As far as TTM requests go, this one was definitely a little different! Though he never took a single at bat in the Majors, Ted Giannoulas was as big a part of my childhood baseball fandom as many players! In his role as "The Chicken," he starred alongside Johnny Bench in what was at the time my favorite TV show, The Baseball Bunch. Each week, a big league player would guest star on the show, giving an instructional lesson to the kids on some aspect of baseball.
In those days, NBC's "Game of the Week" on Saturdays might be the only game you saw all week long. And in that pre-internet age, players seemed so distant that they were almost like mythical heroes. The opportunity to see them interacting with real kids (just like me!) and giving a lesson that I could learn from was a treat beyond compare.
To add a comic element though, the show included The Chicken. Giannoulas played the mascot, who had begun in 1974 as The San Diego Chicken, sponsored by KGB-FM, a radio station in San Diego. He grew in popularity over the next five years, but a series series of legal disputes and court proceedings between Giannoulas and KGB culminated in the Chicken flying the coup and setting out on his own. On June 29, 1979, the San Diego Padres hosted his Grand Rehatching, in an event that can only be described as a spectacle! Giannoulas counts it as his favorite baseball memory.
Giannoulas was very kind to not only sign my card, but to also respond to my brief questionnaire. I asked him what his favorite episodes of The Baseball Bunch, and he responded that his two favorite were when Ozzie Smith and Jim Rice visited. Those two are included below.
One last thing about The Chicken: I was fortunate enough to see him perform in person once. The week after I graduated from college, a couple friends and I made a trip down to Birmingham to see a certain basketball player take a crack at minor league back in 1994. Though Michael Jordan was the reason for our visit, it was a thrill to get to see The Chicken perform, as he was in classic form!
Check out some of his greatest bits below!
No comments:
Post a Comment