08.08.07 5:00 AM CDT
• Sports
• Rocky Rakovic
In the dog days of baseball season, intern Sarah Euler has been mulling some of the esoteric elements of the game.There are superstitions in every sport, but it seems that baseball has the most and the list keeps growing. Although leaping over the baselines and refraining from talk of no-hitters are common among many players, there are others that are more extreme and unusual.
The Seattle Times did an article on the top 10 baseball superstitions of all time. The funniest one from the list was No. 6, "The Curse of Colonel Sanders." This was the only superstition on the list not owned by an American player or team. This curse belongs to the Japanese team, the Hanshin Tigers.
The Tigers won the national title in 1985 and in the celebration that followed, fans resembling Tigers stars jumped into the toxic Dotonbori River. But no one could be found who resembled the Tigers’ American star Randy Bass, so fans went to a Kentucky Fried Chicken and stole a statue of Colonel Sanders and tossed it in the river. In the following years, the Tigers plummeted, had an 18-year losing streak and according to legend will not win another championship until the Colonel is found. Many attempts have been made to retrieve the Colonel including sending divers into the river, but the Colonel statue has still not surfaced.
Now, that’s extreme.
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