Card Of The Week November 3

This past season's Nippon Series was the second time ever that the Hawks had swept the Giants.  The first time was 60 years ago in 1959 when the Hawks were still owned by Nankai and played in Osaka.  Last week on the Japan Baseball Weekly podcast Jim Allen mentioned that Hawks pitcher Tadashi Sugiura had won all four games for Nankai in that Series and I thought this sounded like an interesting topic to dive into.

Sugiura is an interesting figure.  He signed with the Hawks in late 1957 after playing college ball at Rikkio with Shigeo Nagashima.  He went 27-12 in 1958 while pitching 299 innings and won the Pacific League Rookie Of The Year award (Nagashima won the award in the Central League that year).  He had the best year of his career (and arguably the best year of ANY pitcher) the following year when he went 38-4 with an ERA of 1.41 and 336 strikeouts in 371.1 innings.  He had 19 complete games that year along with 9 shutouts.  He worked quite a bit in relief that year as well and ultimately appeared in 69 of Nankai's 134 games.  He was won the Pacific League MVP and was named to the post season Best 9 team.

You might expect that his 1959 workload would came back to haunt him eventually and you'd be right but it took a couple years.  He threw over 300 innings again in 1960 (332.2 to be exact), going 31-11 with 317 strikeouts and a 2.06 ERA.  His innings pitched declined to 241.2 in 1961 and 172.2 in 1962 when he missed time due to a circulation issue in his arm.  He bounced back to pitch in 252.2 in 1963 and 270.2 in 1964 before plummeting to 111.1 in 1965 due to injury.  He actually retired following the 1965 season at age 30 and became Nankai's pitching coach.  He was pressed back into service in 1966 however and pitched irregularly for another five years before retiring for good after the 1970 season.  He later managed the Hawks for four seasons in the late 1980's and was the team's final manager in Osaka in 1988 and their first manager in Fukuoka in 1989.  He was elected to the Hall Of Fame in 1995 and passed away from a heart attack in 2001.

To the surprise of none, Jim was right about Sugiura getting the victory in all four games in the 1959 Nippon Series.  He started Game One and went eight innings, throwing 124 pitches and giving up three runs on nine hits with the Hawks winning 10-7.  He came in in relief in Game Two after the Hawks went up 4-2 in the fourth inning and pitched the final five innings of the game, throwing 64 pitches and giving up three hits and one run and picking up the victory (obviously) in Nankai's 6-3 win.  Two days later he started again and pitched 10(!) innings for a complete game victory in Game Three which the Hawks won 3-2.  He threw 142 pitches and gave up 10 hits and two runs (only one of which was earned).  The next day in Game Four he threw yet another complete game although this one was only nine innings.  He ended up throwing 106 pitches and giving up only five hits and no runs in the Nankai's clinching 3-0 victory.  He ended up throwing 32 of Nankai's 37 innings in the Series and was named Series MVP.

Here's a 1959 menko card of Sugiura from the "JCM 41 Pitcher Catcher" set:

Not to diminish Sugiura's feat but I do want to mention that this was actually not all that unusual at the time.  In 1958 Kazuhisa Inao had gone 4-2 in the Nishitetsu Lions' defeat of the Giants, appearing in (and getting the decision in) six of the seven games.  And in 1960 Taiyo pitcher Noboru Akiyama appeared in all four games of the Whales sweep of the Mainichi Orions, although he only got two of the four wins.