is a former

professional baseball Professional baseball is organized baseball in which players are selected for their talents and are paid to play for a specific team or club system. It is played in leagues and associated farm teams throughout the world. Modern professiona ...

player in Japan's

Nippon Professional Baseball or NPB is the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning ''Professional Baseball''. Outside Japan, it is often just referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league can be traced back to the formation ...

, and a politician. A right-handed pitcher, in he was voted into the

Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame The is a museum which includes a library, reference rooms and . It first opened in 1959 next door to Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo, Japan. In 1988, the museum moved to a new site within the Tokyo Dome. The Hall of Fame and Museum was created as a ...

Baseball career

Horiuchi played for the

Yomiuri Giants The are a Japanese professional baseball team competing in Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League. Based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, they are one of two professional baseball teams based in Tokyo, the other being the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. They ...

his whole career, from 1966–1983; he was an integral part of the team's ten

Japan Series The Japan Series ( , officially the Japan Championship Series, ), also the Nippon Series, :File:2014_JS_logo.png is the annual championship series in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top baseball league in Japan. It is a best-of-seven series ...

championships during that period (including nine in a row). His first season he went 16-2 with a league-leading 1.39

earned run average In baseball statistics, earned run average (ERA) is the average of earned runs allowed by a pitcher per nine innings pitched (i.e. the traditional length of a game). It is determined by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the numb ...

, winning both the

Eiji Sawamura Award The , commonly known as the Sawamura Award, is an honor bestowed upon the top starting pitcher in Nippon Professional Baseball each year. The award was originally established by Japanese magazine "Nekkyū" in 1947 to honor the career of Eiji Sawa ...

and the Central League Rookie of the Year award. He led the league in

winning percentage In sports, a winning percentage is the fraction of games or matches a team or individual has won. The statistic is commonly used in standings or rankings to compare teams or individuals. It is defined as wins divided by the total number of match ...

and also in most

bases on balls A base on balls (BB), also known as a walk, occurs in baseball when a batter receives four pitches that the umpire calls '' balls'', and is in turn awarded first base without the possibility of being called out. The base on balls is defined in Sec ...

allowed. He led the league in winning percentage again in 1967, going 12-2 to post an amazing two-year stretch of 28-4. That year he also threw a

no-hitter In baseball, a no-hitter is a game in which a team was not able to record a hit. Major League Baseball (MLB) officially defines a no-hitter as a completed game in which a team that batted in at least nine innings recorded no hits. A pitcher wh ...

, against the

Hiroshima Carp The is a professional baseball team based in Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan. They compete in the Central League of Nippon Professional Baseball. The team is primarily owned by the Matsuda family, led by , who is a descendant of Mazda ...

. The next three seasons were all successful. but he again led the league in walks all three years. (Horiuchi also gave up 31 home runs in 1968 to lead the league.) 1972 was Horiuchi's finest season, as he went 26-9 with a 2.91 ERA and 26 complete games, again winning the

(this despite the fact he led the league in hits and home runs allowed). That year he also won the Central League MVP. In 1974 Horiuchi led the Central League in complete games with 21. Horiuchi finished his career with 203 wins, earning him a spot in Meikyukai. He managed the Yomiuri Giants in 2004–2005 (the team went 133-144 under his leadership). He has also acted as a TV analyst for Giants broadcasts.

Politics

Horiuchi stood as a candidate of the House of Councillors election, 2010 for the LDP but lost. Receiving 101,840 preference votes nationwide, he ranked 13th on the LDP list

Yomiuri Shimbun The (lit. ''Reading-selling Newspaper'' or ''Selling by Reading Newspaper'') is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five major newspapers in Japan; the other four are ...

, Councillors election special 2010, proportional results
Liberal Democratic Party
/ref> – the party received only twelve proportional seats – and was thus the top replacement candidate for a possible ''kuriage-tōsen'', i.e. the first candidate to be elected without an additional vote if an LDP proportional seat in the 2010 class of Councillors fell vacant. As a result, he became a member of the House of Councillors in the proportional representation segment of the

class of 2010 The 2010 general election took place on 6 May 2010 and saw each of Parliament's 650 constituencies return one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons. Parliament, which consists of the House of Lords and the elected House of Commons, ...

in August 2013 as the replacement for Hirohiko Nakamura, who died on July 31, 2013.

Statistics

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Horiuchi, Tsuneo Living people 1948 births People from Yamanashi Prefecture Japanese baseball players Yomiuri Giants players Nippon Professional Baseball Rookie of the Year Award winners Nippon Professional Baseball MVP Award winners Managers of baseball teams in Japan Yomiuri Giants managers Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) politicians Japanese sportsperson-politicians Members of the House of Councillors (Japan) Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame inductees