‘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.
In March 2009, dredging operations on the river discovered the battered statue. After it was recovered from its watery resting place, hopes were raised that the curse had been lifted, but the Tigers continued to underperform.
Until the 2023 season.
Relatively unheralded, the Tigers went on a winning streak that finally saw them win the championship after a 7-1 victory over local rivals, the Orix Buffaloes, on November 4.
Free of the curse at last, the management of Japan KFC Holdings decided it was finally time to give the statue, which had been on display in another KFC restaurant in Osaka since its recovery, a fitting send-off.
Earlier this month, the statue – missing its glasses and left hand, which were never found – was taken to the Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine, where a priest performed a ritual cleansing ceremony traditionally done for dolls.
Takayuki Hanji, president of KFC Holdings Japan, attended and laid flowers on the altar. He also made a ceremonial offering of sake and a portion of KFC chicken. In a statement, the company said the saga of the statue had “contributed to raising the value of our brand name”.
The Curse of the Colonel is the most infamous hoodoo to have hit a Japanese sporting team, but there are plenty of other teams around the world that fans feel have been subjected to similarly superstitious misfortunes.
The Argentinian team was long believed to have suffered from misfortune caused by the “Curse of Tilcara”, named for a small city where the team prayed for victory ahead of the 1986 World Cup. The team’s manager at the time, Carlos Bilardo, vowed to return to thank the city’s Virgin of Copacabana if they lifted the trophy. Argentina won the tournament but Bilardo and the players never returned.
In subsequent tournaments, Argentina suffered shock loses to Cameroon and Romania, and lost the 1990 final to Germany. Under pressure, the 1986 team finally returned to Tilcara to express their thanks – and Argentina won the 2022 World Cup.
Birmingham City Football Club in England has also laboured under a 100-year hex after moving into a new stadium that was built on land that had been used by Romani people until they were evicted.
There is also a well-known curse claimed to afflict players who appear on the cover of Electronic Art’s hugely popular Fifa video game series, with Wayne Rooney, Kaka, Jack Wilshire and Eden Hazard all suffering season-curtailing injuries after fronting the game.
Another infamous baseball superstition involves the Boston Red Sox, which had to contend with the “Curse of the Bambino” after selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920, after which they went 86 seasons without clinching a World Series.
For the Hanshin Tigers, however, the omens are once again dark as the baseball season gets under way this week. Of the 14 preseason matches it played, the team lost 11 and only won two, putting them dead last in the preseason rankings for the 12 professional teams in Japan.
