Saturday, January 30, 2010

Mistaken for Mr. Baseball...

The movie "Mr. Baseball" was based on a real story. Randy Bass, who once played for the Padres, was sent off to Japan to play for the Hanshin Tigers. The rest is history, sort of. Oh, and there's that electric train.
Well, serendipity dictates that when Randy Bass was "Mr. Baseball" in Japan, I also was in Japan and we looked a lot alike - sometimes, even to me!
Only hard-core fans, and devotees of Japanese baseball, are aware of the Curse of Colonel Sanders. The victims are the Hanshin Tigers, who are the Japanese equivalent of the Cubs and Red Sox — one title in 68 years. That came "in 1985, and in celebration, fans resembling Tigers stars leaped into Osaka's Dotonbori River in celebration. However, no one could be found who resembled the Tigers' burly American star Randy Bass, so resourceful fans went to a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, stole a statue of Colonel Sanders, and tossed it in the river.



In subsequent years, the Tigers plummeted back to the basement, and according to legend will not win another championship until the Colonel is found. Numerous efforts to recover the statue have been undertaken, to no avail. source
My dog at the time - named Pepper - was part wolf...
So anyway, occasionally a little kid would run up to me and ask me to autograph a baseball.
This falls into the Easter Bunny & Santa Claus category. There IS an Easter Bunny and a Santa Clause but neither are what you think they are. So I signed. Life is not always about disappointing children. Life is about being a responsible parent if you choose to produce offspring.

No comments: