Former Orions, Tigers and Carp pitcher Tomoo Wako passed away earlier this week from liver cancer. He was 87 years old.
Wako was born and raised in Sendai and attended Tohoku High School. He was teammates with two other, unrelated players with the same surname - Tadao and Terumoto. Collectively they were known as the "Three Wako Of Tohoku". After graduating, Tomoo signed with the Mainichi Orions and within a few years was one of the workhorses of the pitching staff - working in both a starting and relieving role as need be. He went 13-8 in 1960 to help the now Daimai Orions win the Pacific League pennant and appeared in two games in the Nippon Series against the Taiyo Whales.
He was dealt to the Hanshin Tigers prior to the 1964 season as part of the "Trade Of The Century" that sent Masaaki Koyama to the Orions for Kazuhiro Yamaguchi. The Tigers won the Central League pennant that year and he appeared in two games in the Nippon Series against the Nankai Hawks. He continued to work in both as both a starter and reliever over the next decade, putting up some decent if unremarkable seasons. He made his only All Star team in 1969. He was the Tigers' pitching coach from 1970 to 1972, despite still being an active player.
After the 1974 season he was dealt to the Hiroshima Toyo Carp for Sohachi Aniya. Once again, his new team won the Central League pennant in his first season with them and once again, he made a pair of appearances in the Nippon Series. He was the first player to ever appear in the Nippon Series with three different teams although all were in a losing effort.
He retired as a player after 1976 and started coaching. He would spend nineteen of the next twenty years as a coach for five different teams - the Carp, the Orions (two separate stints), the Tigers (two separate stints), the Hawks and the Baystars. After that he did some coaching for some club teams and a couple schools.
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| 1967 Kabaya-Leaf #107 |
He did not have a lot of baseball cards during his career. He had two menko cards depicting him with the Orions from 1959 and 1960, a card with the Tigers in the 1967 Kabaya-Leaf set (#107 shown above - I do not own this card - I swiped the image from TCDB) and a couple cards with the Carp from a couple playing card sets from 1975 and 1976. He had a few more modern cards, appearing in the BBM Tigers Anniversary sets in 2005 (70th) and 2010 (75th) although not their 2015 (80th) one. He was also in the 2013 BBM Greatest Games 10-22-1973 Tigers vs Giants and 2021 BBM Tigers History sets. He appeared as a member of the Carp in the 2013 BBM The Trade Stories, the 2014 Epoch OB Club 20th Anniversary Volume One and 2015 BBM Carp Legends sets. He has no modern cards depicting him as a member of the Orions - I suspect this is due to the OB team sets for the franchise being limited to only showing players from the Lotte era.
Here's a handful of his modern cards - I don't have any of his cards from when he was an active player:
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| 2005 BBM Tigers 70th Anniversary #31 |
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| 2010 BBM Tigers 75th Anniversary #19 |
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| 2021 BBM Tigers History 1935-2021 #13 |
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| 2013 BBM The Trade Stories #14 |
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| 2015 BBM Carp Legends #09 |
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