Oldest Pitcher to Toss NPB Perfect Game?
Googling didn't produce anything useful, so here's the list of players, the dates they threw their perfect games, and their birthdays. (Including this list to start with would have been helpful. That would have saved the first hour of looking up how to spell each player's name.)
Player (Team) Date (Game) Birthday Age
------------------------------ -------------- ---------- ------------------
Fujimoto Hideo (Giants) 1950.06.28 1918.05.18 32 years 1 month
Takechi Fumio (Kintetsu) 1955.06.19 (2) 1926.11.04 29 years 7 months
Miyaji Yoshitomo (Kokutetsu) 1956.09.19 (2) 1932.01.28 24 years 7 months
Kaneda Masaichi (Kokutetsu) 1957.08.21 (2) 1933.08.01 24 years 0 months
Nishimura Sadaaki (Nishitetsu) 1958.07.19 1934.11.25 23 years 7 months
Shimada Kentaro (Taiyo) 1960.08.11 (1) 1939.08.25 20 years 11 months
Moritaka Yoshimi(?) (Kokutetsu) 1961.06.20 1938.03.08 23 years 3 months
Sasaki Kichiro (Taiyo) 1966.05.01 (2) 1940.03.15 26 years 1 month
Tanaka Tsutomu (Nishitetsu) 1966.05.12 1939.10.10 26 years 7 months
Sotokoba Yoshiro (Hiroshima) 1968.09.14 1945.05.29 23 years 3 months
Sasaki Koichiro (Kintetsu) 1970.10.06 1943.08.30 27 years 1 month
Takahashi Yoshimasa (Toei) 1971.08.21 (2) 1944.05.05 27 years 3 months
Yagisawa Soroku (Lotte) 1973.10.10 (1) 1944.12.01 28 years 10 months
Imai Yutaro (Hankyu) 1978.08.31 1949.08.04 29 years 0 months
Makihara Hiromi (Giants) 1994.05.18 1963.08.11 30 years 9 months
*I calculated the ages by hand - please point out any mistakes.
As you can see, the first perfect game was thrown by the oldest player to do so of the 15 perfect games in NPB history.
mysql> select p.playerid as PlayerID, concat_ws(' ',lastname, firstname) as Name,
> Birthday, PositionID as Pos
> from Players p left join PlayerInfo pi on p.PlayerID=pi.PlayerID
> where year(birthday) +----------+-------------------+------------+------+
| PlayerID | Name | Birthday | Pos |
+----------+-------------------+------------+------+
| 419 | Oh Sadaharu | 1940-05-20 | K |
| 1295 | Yamamoto Koji | 1946-10-25 | K |
| 1163 | Wakamatsu Tsutomu | 1947-04-17 | K |
| 1828 | Horiuchi Tsuneo | 1948-01-16 | K |
| 1473 | Ihara Haruki | 1949-01-18 | K |
| 1743 | Valentine Bobby | 1950-05-13 | K |
| 1570 | Yamashita Daisuke | 1952-03-05 | K |
| 1208 | Nashida Masataka | 1953-08-04 | K |
| 162 | Ochiai Hiromitsu | 1953-12-09 | K |
| 48 | Okada Akinobu | 1957-11-25 | K |
| 4 | Itoh Tsutomu | 1962-08-29 | K |
| 1521 | Hillman Trey | 1963-01-04 | K |
| 507 | Kudoh Kimiyasu | 1963-05-05 | P |
| 165 | Kawai Masahiro | 1964-09-27 | IF |
+----------+-------------------+------------+------+
14 rows in set (23.12 sec)
As you can see, Kudoh and Chunichi's Kawai (formerly of the Giants) are the only two active non-managers (K == Kantoku) 40 or over this year. And Kawai doesn't turn 40 until September.
As for players nearing 40, the only one I could find was Hanshin's Hiroshi Yagi (39) (according to the Japan Times).
Here is the list of 39 year olds (turned or turning 39 this year):
+----------+-------------------+------------+------+
| PlayerID | Name | Birthday | Pos |
+----------+-------------------+------------+------+
| 318 | Yoshii Masato | 1965-04-20 | P |
| 275 | Kitoh Makoto | 1965-05-12 | P |
| 334 | Yagi Hiroshi | 1965-06-08 | IF |
| 636 | Katoh Shinichi | 1965-07-19 | P |
| 289 | Furuta Atsuya | 1965-08-06 | C |
| 90 | Satoh Shinichi | 1965-08-07 | OF |
| 234 | Yamamoto Masahiro | 1965-08-11 | P |
| 531 | Komiyama Satoru | 1965-09-15 | P |
+----------+-------------------+------------+------+
I see that Komi-chan comes up. Also veteran catcher Furuta. Seibu's long time catcher Itoh made it to 41 years old when he retired after last season.
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Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
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I did a little research on the net, and I found a few lists of all the perfect games pitched, but no record as to their ages when the perfect games were thrown.
However, for no-hitters, I found out that (as far as I know anyways) the oldest in NPB to do it was Yoshinori Sato of the Orix Blue Wave on August 26, 1995 against the Kintetsu Buffaloes, at 40 years and 11 months old.
Does anybody know the oldest player to pitch a perfect game for NPB?