'Who works 40 years in a chicken suit?'

Ted Giannoulas is astounded by his fine-feathered career.

Has it really been four decades since the fun-loving San Diego State journalism student agreed to put on a chicken suit for $2 an hour and hand out candy and Easter eggs at a zoo? How could time fly so fast for the Famous Chicken, the hilarious mascot originally hatched as the San Diego Chicken?

They've laughed from Anchorage, Alaska, to the Caribbean and beyond, at 6,500 sporting events and more than triple that in appearances, at parades and birthday parties, at bar mitzvahs and weddings, even at the White House.

"I still feel like a spring Chicken," said Giannoulas, 60. "I still feel like a college kid. I tell you, there are nights I put on that outfit and I swear I could live forever."

The last stop on his 40th anniversary tour of six special cities brings him back Saturday night to Victory Field. Indianapolis is his favorite road trip; he's listed it as No. 1 on his Web site for 14 years.

It's where he met his wife, Jane, after an Indiana Pacers game at Market Square Arena in 1981. But his affinity for the Hoosier State capital goes beyond the Mrs. He considers Indianapolis fans the best, and it's not a promotional pitch. No need. The Indianapolis Indians' game is expected to be a sellout.

"Indy is the most underrated sports town in America," he said in a phone interview from his San Diego home. "It's the way sports fans should be. It's the way a city ought to act. It's the good-natured spirit of sports fans who get it, who understand it, who know that you have a great time at the game. Winning is fantastic, but losing is not the end of the world. The whole world could take lessons from Indianapolis fans on what it's like to be fabulous."

Although he took a sabbatical last year and has performed on a limited basis this summer, Giannoulas is as enthusiastic about this gig as any other. That's saying something, considering he averaged 250 games per year in the 1980s.

In 2000, he hinted at retirement: "I'm thinking just a couple more years." Yet he's still whipping out an eye chart for an umpire, shoving a Barney look-alike over the dugout rail and leading wing-flapping baby chicks around the infield between innings. Then he finishes the night by signing every autograph to ensure each fan enjoys a personal moment.

"Believe me, I've been saying that from my heart, I still can't believe I'm doing this," he said. "I'm as surprised as anybody. Who works 40 years in a chicken suit?"

He hasn't missed a game due to injury or illness, although the Famous Chicken has kept that streak intact with a broken foot and separated shoulder. Sure, his 5-4, 165-pound body aches sometimes in that 7-pound Velcro suit. But laughter provides an adrenaline rush each time he suits up.

"Thankfully, I've never incapacitated myself to the point where I just couldn't go on," he said. "Maybe I'm lucky. Maybe it's attributed to my days as a hockey goalie, growing up as a kid in Canada, learning to fall to the ice and take a lot of bumps and bruises.

"I don't go into a workout room and lift weights. I don't jog five miles a day. I do stretching and, of course, I sweat quite a bit in the outfit, but that's the extent of it. Health-wise, when you sweat every night, all those toxins come out and it keeps you healthy. The new fad now is hot yoga. Well, I've been doing that for 40 years."

Jane, 57, says her life changed the night they met at Market Square Arena in 1981. And that was when she was on a double date at an Indiana Pacers game — her boyfriend wanted her to see this guy in a chicken suit.

After the show, the two ladies went down to meet him. He invited them to go out for pizza but they said they couldn't because they were with their boyfriends.

Two years later, Jane, a Butler graduate from Mooresville, was single and called Giannoulas before he was to do another Pacers game and asked if the pizza offer was still open. Ted said yes. They went to Union Jack's in Speedway after the game. They wed in 1995.

"He's taught me things beyond measure about life and laughter," she said. "The most wonderful thing about him is he keeps laughter in his life every day. It doesn't stop when he leaves the field.

"It's still about living for the laughter. It's his life. It fills his soul."

His favorite gig was the "Grand Hatching" at San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium on June 29, 1979. It was his rebirth after being fired by the radio station that discovered him. He hopped out of an 8-foot Styrofoam egg. An incentive clause paying $1.50 for every fan drawn over the Padres' attendance average translated to a paycheck of almost $44,000. It was used on legal fees to gain his liberation.

The voice cracks with emotion when he shares stories from some of his more meaningful experiences. In Fargo, N.D., a man dying of cancer laughed so hard it had a grateful son in tears. In Phoenix, the widow of an airplane pilot laughed for the first time in three years.

And then there was Butte, Montana, in the early 1990s, where he met a 4-year-old boy named Matthew. Giannoulas was stunned when told the boy had been blind since birth.

"I'm really enjoying you," the boy said.

As he relives that story, remembering those saucer eyes of that blind child, the Famous Chicken reminds he is human. The voice cracks with emotion. He pauses repeatedly to collect himself.

"There's a kid who can't see the blue sky, he can't see the green grass, he can't see this big orange and blue chicken before him," Giannoulas said. "All he could do was feel the laughter of everyone, and he was loving it.

"It's been an extraordinary ride. I've loved it. I wish I could roll back 40 years and do it all over again."

Call Star reporter Phillip B. Wilson at (317) 444-6642. Follow him on Twitter: @pwilson24.

FAVORITE SKIT

Without hesitation, the Famous Chicken says his most popular skit is the baby chicks.

"That's when I bring out the little tykes in baby chicken suits," he said. "They're anywhere from 3-to-5 years old. They follow me out of the dugout like little dumplings and they copy all my moves across the field as they waddle behind me.

"We spank the catcher on the butt for good luck. We put the voodoo on the visiting team dugout for bad luck. And then we parade behind the home plate umpire and we do what is known charitably as the raised-leg salute. Just think of a dog going to a fire hydrant."

Ted Giannoulas quickly learned that if the bit works, keep doing it.

"There was a time when I first started doing it in the late '80s, I wouldn't do it every night," he said. "I had fans that were literally upset with me that I did not bring out that joke. I would try to explain I did it the last time I was there, and they would say, 'So what? Do it again!'

"You have to do your greatest hits. There's no getting around it."

And one of his baby chicks grew up to play in the majors.

"Nick Swisher, when he was 3 years old, he waddled around as a chicken baby in Norfolk, Va.," he said of the Cleveland Indians first baseman/outfielder.

EYE CHART INSPIRATION

While Giannoulas is clever, he can't take credit for coming up with showing an eye chart to an umpire. That idea came from San Diego Padres manager Roger Craig in the summer of 1979.

The Famous Chicken was taking a water break in the Jack Murphy Stadium locker room when Craig stormed in and started throwing stuff around. He had been ejected for the first time in his career.

"He's stomping around like a bull in a china shop," Giannoulas said. "He marches into the trainer's room and goes right up the wall, where there's an eye chart. He rips it down from the wall and storms back out to me. 'Teddy, you've got to do me a favor. Take this out there and stick it in his face!' "

The next night, Giannoulas put on a white doctor's coat. He checked the home-plate umpire with a stethoscope, a thermometer and then searched for a pulse before whipping out the eye chart.

Craig cracked up, as did the umpires.

"I've been pulling out the eye chart in one form or another about every single night since," he said, "and it still gets a fabulous reaction."