Hiroshi Nakao pitched for the Giants for 16 seasons. He broke in as a 19 year old in 1939, missed several seasons for the war, and pitched until 1957. He was great when he was young, but his production quickly tailed off; his last couple seasons were pretty good, but 1948 was the last season in which he was really a star performer. At least season was a good one: he won just the second Sawamura award ever given out in 1948. (Bessho won the inaugural award a year earlier.)
Statistically, what is most noticeable about him was his ability to strike batters out. When he was young his strikeout rate was almost double the league average. That’s… that’s not something you can really do today. To double the league K rate in the 2018 AL you would need to strike out 17 batters per nine innings, which is something that no one has ever done. Gerrit Cole led the AL this year with a mark a bit above 12. Which is remarkable in its own right (especially considering that he’s a starting pitcher), but nothing like what Nakao was doing. He finished with a 209-127 record – which is good – and would have done much better if he hadn’t lost the heart of his career to the war. Which, as tragedies resulting from WWII go, is pretty low on the list, but it’s still regrettable. He served in the army, but I have been unable to determine whether he ever saw combat. With some very notable exceptions, prominent American ball players mostly did not. Likewise, I have found a suspiciously high percentage of Japanese players that were given not-very-dangerous postings (of course these things are relative, given how thoroughly the Japanese main islands were bombed, even civilians were in considerable danger), so there may have been some element of favoritism going on in the Japanese military as well. Although, as Eiji Sawamura can attest, not as much as in the American military.
As might be expected from an extraordinary strikeout pitcher, he was also extremely wild. He once threw a no hitter despite allowing ten baserunners on walks and hit batsmen. (It was the fifth no hitter in JBL history.) His walk totals were regularly among the league leaders. Nolan Ryan was the Platonic form of this kind of pitcher. Notice that despite all the no-hitters, Ryan never pitched a perfect game. A Nakao/Ryan comparison isn’t apt, however, because Ryan was basically indestructible, whereas Nakao was very destructible. His innings pitched totals dropped and his ERA rose dramatically starting in his late twenties, basically the opposite of Ryan. Actually, on second thought, it’s Nakao who is the Platonic form of the pitcher with a blazing fastball but no idea where its going. At least Ryan struck out more batters than he walked. That’s not something that Nakao can say.
After retiring Nakao coached in the Giants’ system. As a coach he subscribed to Kawakami’s intense training philosophy, and he (and Kawakami) came in for criticism when a young pitcher (Toshihiko Yoguchi) had a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized, and died. Officially the cause of death was heart failure, but
Whiting reports that an investigation by the Shuken Post concluded that it was suicide.
By 1955 Nakao was the team captain of the Giants. I don’t know exactly what this means. In America its an entirely honorary post. In Japan its different than the team’s manager, but I don’t know what duties accompany it. Anyway, I discovered this tidbit in the
2/25/55 issue of the Kingston Gleaner. It contained an article about a goodwill tour that the Giants engaged in across South America, Jamaica, the D.R. and neighboring countries.
Fun fact: this thread has made its way into Google’s algorithm. While researching this post I encountered one of my earlier posts in which I mentioned Nakao.
Today’s card is from the JGA 19 set. The picture picked up every speck of dirt on the card, in hand it looks a good bit nicer than this picture. The card was distributed in the 1/1/52 issue of Shonen Club magazine. Originally it was a part of a 16 card sheet that was then cut into individual cards by the kid with the magazine subscription. Engel calls it a game card: above and below the picture of the player are printed the names of baseball plays. It is not clear to me that this is sufficient to make it a game card, how you are supposed to use the names of baseball plays to play a game is not exactly clear. My card is actually cut down quite a bit, as the names of the plays are completely gone.
Engel says that this set has an R4 rarity, fewer than ten of each card known. Now, Engel's rarity classifications are not to be trusted, and I have no idea how many of these cards are out there. But it would make sense if they were pretty unusual. It’s not like you could stop into the store at any point all summer and pick up a wax pack of these. These cards were distributed with one issue of one magazine.