Whenever there's a discussion about cursed sports teams, my favorite one to bring up is "The Curse of the Colonel."
In 1985, the Hanshin Tigers of Osaka won the Japan Series. The night of their victory, crowds of drunken fans were celebrating in the streets, and at some point they got the idea to starting jumping into the Dotonbori river, which runs through the city. People were picked out of the crowd who resembled members of the Tigers, and one by one they stood on the edge of one of the bridges and jumped in. They ran into a problem, however, when no one could be found who resembled American Randy Bass, the team's star slugger. As a substitute, the crowd grabbed a statue of Colonel Sanders standing outside a nearby KFC (all the KFCs in Japan have them), and dumped him over the side, whereupon he sank into the murky water and vanished from sight.
The next morning, some of the revelers felt remorse over their vandalism, and efforts were made to recover the statue, but in vain (the Dotonbori isn't very deep, but it is extremely polluted, and impossible even for divers with masks to see more than a foot). And from that day, it has been said that the Tigers would be cursed to never again win the Japan Series until the Colonel was recovered and returned to his rightful place, and indeed they have never won since.
Well, today, after 24 years, the Colonel has been found.
So far it's just in the Japanese news, but the English versions should be out by tomorrow. He was found by a diver about 200 meters downstream from where he was dropped, in water only about 1.5 meters deep (the fact that it still took a diver to find him should give you an idea just how dirty the water is). Time will tell whether the curse has been lifted or not.