It's known as the "Curse of Col. Sanders."
Back in 1985, when a baseball team in Osaka, Japan, won a championship, ecstatic fans threw a statue of the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken into the Dotonbori River in a burst of jubilation. The team hasn't won a championship since.
But on Wednesday, divers found the long-submerged statue, caked with gray sludge, and now fans of the Hanshin Tigers believe the curse may be over.
The fans had picked the Col. Harland Sanders statue because it was the closest thing they could find that looked like Randy Bass, the team's star slugger.
Bass said that usually fans who look like the players they're celebrating jump into the river. But because no one looked like the blond, bearded Bass, they grabbed the statue, dressed it up in Bass' uniform and tossed it.
Bass, who played 130 games over six seasons with five major league clubs including the Hanshin Tigers, is now a state senator for Oklahoma.
"It's incredible," Bass says. "Put all of your money on the Tigers, that's for sure. They definitely have a shot. They have a great team, too."
As a curious aside, Col. Sanders spent the last years of his life in Thornhill, Ontario.
2 comments:
Col Sanders lived in Thornhill??? What the heck? Do you have any additional details on that? I do recall that he retained the Canadian rights for Kentucky Fried Chicken for a long time and lived in Mississauga -- Trillium Health Centre has a wing named after him.
Not much except that he lived near to the corner of Yonge and Centre
Post a Comment