At long last, VICTORY

The Hanshin Tigers have shaken of the dreaded “curse of the Colonel” and proven to be the polar opposites of their Detroit namesakes. With a little bit of help from the bottom feeding Yokohama Bay Stars, the Tigers clinched their first pennant since fans threw a Colonel Sanders statue into a river the last time they won*.

The last time the Tigers topped the league, Hanshin fans who were acknowledged to resemble members of the team took leaps off a downtown Osaka bridge into the crystal(izing) waters of the river**. When no fan could be found resembling a foreign player, who was at least also willing to jump into the murk, a statue of Colonel Sanders was used as a proxy. Celebrating fans lofted the smiling edifice of the processed poultry king and paraded him to the bridge and dropped him into the dark water.

He was never seen again. Neither was a Tigers’ pennant. Repeated efforts were made over the years to find the Colonel, but all were futile. So, too, were the Tigers’ efforts at winning enough games to secure victory over the Yomiuri Giants of Tokyo, the New York Yankees of Japanese baseball. This year proved different, despite no sign of the Colonel, who by now is presumed to be either buried securely beneath the bottom slime or washed out to sea.

The Tigers took a commanding lead of the league, at one point putting themselves 18 games ahead of the hated rival Giants. The Giants, meanwhile, have lost their main star to the Yankees and are now wallowing in the depths of the league. As some pundits in local media have pointed out, the Giants had dominated through sheer cash (much like the Yankees) and were paying the price with older players unable to keep up the momentum, who will no doubt be replaced with cash fueled off-season deals. Hanshin, on the other hand, rebuilt their team from the ground up, developing their talent and benefiting some from a couple of players back from their stints in the big leagues. Only one player in Hanshin’s lineup was not with the team last year.

Finally, the rabid fans of the Hanshin Tigers were rewarded for their patience. As word spread from radios and sports bars that the Bay Stars had helped their cause and secured the final position for the Tigers, fans crammed the riverbanks and bridges of Osaka. To cheering throngs, pinstripe clad fans jumped, flipped and disappeared into the murky waters of Osaka’s river***.

* a more caring writer may have actually taken the time to see when that was.
** again, a more caring writer might have made an effort to find the name of the river, and very possibly the exact bridge.
*** sadly, one person has gone they way of the Colonel this year