Curse of the Colonel

[4] Comparisons are often made between the Hanshin Tigers and the Boston Red Sox, who were said to be under the Curse of the Bambino until they won the World Series in 2004.

[7] In 1985, the Hanshin Tigers faced the Seibu Lions and had a surprise first victory in the Japan Series,[7] largely due to the efforts of their star slugger, the American Randy Bass.

Lacking a Caucasian person to imitate Bass, the crowd seized a plastic statue of Colonel Sanders from a KFC and tossed it off the bridge as an effigy.

[9] A Colonel Sanders statue was taken from the storefront of a KFC in Kobe and its hands were cut off, supposedly in imitation of Sharia law.

The Tigers won the Central League to qualify for the Japan Series, and many newspapers speculated that the Curse of the Colonel had finally been broken.

[1][10] Many KFC outlets in Kobe and Osaka moved their Colonel Sanders statues inside until the series was over to protect them from rabid Tigers fans.

[11] To prevent future incidents, the Osaka city council ordered the construction of a new Ebisubashi bridge beginning in 2004, which will make it more difficult for fans to take the celebratory leap should the Curse of the Colonel be broken and the Tigers win again.

Divers who recovered the statue at first thought it was only a large barrel, and shortly after a human corpse, but Hanshin fans on the scene were quick to identify it as the upper body of the long-lost Colonel.