‘Curse of the Colonel’ lifted? Japan’s Hanshin Tigers hope ritual ceremony bats away years of bad luck
- After jubilant fans threw a statue of KFC founder Colonel Sanders into a river in 1985, the baseball team suffered decades of poor performance
- The Tigers clinched last year’s championship, raising hopes they can now hit it out of the park
Japan’s Hanshin Tigers professional baseball team is hoping it has finally banished the so-called Curse of the Colonel, after the life-size statue of KFC founder Colonel Harland Sanders tossed by the team’s fans into a river nearly 40 years ago underwent a religious cleansing ceremony and burial.
Fans of the Osaka-based team have long had a reputation for being among the most fervent in the country and for many successful seasons before 1985, fans would celebrate victories by leaping off the bridge over the Dotonburi River in central Osaka.
The river was filthy and deep – and there was at least one fatality as a result of a leap from the bridge – but Hanshin supporters did not earn their reputation for being fanatics without good reason.
After winning the Central League pennant in 1985, a group of Tigers fans outdid themselves and seized a plastic statue of Colonel Sanders from outside a nearby KFC outlet. Evading police, they threw the iconic statue into the river, where it promptly sank into the mud and was lost.
That act of vandalism was the start of what became known as the “Curse of the Colonel”, when the team’s fortunes plummeted and fans began to wonder if they would ever win another championship.