Dozens of baseball fans in Osaka hurled themselves into a filthy city-center river and partied long into the night after the Hanshin Tigers won the Japan Series for only the second time in their history.
The country’s most passionately supported team beat the Orix Buffaloes in the final game of the best-of-seven series late on Sunday night to win the title for the first time since 1985.
It lifted the so-called “Curse of the Colonel,” which warned that the Tigers would never win another Japan Series after fans threw a plastic statue of Colonel Sanders snatched from a nearby KFC restaurant into the river the last time they won the title.
Photo: AFP
Tigers fan Yuko Kawase, who attends about 80 or 90 games a season, as well as the team’s training camps, said that it felt “like a dream.”
“It’s been 38 years since the last time, and Hanshin fans who I have known have passed away since then,” she said. “A lot happens in a person’s life over the course of 38 years, and I have been reflecting on a lot of things.”
Police had told fans not to jump into the Dotonbori River, which authorities had described as like “swimming in toilet water.”
Photo: AFP
One person died after diving in when the Tigers won the Central League pennant in 2003.
Yet the warning went unheeded after Sunday’s victory, with cheers erupting every time a fan hurled themselves into the water. One man even arrived for the celebrations dressed as Colonel Sanders, and was duly tossed into the river.
The Tigers are hugely popular in baseball-crazy Osaka, but have a long history of underachievement. They last reached the Japan Series in 2014, when they lost the best-of-seven contest 4-1 against the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks.
The Tigers bucked the trend this year, beating the defending champion Buffaloes in seven games to claim the title.
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