A baseball curse is lifted

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.

Ah baseball fans. Is there any other group of people more superstitious than us.

Cool story, thank you for sharing it.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

Ah baseball fans. Is there any other group of people more superstitious than us.

Cool story, thank you for sharing it.

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*puts on lucky Modesto Nuts hat, rubs lucky bat with lucky baseball cover, spits 4 times over right shoulder, puts on lucky Modesto Nuts socks(left one first wait 8 seconds then the right), puts on the lucky underwear for the 3rd time this week, finds lucky California State Quarter(2005), flips it until getting heads 3 times in a row, place in right shoe face down under the big toe, brushes hair with lucky hairbrush, gets out of bed to face the day*

Superstitious? Us? Impossible!!

No amount of superstition can save the Dodgers from their own mishaps. :(


Cool story. I'll have to follow the Tigers this year to see if they manage to rebound.

Sounds like the Japanese version of Babe Ruth's piano.

This is just plain awesome. Lessee, the Tigers went 82-59-3 in 2008 (ties? in baseball?), and fell to the Chunichi Dragons in the best-of-three Climax Series 1st Stage, one series short of the Japan Series. I will have to follow these guys this year.

On a side note, I was gonna ask about curses in other sports, but then I ran across this wikipedia page of sports-related curses. There goes my afternoon.

Here is the English version of the story.

Yeah, but the Tigers won in 2005, didn't they? I still have a Hanshin cap given to me by an enthusiastic fan in the celebratory aftermath.

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Originally posted by Dosipede

the best-of-three Climax Series 1st Stage

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Sounds like fun...

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Originally posted by Cerowyn

Yeah, but the Tigers won in 2005, didn't they? I still have a Hanshin cap given to me by an enthusiastic fan in the celebratory aftermath.

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They won the pennant that year, but lost in the Japan Series to the Marines 4-0.

And not only did they get swept, they lost by a collective score of 43-4.