Ultimate Mets Database: Game of July 23, 1983

Richard George "Seaver" Biever
October 8, 2001
My college girlfriend at the time -- a Reds fan -- and I had great seats behind home plate. Both teams were terrible that year and somewhere about the middle innings, someone threw a rubber chicken -- you read that right, folks, a rubber chicken -- from somewhere in the blue field level seats along the third base line.

It flew end-over-end and bopped some unsuspecting fan upside the head. The crowd was shocked, dumbfounded at this vaudevillian assault on our national pastime. Until the fan grabbed the rubber chicken around its scrawny rubber neck and flung the chicken to another part of the blue seats. The crowd crowed with approval. For an inning or so, fans tossed the rubber chicken around and ignored the game.

Until some strong-armed chicken flinger flung it far out high into the night air until it landed -- gasp -- on the field of play, right in front of the Mets dugout. The fowl ran afoul. One of the Mets tossed it into the dugout and soon fans started chanting. "We want the chicken. We want the chicken." What were the Mets to do?

The Mets gave the fans what they wanted: the chicken. Only in pieces. Someone (probably gour-Met cook Rusty Staub) had tried to fricasse the chicken by cutting its rubber extremities off.

Now in several pieces, the chicken lost its excitment. Fans went back to watching the game. Sensing it was safe, an usher grabbed the body part of the chicken away from a little boy sitting near me. The scoreboard then got into the act, announcing that a limited number of chicken sandwiches were "now available at concession stands". And the Cincinnati Chicken never appeared again as far as I know. The boring game was pretty forgettable. But I think the Cincinnati Chicken deserves a mention at the Hall of Fame. What better place to remember the Cincinnati Chicken but at Coop-erstown?

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