Baseball: Hall of Fame Carp ace pitcher Kitabeppu dies at 65

Manabu Kitabeppu, a Hall of Fame pitcher who won 213 career games and was a mainstay of the Hiroshima Carp’s Central League dynasty of the 1970s and 1980s, died Friday in Hiroshima after battling cancer. He was 65.

Kitabeppu won the Sawamura Award in 1982 and 1986 as the CL’s most impressive starting pitcher and was the league’s MVP in 1986. During his career, the Carp won five CL pennants and three Japan Series championships. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2012. In 2020, Kitabeppu announced he had adult T cell leukemia and had undergone a blood stem cell transplant.

In June 2022, his w...