Sources: Sponichi / Nikkan Sports
There is more to Junya Nishi than meets the eye. Whether you know him as the fireball-throwing, celebration-embellishing second-year high schooler, the first-round draft pick of the Hanshin Tigers in 2019, or the kid who nervously pitched through his first inning as a pro last night, ultimately earning the win, his story is one that will move you.
He lost his father, Masakazu, as a freshman. Masakazu was just 45 years old. It was his mother, Mie, who raised him through his high school years. While on the mound at Koshien in high school, his fist-pumping after strikeouts looked quite juvenile (which is fair, since he was just a kid then), but his catcher at the time, Shunya Fujiwara, says this: “He did not speak a whole lot off the field, but he was transformed when he got up on that mound. He always left it all out the field.” When his father passed on in the fall of his freshman year, his attitude towards baseball changed. He ran a lot more, threw a lot more bullpens. He stopped relying so much on his raw skills. Nishi’s father was his biggest fan, and he used that to motivate himself when times were tough on the mound.
“You have to do this for your dad, don’t you?” These were the words that Fujiwara would speak to Nishi whenever they had conferences on the mound. “Yeah, you’re right” was Nishi’s reply. He would nod silently, gazing up to the sky as though to touch base with his father. This became Fujiwara and Nishi’s routine. When Nishi recorded big strikeouts in the Summer Koshien tournament (and he had 16 in one game), he pumped his fists wildly, something that became a hot topic of conversation. “The umps warned him about it, but he was actually fist-pumping to his father. Those were his raw emotions about his dad coming out on the field.”
When NIshi and Fujiwara lost in round two of the tournament, Fujiwara, who was to graduate from high school the next spring, told his usually introspective junior, “Just make sure you carry the team back there next summer and win it all.”
Nishi and his teammates never made it back to Koshien for the summer tournament the following year, but he finds himself pitching on that mound now as a member of the Hanshin Tigers. During last night’s win over the Yakult Swallows, Nishi did not pump his fists even once, but there is no doubt old catcher, Fujiwara, is proud of the performance he saw last night.
When asked what he was going to do with the winning ball from the game, Nishi said, “I will give it to my mother.” That’s not the only thing he has given her since he has gone pro, though. When he received his signing bonus before the 2020 season, he bought her a new car, which he says should replace the one she drove for countless hours to cheer him on during his high school years. He also gives the bulk of his salary to his mother, in order to help her raise the family. “It costs a lot of money to pay for my brother’s baseball stuff, so…”
His younger brother, Ryoya, is a member of Koryo High School (Hiroshima), which aims to reach the Koshien tournament this year. “I hear he finally got a number on his back, so I’m excited to see what he can do,” the kind elder brother says. It has now been four years since his father’s death. Young Junya has taken on the role of man of the house, supporting his family in his father’s absence.