2031 Almanac: The No-Hitter
Talk about going out with a flourish!
Less than a month after announcing that he would retire at the end of the season, 38-year-old Kazuhiko Nishiyama threw the first no-hitter of his career against the eventual Imperial League Champion San Juan Coqui.
The Sept. 22 gem was just the second in Claymores’ franchise history – and the first since the team left the LRS to join PEBA. The only previous no-no was thrown by Terry Dumont in 2020 while the team was still playing as the Fushigi Yugi Celestial Warriors in the League of the Rising Sun.
Nishiyama allowed just two base runners in his 9 innings of sterling work. He walked OF Roberto Martinez to lead off the 7th inning, and hit catcher Ju-chan Park to lead off the 9th while striking out 6 Coqui batters.
“I thought Kazuhiko started off a little slow and was struggling with his command at first,” said Claymores Manager Hayato Sasaki. “He lucked his way through the early innings, and they helped him out by not being patient. Eventually, it all came together for him and from there on the Coqui never had a chance. He dominated them.”
The Scottish coasted to a 5-0 win at the Castle in Edinburgh, a rare bright spot in a bleak losing season.
“What a sweet thing to happen in the last month of my career,” said Nishiyama. “It’s been a great life, and this was just the perfect exclamation point!”
This was Nishiyama’s second stint with the Scottish, after playing for the Claymores in 2027 and 2028.
He re-joined the Scottish organization in April of this year, signing a minor league contract to play with AAA Aberdeen, where he went 6-4 with a 2.51 ERA and made the AAA All-Star team. The Claymores called him up in July, and he went 4-5 with a 3.36 ERA in 14 starts.
Nishiyama started his career in 2021 with the Sendai Flying Eagles in the LRS, then played for several PEBA teams, including Kalamazoo, Duluth and Toyama.
“I’ve had a lot of great moments in my career, including winning a PEBA championship with the Warriors back in ’26, striking out 15 guys in ’22, and throwing a 1-hitter against Chiba in 2022,” said Nishiyama. “But this was maybe the sweetest moment of all – it put me in the history books and showed I could still bring it, even at the end of my career.”
