Given its age (it's almost 25 years old), my Hanshin Tigers baseball cap is in remarkably good shape. I think it's made from some kind of indestructable synthetic material. Unfortunately it's so darn uncomfortable I hardly ever wear it, which is possibly another reason why it's in such good condition.
I bought it during my first trip to Japan in 1985. Those of you familiar with Japanese baseball history will know that this was the year the team from Osaka won the most coveted prize in Japanese baseball, the Japan Series. Despite living in an area dominated by fans of a rival team, the Hiroshima Carps (my host family even warned me that wearing it could get me in trouble), I went out and bought a Hanshin Tigers cap. Not that I was a big baseball fan or anything. Mainly it was because I liked the striking black and white pinstripe design.
Anyway, I continued wearing my hat thinking that the Hanshin Tigers were a strong team (such was my ignorance of Japanese baseball), when in fact they're widely regarded as a bunch of underachievers. That 1985 victory was their first in 21 years, and they haven’t repeated the feat since. Some people put this down to a curse. After that Japan Series win, a group of celebrating fans grabbed a Colonel Sanders statue from outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet (the Colonel was said to resemble the team's first baseman, Randy Bass, who is now a US State Senator, by the way) and threw it into Osaka's Dotonbori Canal. As a result of the team's poor performance since then, it was said that they were doomed never to repeat their series win until the Colonel was recovered from the river.
Well, good news! As is being reported around the world (the story even featured on a local New Zealand news website), the Colonel has been rescued from his watery grave after being discovered by divers checking for unexploded bombs from World War Two. Maybe I'll soon be able to wear my Hanshin Tigers cap with pride once again.
Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 85.9km
Days left until departure: 61
No comments:
Post a Comment