page_title: Masahiro Tanaka
section_title: Summer 2006
hierarchical_section_title: Masahiro Tanaka / High school career / Summer 2006
caption_attribution_description: 日本語: 駒大苫小牧高校野球部 田中将大（甲子園球場 対東洋大姫路戦）
context_page_description: Masahiro Tanaka is a Japanese professional baseball starting pitcher for the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball. From 2007 through 2013, he played for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in Nippon Professional Baseball's Pacific League. Tanaka was posted by the Eagles after the 2013 season to be signed by an American team; he agreed to terms with the New York Yankees and signed a seven-year, $155 million contract, the fifth-largest deal ever given to a pitcher at the time. He made his major league debut in 2014. Tanaka is known for being an exceptional pitcher in the postseason, currently sporting the 3rd-lowest postseason ERA in MLB history at 1.32.
  Tanaka was the Eagles' first-round pick in the 2006 NPB amateur player draft. From 2012 to 2013, he won 26 consecutive decisions, which set a new NPB record. In the MLB, Tanaka has earned selections to two Major League Baseball All-Star Games.
context_section_description: Tomakomai High earned a berth in the 88th National High School Baseball Championship that summer. Tanaka managed to lead them to their third consecutive appearance in the tournament finals despite being ill prior to the tournament. The team's coach did not start Tanaka in the finals against Waseda Jitsugyo High School (an affiliate school of Waseda University), opting to rest him due to the number of innings he had thrown in the last few games, but he ended up sending Tanaka to the mound in relief midway through the third inning. Tanaka held Waseda Jitsugyo to just one run and struck out 10, but the opponent's ace, Yuki Saito, held Tomakomai High to one run himself on seven hits. The game remained tied 1–1 after 15 innings, forcing a rematch as per tournament regulations. It was the first time in 37 years (since Matsuyama Commercial High School and Misawa High School met in the finals in 1969) that the tournament finals had resulted in a rematch.
  In the rematch that ensued the next day, Tanaka again came on in relief in the bottom of the first, but Tomakomai High lost to Waseda Jitsugyo despite his pitching the remaining 7​¹⁄₃ innings of the game. (Tanaka was the last batter, striking out to end the game.) The pitchers' duel between Tanaka and Saito in the finals and the rematch that followed became on the most defining moments in all of sports in Japan that year. Tanaka, dealing with intestinal inflammation, threw 742 pitches in 52​²⁄₃ innings (six appearances) in the tournament, striking out 54 and walking 20 with a 2.22 earned run average (ERA).
  Both pitchers were chosen to play for Japan in the United States-Japan High School Baseball Tournament (organized by the Japanese Educational Resource Center in conjunction with the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy). Tomakomai High and Waseda Jitsugyo High met one last time in the finals of the Nojigiku Hyōgo National Sports Festival, the last tournament of Tanaka's high school career, but Tomakomai High was shut out by Saito and lost (1–0) to Waseda Jitsugyo, finishing second yet again.
caption: Tanaka as a pitcher for Tomakomai High (taken August 17, 2006, at Koshien Stadium)
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