Xavier Nation Magazine Feature: The Chicken Runs at Midnight

A good man with a compelling story will demand ears and eyes. Rich Donnelly's story demands yours. Long before any Hollywood producers proposed to tell his story of triumph and tragedy, Donnelly was not in Hollywood. He was at Xavier.

More specifically, Donnelly was a catcher on the Musketeers' baseball team. He was pushing toward his physical education degree. He was a kid from Steubenville, Ohio, who was still a bit awed by his fellow athletes on campus—especially his buddies on the basketball and football teams.

"They all wore these beautiful blue letter sweaters with a big white X when they walked around campus," Donnelly remembers. "Man, I wanted one of those. I wanted to be known, to be accepted, to wear it out on a date."

Slight problem, however.

"Back then, the baseball team didn't pass out the sweaters," Donnelly says. "We just got the letters. Only the football and basketball players got those sweaters. So, I saved up $25 and went down to Shillito's, the big department store, and bought one. I took it to my girlfriend—Peggy, who I later married—and she sewed on the letter. It just made me so proud to wear that sweater and that X."

A dogged man will not be denied. On the field, Donnelly was just as determined to make an impression. He was drafted by the Minnesota Twins and played four minor league seasons before figuring out that for a .230 hitter, coaching could be a better ticket to the Major Leagues. He made it there in 1980 as the bullpen coach for the Texas Rangers. Six years later, he was hired by Pittsburgh manager Jim Leyland to join the Pirates staff.
And that's where Donnelly's narrative took a heartbreaking turn, with a spiritually unexpected conclusion. He has spent the last 26 years processing it all.

In the spring of 1992, Donnelly was at the Pirates training camp. He received a phone call from his 17-year-old daughter Amy in Dallas, where she was living with her mom following her parents' divorce. Amy had been diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer. Nine months to live.

A strong man will bear up and do the ultimate for his daughter. Donnelly pursued the best doctors, sought the best treatment. When she seemed to be rallying and the Pirates won their division, he invited Amy to come watch playoff games in Pittsburgh. Amy relished every inning. In the box seats, she observed her father's third-base coaching method up close. She was amused greatly by his distinctive waist-bending style of cupping his hands around his mouth as he screamed at Pittsburgh runners on second base. On the car ride back to his place after the game with her family, Amy joked that her dad must have been asking what the runners' Chinese food takeout order was going to be—or wondered if he might be speaking in some sort of secret code.

"Dad, what are you yelling at them?" she asked. "Is it something like: 'The chicken runs at midnight?'"

Huh? The car's occupants, including Amy's younger brother Tim, did double takes and head shakes.

"We all started cracking up and asked, 'What are you talking about?'" Tim Donnelly says. "The chicken runs at midnight? Where did she come up with that?"

Amy laughed, too, and said she had no idea. But the phrase became a go-to family expression that always brought a smile and sustained them throughout Amy's ordeal. The Pirates picked up the saying, too, and began tossing it around to honor Amy, even as they lost the National League Championship Series in seven games. It was all too sad. By January, Amy was gone. The family put the crazy catchphrase on her headstone.

A grieving man must carry on. So must a baseball coach. Five years later, Leyland had moved on to the Florida Marlins. Donnelly followed. They helped guide the 1997 team to the World Series. Late that summer, the Marlins traded for a skinny infielder named Craig Counsell, who possessed a unique batting stance with his arms splayed awkwardly in front of him.

Tim Donnelly, by now a teenager, was a Marlins batboy and dugout presence. So was his brother. They loved Counsell. They loved his crazy stance. They began calling him "Chicken Man" or just "The Chicken."

Now came the transcendency. The Marlins and Cleveland Indians stretched that 1997 World Series into a Game 7 and played into an extra 10th inning, deep into the Florida night. Finally, with Counsell standing on third base, a Marlins batter swatted a base hit. Donnelly waved Counsell toward home plate to score the Series-winning run. The stadium went nutty. Tim Donnelly and his brother sprinted from the dugout onto the field to embrace their father.

Tim then happened to look up at the centerfield scoreboard and saw the giant clock atop it.

"Dad!" he yelled at Rich Donnelly. "Look up there! Look! Look!"

The clock was just a few minutes past 12 o'clock.

"The chicken ran at midnight!" screamed Tim.

The Donnellys all wept, happy and sad.

"It was Amy," Rich says, never doubting.

