Curse of the Colonel (カーネルサンダースの呪い, Kāneru Sandāsu no Noroi?) refers to an urban legend regarding a reputed curse placed on the Japanese Kansai-based Hanshin Tigers baseball team by deceased KFC founder and mascot Colonel Harland Sanders.
The curse was said to be placed on the team because of the Colonel's anger over treatment of one of his store-front statues, which was thrown into the Dōtonbori River by celebrating Hanshin fans following their team's victory in the 1985 Japan Championship Series. As is common with sports-related curses, the Curse of the Colonel was used to explain the team's subsequent 18-year losing streak. Some fans believed the team would never win another Japan Series until the statue had been recovered.
Comparisons are often made between the Hanshin Tigers and the Boston Red Sox, who were said to be under the Curse of the Bambino until they won the World Series in 2004. The "Curse of the Colonel" has also been used as a boogeyman threat to those who would divulge the secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices that comprise the unique taste of his chicken.
Famous quotes containing the words curse of the, curse of, curse and/or colonel:
“As Labor is the common burthen of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burthen on to the shoulders of others, is the great, durable, curse of the race.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The modern woman is the curse of the universe. A disaster, that’s what. She thinks that before her arrival on the scene no woman ever did anything worthwhile before, no woman was ever liberated until her time, no woman really ever amounted to anything.”
—Adela Rogers St. Johns (1894–1988)
“If this uncertain age in which we dwell
Were really as dark as I hear sages tell,
And I convinced that they were really sages,
I should not curse myself with it to hell....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. “A good colonel makes a good regiment,” is an axiom.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)