The Curse of the Colonel is over. After 38 years (a real long time in a league with only 12 teams), the Hanshin Tigers have won the Japan Series again, for the first time since Randy Bass’ 1985 team.
The mega-popular Osaka team of lovable losers were cursed by throwing a statue of Colonel Sanders into the Dotonbori River. In celebrating this year’s Japan Series win, they threw a Colonel Sanders cosplayer into the river. Former Athletic Sheldon Neuse was the surprising star of the series (though somewhat controversially not series MVP) after a rough regular season, and hit a three-run homer in Game 7 before catching the game’s final out.
I’ve thrown a few Tigers-related videos up on the channel this week. First off, the Japan Series victory scene for the Hanshin Tigers recreated in the latest Pawapuro:
And I took a tour through Hanshin Tigers DS, a team-specific trivia game and historical database for the Nintendo DS. And to give a sense of how popular the Tigers are, there is no Yomiuri Giants DS or Hiroshima Carp DS. Only the Tigers got the special treatment of their own commercial handheld game:
That wasn’t the only Nintendo-Tigers mashup. A special GameCube was made for the Tigers’ 2003 Central League pennant season, bundled along with a Tigers jersey with a Nintendo logo on one sleeve. The Nintendo Collecting channel has an unboxing video:
Getting the full bundle including the jersey would cost a little over $600 on eBay right now.
But that’s not the only Hanshin Tigers game console! There is also a special Hanshin Tigers edition of the Neo Geo Pocket Color! Here’s a Portuguese-language YouTube video showing one off:
No, there are not other variations of the Neo Geo Pocket Color for the other NPB teams! There is a (relatively lame) Yomiuri Giants Game Boy Advance out there, but otherwise, something about the Tigers makes them the more bankable team for game-specific swag despite mostly crappy results over the years.
Congrats to the Tigers on ending another famous baseball curse. I may be forgetting something obvious, but I think the Curse of Rocky Colavito is the biggest remaining psychological hurdle to clear in the sport of baseball. Good luck to Stephen Vogt’s Guardians on tackling that next year.
And good luck to whoever your favorite team is for next year, as the baseball calendar turns to winter. I’ll leave you here with the Tigers ending to Namco’s World Stadium 4.