Shūgo Kanō (叶 修悟, Kanō Shūgo) is Mihashi's former teammate from junior high and now his baseball rival. Currently one of the main pitchers of Mihoshi Academy's high school baseball team.
Background[]
Many of the team members in Mihoshi's Junior High team believed that Kanō would have been the ace pitcher had it not been for Mihashi, whose grandfather happened to own the school. He is known for throwing a forkball, which he uses as a strikeout pitch.
Appearance[]
Kanō has longer shaggy dark brown hair and light brown eyes. He is slightly smaller in stature than most of his other teammates but manages to keep a good speed while pitching.
Personality[]
Kanō is shown to be very friendly in his first appearance but is later shown to almost break down when he learned that his teammates weren't taking their practice match against Nishiura seriously. He thinks that he is inferior to Mihashi and is angry at his teammates for bullying Mihashi.
Relationships[]
Ren Mihashi[]
Kanō believes that it was because they bullied Mihashi (up to the point where the catcher refused to give out signs for him to pitch) that Mihashi had lost confindence in his pitches and therefore has lost all the games; therefore it wasn't Mihashi's fault for making them lose all of the games they played, but his teammates'.
It was shown that Kanō had encouraged Mihashi to continue baseball when he transferred to Nishiura, most likely because he knew Mihashi had great potential in him. At the end of the first season, Mihashi is truly grateful to Kanō for encouraging him to play baseball. After his defeat against Nishiura's team in a practice game, Kanō and Mihashi are now on very friendly terms, up to the point where Mihashi calls Kanō by his first name.
Ren's family also knows and are familiar with him. Ren's mother refers to him as Shu-chan. Ren's cousin Ruri calls him Kanō, and her little brother (Ren's other cousin), Ryu, admires him and goes to see Mihoshi's game instead of Nishiura's.