SAN DIEGO, CA – It was 1974, Nixon had just left the White House, Hank Aaron had tied Babe Ruth’s home run total, Disco was beginning to take the world by storm and Paul McCartney was playing with The Wings instead of The Beatles. In the shadow of these great events a mascot was born… The San Diego Chicken. The Chicken led a long masterful career as the Padres Mascot. The Chicken did everything from television to radio to county fairs. His success on the field over the year even launched a music career with a cover of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.”
Close your eyes and enjoy:
https://youtu.be/I4emKp5vUKI
I remember The Chicken best on The Baseball Bunch with Johnny Bench. Unfortunately, in 1985 that show was cancelled, marking the beginning of the end for The Chicken. Shortly after the cancellation, MacDonald’s founder and Padres owner Ray Crock invited The Chicken out for a business dinner at one of his new establishments to talk about his career. This new restaurant would change The Chicken’s life forever.
Here to talk about his downfall is… The Chicken himself. In order to translate this exclusive interview with the Chicken I have enlisted the help of the only person I know who speaks bird, Swedish singer Bjork.
Ram Rules: Chicken, What was it like the first time you tasted Waffle house waffles?”
Chicken: Uh… Wow, Ram! It was like… Indescribable. It’s like when you look at a girl and know that you are going to marry her. I was instantly addicted to waffles. I have tried cocaine when I was hanging around the ’85 Mets and hell I gave Doc Ellis the acid he took before he threw that no hitter against us. But nothing, nothing goes better together than the San Diego Chicken & Waffles.
Ram Rules: Lets talk about Chickenomics. Where did that even come from?
Chicken: Looking back my agent was Richard. He knew I had graduated from the short stack to the full-blown tall stack at this point. I couldn’t book a bar mitzvah in La Hoya to save my life. That’s when my agent called and said lets do a PSA it will be good for your career.
Ram Rules: As I’m sure most of our readers are aware you had a very publicized battle with Barney. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Chicken: This is when I hit rock bottom. We had just come off a 7-game road stand in Toronto and Montreal and I hadn’t seen a waffle in 8 days. I was sucking sap straight from the trees just to stay even but for some reason they only have pancakes in Canada. Pancakes are fine if you are just playing around but at this point it was having a Belgian before I could even get out of bed. I was constantly on edge. When that purple abomination tried to upstage me on my own turf I simply lost what composure I had left and I also lost my job.
Ram Rules: What have you done since?
Chicken: @#^$! What do you think I have done! I am a chicken on food stamps! You bribed me with some knock-off IHOP crap and a gallon of Log Cabin Lite to do this interview! Lite?! Log Cabin Lite?! Screw off this interview is done.
And there you have it folks. Another American icon faded into the night due to the grips of addiction.
Join us again next time on Inside the Blinds. In the meantime, come back tomorrow and get addicted on Cookie’s Corner.
