Eiji Kanamori

Eiji Kanamori (金森 永時)

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 5' 9", Weight 158 lb.

• School Waseda University
• High School PL Gakuen High School

• Born January 24, 1957 in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Eiji Kanamori has played in Nippon Pro Baseball.

Kanamori represented Japan in the 1980 Amateur World Series and the 1981 Intercontinental Cup. The Seibu Lions drafted Kanamori in the fourth round of the 1984 NPB draft. Kanamori debuted on September 9, 1982, and collected his first major league hit from Yoshio Fukazawa in the same game. He spent his first career year mainly in the NPB Farm Leagues, the and batted .293/.384/.397 in the 1983 season. He remained as a backup outfielder in 1984 season, hitting .250/.364/.351 in 148 at-bats and leading the league in hit-by-pitches with 12.

The 1985 season was Kanamori's career year. He batted .312/.411/.453 with career-high 12 homers. He led the league in hit-by-pitch again with 15, and ranked eighth in batting average. He won both the Best Nine and NPB Gold Glove Award as an outfielder. In the 1985 NPB All-Star Game, he hit a double off Tatsuo Komatsu in the 2nd inning of Game 2. Kanamori participated in the All-Star Game again in the next year and recorded a 1-for-3; the hit was a single off Tsunemi Tsuda in the 9th inning of Game 3. He ended up hitting .298/.374/.408 this year. In 1987, Kanamori was selected into the All-Star Game for the third consecutive year, but didn't collected any hits in 3 at-bats. He batted .243/.279/.321 in this year.

The Lions traded Kanamori to the Hanshin Tigers for Terufumi Kitamura in the 1988 season, but he struggled in that year as his batting line fell to .209/.293/.322. The Ishikawa native bounced back in 1989 season with a .306/.382/.380 batting line in the 1990 season. He was used as pinch-runner or 4th OF by the Tigers, and he only played 68, 73 and 42 games respectively from the 1990 season to the 1992 season.

Kanamori announced that he would become a free agent after the 1992 season and signed with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. Kanamori didn't play well in the first year with the Swallows, as he only batted .171/.370/.244 in 46 games. He bounced back and recorded a .271/.292/.314 and .324/.380/.479 batting line in the next two years. After his batting line fell to .178/.196/.200 in the 1996 season, Kanamori announced his retirement and became a coach. He was the assistant hitting coach for the Swallows from 1997 to 1999, for the Lions from 2001 to 2002, for the Tigers in 2004 and for the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks from 2005 to 2006. After spending some years in the independent leagues, he came back to the NPB and served as the hitting coach for the Chiba Lotte Marines from 2010 to 2011.

Overall, Kanamori had hit .270/.351/.372 in 15 seasons in NPB.

Sources

• NPB site
• Wiki Japan
• 1985 NPB All-Star Game
• 1986 NPB All-Star Game