Jiro Noguchi

Jirō Noguchi (1920–2007) was a Japanese baseball pitcher and two-way player who spent 13 seasons in the Japanese Baseball League and Nippon Professional Baseball from 1939 to 1952. Born in Nagoya and briefly a student at Hosei University, he began his career with the Tokyo Senators at age 19. A six-time 20-game winner and three-time 30-game winner, he won 40 games in a single season and finished with a 1.96 career ERA, second all-time. As a batter, he set a Japanese professional record with a 31-game hitting streak that stood for 25 years. He was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989.