When the Chicken came to town

TAMIS, the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, presented this wonderful ad from 1988.

Knoxville Blue Jays Welcome the San Diego Chicken from TAMIS on Vimeo.

Promotions are nice, but who won the game?  The K-Jays, at that time, were a farm club of the Toronto Blue Jays.  They beat Huntsville 3-1, sweeping that series.

The Knoxville News-Sentinel - June 4, 1988

The Knoxville News-Sentinel - June 4, 1988

The K-Jays finished that 1988 season with a 75-69 record, but that was only good enough to be the third best team in the Southern League, Western Division and the fourth best team in the whole of the league.

That season they had 23 players who were, or would be, in the majors.  If you were there that evening you saw the following previous or future major leaguers:

• Kevin Batiste
• Francisco Cabrera
• Steve Cummings
• Junior Felix
• Webster Garrison
• Darren Hall
• Shawn Jeter
• Domingo Martinez
• Tom Quinlan
• Alex Sanchez
• Matt Stark

These two players did not make the show:

• Jimmy Kelly
• Tom Malave