ESPN.com will catch up with a notable sports figure from yesteryear each Thursday in its "Where Are They Now?" series.
Claim to fame: The San Diego Chicken is arguably the most famous mascot in sports. Since the character's inception in 1974 as a mascot for rock station KGB, Ted Giannoulas is the only person to portray the famous fowl.
Giannoulas stumped for KGB as the Chicken at San Diego Padres games for several years, becoming a fan favorite in the process. There was eventually a dispute over ownership rights to the mascot, and Giannoulas won a court battle against the station to continue portraying the character.
The Chicken then re-emerged at the "Grand Hatching" before a Padres-Astros game on June 29, 1979. It was quite the event -- you can watch it here on YouTube -- complete with a sellout crowd, police escorts, an armored truck, massive media coverage and Padres players Kurt Bevacqua and John D'Acquisto hoisting the costumed Giannoulas on their shoulders.
Early in his career, Giannoulas turned down a lucrative offer by nascent media mogul Ted Turner to work for the Atlanta Braves and fledgling cable station WTBS. "I was gonna have my own show and an office next to Hank Aaron," Giannoulas said. "[Turner] said, 'Come with me, and I'll make you bigger than Mickey Mouse.' I believed him."
But the entertainer instead decided to remain in San Diego, clearly influenced by an outpouring of goodwill from thousands of fans that included voluminous mail from schoolchildren urging him to stay.
In the subsequent decades, the Chicken cultivated iconic status in the sports world, performing for presidents and rock stars and appearing at more than 5,000 sporting events in all 50 states along the way. He was even featured in sets of Donruss baseball cards.
It's an unlikely, albeit quite successful career path for a man who once attended journalism school at San Diego State in hopes of becoming a sports writer.
Catching up: Giannoulas, now 62, still performs as the Chicken, but he can afford to be selective about the schedule he maintains. He embarked on a summer tour this year but limited it to fewer than 10 appearances. It's a far cry from when Giannoulas performed more than 200 dates annually in his prime, but he does just fine financially.
"It's safe to say I'm still in the six-figure range," he said of the Chicken's annual haul.
The famed mascot also recently filmed a commercial for Lee Jeans with ESPN personalities Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg. Want to see a current photo of Giannoulas? No can do. He declines to be photographed out of costume, understandably protective of the brand value he has created.
Quotable: "I get very passionate about performing for thousands of people. It's intoxicating. ... It's been [almost] 42 years. It was a radio station promotion that wasn't supposed to last 42 days."
What's next? Giannoulas has no plans to stop portraying the Chicken, and he cites the Rolling Stones -- now in their sixth decade as performers -- as an inspiration to keep going. "I saw them in May at Petco Park," Giannoulas said. "What a performance! They act like they're 21 years old again, and they make the crowd feel like they're 21 again."
Giannoulas isn't sure whether he will seek someone else to play the Chicken when he eventually decides to retire, but it's not a decision he considers imminent by any means.
"I'm literally taking it year to year," Giannoulas said. "I'm still getting around out there and performing and enjoying it while I'm out there."