seen enough by the eighth inning of the team’s 1974 home opener.The new Padres owner already had endured a three-game sweep by the Dodgers (getting outscored 25-2) in Los Angeles…
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The Chicken entertained fans for the first time 50 years ago at San Diego Stadium
A San Diego State student named Ted Giannoulas dressed up in a chicken suit, bought a ticket to the Padres game and forever changed the fan experience at sporting events
Ray Kroc had seen enough by the eighth inning of the team’s 1974 home opener.
The new Padres owner already had endured a three-game sweep by the Dodgers (getting outscored 25-2) in Los Angeles to open the season.
The home opener was more of the same. The Padres trailed the Houston Astros 6-0 after two innings and 9-2 in the eighth when Kroc cleared his throat and spoke into the PA microphone about the most “stupid ballplaying” he had seen in his life.
“I have some good news and some bad news,” the McDonald’s magnate said. “The good news is you loyal fans have outstripped Los Angeles. They had 31,000 on opening night. We have nearly 40,000.”
Just then the owner was interrupted when a streaker ran across the field at San Diego Stadium.
“Get him out of here,” Kroc yelled. “Take him to jail.”
And with that, Ted Giannoulas, a San Diego State student walking around the field-level concourse behind home plate, got out of there as well.
Giannoulas was concerned about angering Kroc for his appearance as well.
See, he was dressed in a chicken suit.
“This guy is going to look at me and say, ‘Get that chicken. We’re hamburger people around here,’” Giannoulas thought.
That was the scene on April 9, 1974 — 50 years ago Tuesday — when Giannoulas debuted at San Diego Stadium as the KGB Chicken.
No one had any idea that night, but they were witnesses to a transformative moment in sports history.
The play on the field was the only entertainment then at pro sports events, outside of organ music played during breaks in the action.
“There were no mascots in professional sports,” Giannoulas said last week. “Fans still showed up at the games in shirts and ties. They didn’t go in costumes or face paint or wild hair or anything of that.”
Certainly, no one entertained the crowd — often more than those they had paid to see — throughout the game. Game after game. The ballpark became the KGB Chicken’s regular roost.
A year after that first appearance, a stadium usher approached Giannoulas and said, “They want you up in the owner’s box.”
Giannoulas thought he was going to be dressed down for something he did, but Kroc just wanted to meet him and shake his hand.
“He told me,” Giannoulas said, “ ‘It’s amazing. We’re losing and our customers are going home happy every night because of you, young man. Thank you.’
“He wanted to win a pennant and a championship, of course. But goal No. 2 was, ‘Are my customers going home happy? And they were.”
Giannoulas was a game changer.
By 1979, he had become so popular that, after winning a lawsuit against KGB over rights to the character he created, 47,000 people showed up at the stadium to see his “Grand Hatching” as The Famous San Diego Chicken.
In 2005, The Chicken was part of the inaugural induction class for the Mascot Hall of Fame.
Jack Murphy, the San Diego Union sports editor when Giannoulas stepped on the stage, once said: “The Chicken has the soul of a poet. He is an embryonic Charles Chaplin in chicken feathers.”
Giannoulas, who grew up in Ontario, Canada, before his family moved to San Diego when he was a teenager, was influenced more by The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges and stand-up comedy routines.
The Sporting News placed him among The Top 100 Most Powerful People in Sports of the 20th Century.
An idea hatches
It is a most unlikely origin story.
In 1974, Giannoulas was a journalism major at San Diego State, intent on becoming a sportswriter — go figure — or maybe a broadcaster.
He was sitting in the office of KCR, the campus radio station, chatting with half a dozen others when a man from San Diego radio station KGB walked in looking to hire someone for a promotion.
The one-week assignment paid $2 an hour to give out candy Easter eggs to children at the San Diego Zoo.
There was one catch — the person had to wear a chicken suit.
“Everybody pauses a second, but then everybody volunteers,” Giannoulas said. “He scans the room and he sees me in the back corner and he says, ‘You, the short dude. You’ll fit the chicken suit best of all.’ ”
It wasn’t the first time the 5-foot-3 1/2 Giannoulas was presented with such an opportunity.
“When I was a kid at Hoover (High School), they had an open tryout for the Cardinal mascot,” Giannoulas said. “Nobody wanted to do it. My friends said, ‘Ted, you should do that.’ I turned and said, ‘I’m way too hip to be doing anything like that. You guys really think I’m that stupid? To be a goof like that?’ “
Giannoulas didn’t bawk this time.
He was eager to extend his employment beyond one week when the idea of wearing the chicken suit to a Padres game came to him.
He bought a ticket to the home opener, got suited up in the parking lot and walked up to the entrance gates.
“It created a little consternation,” Giannoulas said. “You don’t see somebody coming up to the turnstiles in 1974 wearing a chicken suit expecting to get in.
“They had to radio people in the front office to ask if I could be allowed in.”
Padres President Buzzie Bavasi had just one question: “Does he have a ticket?”
“Yes,” he was told.
“It created a lot of amusement around the sections,” Giannoulas said, “but I figured I better get a little more attention — I had the KGB call letters on my chest — got up and just started walking around the aisles, waving to fans. I would do a little soft shoe in the aisles when the organ music played.
“People were laughing. Those who brought cameras wanted pictures. It was completely off the wall. As irreverent as you can get.”
The radio station got more publicity that one night than it did the entire week at the zoo. And Giannoulas enjoyed the attention.
He returned the next game. And the next game. And the next.
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