Here’s why Colonel Sanders was behind home plate at the Rogers Centre

After the muscular Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier in the playoffs and the Marlins Man in Game 1 of the World Series, last night (Saturday) it was the turn of another character to be prominently displayed behind home plate at Rogers Centre.

Colonel Sanders was on hand for Game 2 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre. And you couldn't miss him.

Shoutout to the man behind home plate in the Colonel Sanders outfit messing with the Dodgers Japanese players pic.twitter.com/qoFsDbOkYM

– Morgan Cameron Ross (@Morgan_C_Ross) October 26, 2025

Here are two possible explanations for the presence of a man with a white goatee, wearing a white suit and black bow tie.

First, this may have been done intentionally by KFC Canada given all the excitement surrounding the Blue Jays' playoff run, with Instagram stories pushing us in that direction.

Colonel Sanders has real ties to Canada, having moved to Mississauga in 1965 to oversee his Canadian franchises, and having had total control of the KFC brand in Canada until his death at the age of 90 in 1980.

But it's not just this potential stunt that may explain it all.

Indeed, the appearance of Colonel Sanders may also be a reference to the “Colonel's Curse”, a Japanese legend according to which the ghost of Colonel Sanders cursed the Hanshin Tigers, a Nippon Baseball League team in Japan, for throwing his statue into a canal.

The Dodgers have three players who came over from the NBL – game two starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani and reliever Roki Sasaki – but none of them played for the Tigers.

If the second option is the right one, with Yamamoto's performance in yesterday's game, it's safe to say that the curse doesn't affect the Dodgers players at all.

This content was created with the help of AI.