The Hanshin Tigers & the Colonel Sanders legend
Win the pennant, jump in the canal — and the strange tale of the Colonel who spent 24 years on the bottom.
Key facts
- When the Hanshin Tigers win big, fans leap into the Dōtonbori canal from Ebisu-bashi. It is dangerous — a 24-year-old fan drowned during the 2003 celebrations, and a “do not dive” sign now stands at the bridge.
- In 1985, after the Tigers clinched the Central League pennant, celebrating fans threw a KFC Colonel Sanders statue into the canal as a stand-in for American slugger Randy Bass.
- An urban legend grew — the “Curse of the Colonel” — that the team wouldn't win it all until the statue was found. It was recovered in 2009, and the Tigers won the 2023 Japan Series.
Narration transcript
The water here looks ordinary. It is not. This is the stretch the whole city watches when the Hanshin Tigers — Osaka's beloved, long-suffering baseball team — win something that matters. Because when they do, the fans jump in. Off the bridges, into the canal, by the thousand. I'll say the obvious part plainly: it's genuinely dangerous — a young man drowned in the 2003 celebrations, and there's a sign on Ebisu-bashi begging people not to dive. Please don't.
Now the legend. Back in 1985, the Tigers clinched the pennant, and the crowd went looking for something to throw in. Their big hero was an American named Randy Bass — and, the story goes, unable to find a foreigner to toss in, they grabbed the next best bearded Western face: the Colonel Sanders statue from a nearby KFC. In he went.
And then the Tigers stopped winning. Fans started whispering about a curse — that the team was doomed until the Colonel was pulled from the water. He surfaced, at last, in 2009. Now, how much of that is true and how much is a good Osaka story told a hundred times? That's the fun of it. But the Tigers did finally win it all again — in 2023.