Who is the San Diego Chicken?

The San Diego Chicken is the costumed character performed by Ted Giannoulas, who first put on a rented chicken suit in 1974 for a San Diego radio station promotion at the zoo. He began appearing at Padres games and became one of the best known performers in American sports.

Why was the San Diego Chicken fired?

KGB radio fired Giannoulas in May 1979 after he performed at a nationally televised NBA playoff game in Seattle without displaying the station logo. The station sued him for breach of contract and a court order barred him from wearing the costume.

What was the Grand Hatching?

On June 29, 1979, Giannoulas emerged from a giant styrofoam egg on the field at San Diego Stadium in a new costume sewn by his mother and sister. The crowd sold out the ballpark, traffic backed up for four miles, and the game started 36 minutes late.

Did the San Diego Chicken inspire the Phillie Phanatic?

The Phillies decided they wanted a mascot similar to the Padres San Diego Chicken and commissioned the designers behind Miss Piggy to create one. The Phillie Phanatic debuted in April 1978, and costumed mascots have been standard at American ballparks ever since.

The San Diego Chicken: Fired, Sued, and Hatched From an Egg

A man from KGB radio walked up to a group of students at San Diego State in the spring of 1974 and asked if anyone wanted to hand out eggs at the zoo. The pay was two dollars an hour. The catch was a rented chicken suit, and the job went to the student small enough to fit inside it.

Two Dollars an Hour

Ted Giannoulas was a journalism major who weighed about 120 pounds soaking wet. He took the promotion because he saw it as a way into the radio station's news department.

On April 9, 1974, he turned up at the Padres home opener still wearing the costume, mainly so he could get into the ballpark for free.

The station's instructions were simple. Just be a fan. Buy a beer and a hot dog, cheer on the Padres.

The Ballpark Started Filling Up For Him

He kept coming back. By 1977 the Padres had promised the ceremonial first pitch of the season to the Chicken, and turned down commissioner Bowie Kuhn to keep that promise.

That May he got onto the field during a commercial shoot and improvised: he pantomimed spectacular plays at shortstop and started a running argument with umpire Art Williams. The crowd howled.

When a regional magazine polled Padres fans, 11 percent said they came to the games just to see the Chicken.

One of those fans was a two-sport star at San Diego State named Tony Gwynn. "I loved [Dave] Winfield and Ozzie [Smith] at the end, but you know after a while, it was 'Hey, the Chicken - what's the Chicken doing?'"

Braves owner Ted Turner offered him $50,000 to move to Atlanta, then raised it to $100,000 with a television show and an office next to Hank Aaron. Giannoulas stayed, and KGB put him on $50,000 a year, which made a man in a bird costume the second-highest paid employee at the station.

Fired Over a Missing Logo

On May 4, 1979, he performed at a nationally televised NBA playoff game in Seattle without the KGB logo on display.

The station fired him and sued him for $250,000 for breach of contract.

At a hearing on May 23, Giannoulas was stripped of the chicken suit and barred from appearing in the costume in San Diego and the surrounding counties. The station owned the bird. He did not.

The Grand Hatching

His mother, a professional seamstress, and his sister built him a new costume with his own logo on it.

On June 25 he held a press conference at the ballpark from inside a giant styrofoam egg, making reporters press their microphones against the shell, and invited the city to watch him hatch.

The egg sat on display in the right-field pavilion all week, then disappeared the night before the event. The men who took it sobered up, called the local news, and negotiated its return for twelve tickets and all the beer they could drink. Giannoulas talked them down to four tickets and twenty dollars, and no charges were filed.

On June 29, 1979, traffic to San Diego Stadium backed up for four miles and the first pitch was delayed 36 minutes. The crowd, a sellout, chanted "We want the chicken" as the outfield gates opened.

The egg came in on an armored truck with a California Highway Patrol motorcycle escort, was set down near third base, rolled around, and cracked open.

He had negotiated a cut of every ticket sold above the Padres' average attendance and cleared more than $40,000 on the night. It went straight to his legal fees.

A Chicken, Just Not That Chicken

The fight ran on. In April 1980 a two-day contempt hearing ended with the San Diego Chicken and the old KGB Chicken standing side by side in the courtroom while the judge compared them.

The court found the two costumes were not "substantially similar" and dismissed the charges.

The appeal went the same way. "Silly though the issues appear at first glance, the underlying principles are serious," wrote Justice Gerald Brown, whose court held that no injunction could bar Giannoulas from "any chicken suit whatsoever" and that the lower court had improperly restricted his "rights to earn a living and to express himself as an artist."

The judges leaned on a case about Bela Lugosi playing Dracula, finding that "masked or not, both Lugosi and Giannoulas have made certain roles their own, by a combination of mannerisms, gestures, body language, and other behavior adding up in each case to a unique character."

He won a second case in 1998, when the owners of Barney the dinosaur sued over a sketch in which the Chicken roughed up a purple lookalike. The court called it parody and protected speech, and made them pay his legal fees.

The Job He Turned Into an Industry

Teams had been watching him for years before the lawsuit. The Phillies decided they wanted a mascot of their own "similar to the Padres' San Diego Chicken" and hired the designers of Miss Piggy to build one, and the Phillie Phanatic debuted in April 1978.