Card Of The Week May 14

Shoki Murakami of the Tigers has had a pretty good season so far.  He threw seven perfect innings in his first start of the year back on April 12th before being pulled for a pinch hitter in a controversial move by manager Akinobu Okada.   In his next start ten days later he threw a complete game shutout of the Dragons.  A week later he threw eight scoreless innings as the Tigers beat the Swallows 7-0.  Last Tuesday he had thrown six scoreless innings against Yakult which (when including the scoreless inning in relief he had in his first appearance of the year on April 1st) put his streak of innings without giving up a run to start the season at 31, which tied him for the record with Etsuo Nakai, who did it in 1963.  Murakami gave up a home run to Domingo Santana in the seventh inning though which ended the streak.  To add insult to injury, Santana's home run was the only scoring in the game by either team so Murakami took the 1-0 loss.

I didn't know much about Nakai until I sat down to write this.  He was kind of an odd fellow.  His 31 consecutive scoreless inning streak not only started his 1963 season, it started his career.  He had been attending Kansai University but decided to drop out and sign with Hanshin in 1963.  He dominated the Western League, going 13-1 and leading the league in ERA (although I don't know what his ERA actually was) before being called up to the ichi-gun team in September.  His streak ran from September 7th to October 17th.  His final stats with the top team that year was 4-1 with an ERA of 1.22.  He threw three complete game shutouts in five starts.  Expectations for him were high the following year but he got hurt in a car accident in May of 1964 and he was slow in recovering from it - in fact arguably he never did.  He went 1-2 with a 3.69 ERA in 11 games in 1964 but only made one appearance in 1965, giving up one run in one inning of work for a 9.00 ERA.  He appears to have sat out the 1966 season altogether and then returned to the Tigers for two seasons entirely on the farm.  He joined the Nishitetsu Lions after 1968 and spent three solid seasons with them, mostly in middle relief.  He retired following the 1971 season at age 28 and was apparently a salaryman for some corporation for several years after that.  He joined Hanshin's coaching staff in 1979 but tragically passed away in August of that year from heart failure.  He was just 36 years old.

Here's cards of both Murakami (2022 BBM Tigers #T20) and Nakai (1964 Murakami JCM 14g "Bat On Right") - I think this is Nakai's only catalogued card: