Wataru Nonin

Wataru Nonin (濃人 渉)

• Bats Right, Throws Right

• High School Koryo High School

• Born March 22, 1915 in Hiroshima, Hiroshima Japan
• Died October 10, 1991

BR register page

Biographical Information

Wataru Nonin played and managed in Nippon Pro Baseball.

Nonin was signed by Nagoya Kinko when they were founded in 1936, but he only played 29 games in his rookie season. He was then conscripted into the army and missed the next two years. He came back in 1939 and hit .247/.371/.326, then recorded a .235/.329/.336 batting line in 1940. He led the Japanese Professional Baseball League in games played from 1941 to 1943, but only hit .216/.346/.241, .207/.313/.260 and .195/.332/.244 respectively. When the Nishitetsu club was expelled after the 1943 season, Nonin left the league and came back to his hometown Hiroshima. He was one of only two NPB players to experience the Atomic bombings in Hiroshima (the other was Isao Harimoto, who was a child at the time).

Nonin joined the Kinsei Stars with his old teammate Shuichi Ishimoto after the War in 1948, but he announced his retirement after hitting .166/.295/.233. He then managed the Nittetsu Futase of the Industrial League. The Chunichi Dragons hired him as their minor league manager in 1960, and he managed their big club from 1961 to 1962. However, although the Dragons played well under his lead, the owner of Chunichi wanted a manager from the Tokyo Big6 Baseball League, so he fired Nonin after the 1962 season.

The Tokyo Orions then invited Nonin to become their new bench coach in 1964, then soon became the manager when Katsuki Tokura left the team in the middle of the 1964 season. The Orions improved to 67-63 in 1968, and they never had an under-.500 winning percentage when Nonin was their manager. The Hiroshima native led the Orions to win 80 games in 1970, but lost to the Yomiuri Giants in 5 games in the 1970 Nippon Series. On July 13, Nonin became the last manager to decide to forfeit a game, doing so because Shinichi Eto had a disputation with the umpire for a strike call. He was then replaced by Keiji Osawa 10 days later, and became a scout from 1972 to 1978. He insisted the Orions draft Yoshio Tanaka in the first round of the 1975 NPB draft, and even said that "If Tanaka couldn't pitch well with the big club, I'll leave the team". However, Tanaka struggled and even led the league in walks in 1979, then Nonin resigned after the 1979 season.

Overall, Nonin had hit .212/.324/.269 with 436 hits in 8 years in NPB. As a manager, he was 442-343-28 with a pennant in 7 years.

Related Sites

• Stats at japanesebaseball.com
• Wiki Japan
• NPB.com Bio