A spiritual man holds onto that feeling forever. Ever since that night, Donnelly has shared his experience with anyone willing to listen at his various coaching stops—in the clubhouses of the Rockies, Brewers, Dodgers, and Mariners—as well as with church groups and other willing gatherings. His story never fails to move an audience. An ESPN project has immortalized the tale. Donnelly has appeared in a documentary about Catholics in the Major Leagues. Brad Holman, the bullpen coach of the Texas Rangers, wrote a touching song about the chicken's midnight run. Book and film offers arose.

But here's what Donnelly never saw coming: Amy's divine intervention transported his faith to a different plane. It rebooted his mentality back to his undergraduate years when he attended Mass regularly and performed the daily readings at the request of Fr. John McElroy, who taught in Xavier's Theology department. The priest, Donnelly is convinced, was quietly trying to help him overcome a stuttering condition.

"Rich was a very dedicated person in college," affirms Tim O'Connell, one of Donnelly's baseball teammates at Xavier and someone with whom he stays in regular touch. "He got the most out of his ability to be a friend. But being around the Jesuits at that time, in terms of forming your goals and your morals and your life…I've always said that you learned to be a winner."

Apparently so. With Donnelly behind the plate, the 1967 Musketeers spun out a 24–9 record and earned an invitation to the NCAA tournament. But school administrators nixed the invitation, complaining that the tournament would interfere with classes and exams.

"We might have been the only team in history that declined a NCAA bid because of something like that," Donnelly says.

He got over it. To this day, he believes that Xavier was the perfect place for him. He rattles off the names of the friends and remarkable athletes he admired there—O'Connell, Danny Abramowicz, Steve Thomas, Jim Gruber, Joe Pangrazio, Bob Quick, Luther Rackley. And what about the year Donnelly spent as a student teacher and coaching assistant at Roger Bacon High under legendary coach Bron Bacevich? Invaluable, he says.

"Anything I am today as a person, it wouldn't have been the same if I'd gone somewhere else," Donnelly says.

At age 71, his pace has at least slowed a bit. After his final MLB coaching stint three years ago, Donnelly served one more term under Leyland, who managed the Team USA coaching staff at the 2017 World Baseball Classic and won a gold medal. Donnelly then returned to his home outside Steubenville and settled into a happy groove with wife Roberta. Last year, Donnelly finally found time to cooperate on a Chicken Runs at Midnight book, which will be on shelves soon. Donnelly also sold the film rights to accomplished producer/director Greg Nicotero (The Walking Dead). But mostly, Donnelly relished the chance to spend more quality time with his seven remaining children and their own families. He reconnected with old friends, feeling a great sense of peace.

The peace was unfathomably interrupted in early January of this year. Donnelly received another horrible phone call. His 38-year-old son, Michael, had been killed in a hit-and-run accident while being a Good Samaritan and trying to assist a stranded motorist alongside a Dallas freeway.

A man of faith learns to accept signs that he can't understand. Donnelly's extended family gathered in Texas for Michael's funeral service. Afterward, they returned to his home for more quiet sharing of memories. That's when Michael's mother and Rich's ex-wife, Peggy, made a revelation.

"You won't believe what I found in Michael's things," she said.

It was Donnelly's college letter sweater. The beautiful blue one with the big white X.

"I got teary-eyed," Donnelly says. "I didn't know where it had gone. It meant the world to me. But after that, I didn't want to take it home. I gave it to my granddaughter."

Noticeably absent from any of Donnelly's conversations, you may have noticed, is even a hint of him wondering, "Why me?"

"He might have asked himself that many times," says his son, Tim, himself a baseball coach at Middle Tennessee State. "But I've never heard him ask that."

The reason, Donnelly says, is simple.

"You know, I was raised a strict Catholic," he explains. "In the catechism, there's a statement about the Seven Capital Sins. One of them is despair. To me, despair is giving up or feeling sorry for myself.

At Xavier, I would get upset if anyone on our team felt sorry for themselves. And I have tried to carry that with me through my life."

In the aftermath of Michael's death, Donnelly has received dozens of phone calls and messages from former Xavier teammates and classmates.

"That showed me what those years really meant," Donnelly says. "It's why X was so special to me. For them to call me—after 50 years, in some cases—it was wonderful. I can't imagine what my life would have been without those people."

A man who deserves those phone calls will receive those phone calls. The chicken runs at midnight. Rich Donnelly walks with remarkable graciousness. His walk, as a pious adult, began at Xavier. He believes it is no coincidence.

Schedule

Upcoming Events