Legally, the likeness of the San Diego Chicken belonged to radio station KGB, but Ted Giannoulas certainly made the role his after first putting on the suit as a San Diego State student to hand out Easter eggs at the San Diego Zoo.
Giannoulas eventually took his act to the Padres — more than 500 in a row — as well as other concerts and sporting events until he was fired from the KGB’s $50,000 mascot job. He was “rehatched” on this date — June 29 — in 1979 in front of a crowd of 47,022 at San Diego Stadium as a “compilation bird,” he told the San Diego Union, “with a little from everything, and the colors are completely different.