Akira Iwamoto (01)

Akira Iwamoto (岩本 章)

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 5' 7", Weight 143 lb.
• High School Kochi Shogyo High School

• Born January 14, 1921 in Kochi, Kochi Japan
• Died March 4, 1993

BR Register page

Biographical Information

Outfielder Akira Iwamoto was a player in Japanese baseball from the 1930s to the 1950s. He played 15 seasons at Japan's top professional level, including the first four seasons of Nippon Pro Baseball starting in 1950. Like all Japanese players of his era, his career was stopped in 1944 and 1945 when World War II forced a stoppage in professional baseball.

He was only 17 when he played his first game with the Tokyo Kyojin in 1938. His first few seasons were unconvincing, as he did not manage to crack the .200 mark in batting average until 1944, when the season was cut short by the war. He was not an automatic out however, as his 4 home runs for the Nagoya club in 1943 tied for the Dai-Nippon Professional Baseball League lead.

He returned after the war as a low-average hitter with decent power - he was in fact the first player to hit a home run after the war - and had his best season for the Hiroshima Carp in 1950, which was the first year in which there were two competing leagues - the Central League and the Pacific League - operating under the NPB structure, an arrangement that continues to this day. He hit .277 with 12 homers and 51 RBIs in 112 games that year - all career highs. On March 10th, he collected the first hit and stolen base in the history of the Hiroshima team and of the Central League, in a 6-5 loss to the Nishi-Nihon Pirates. That game was doubly significant because the city of Hiroshima had been almost completely leveled by an atomic bomb less than five years earlier, and its fielding a top-level baseball team was a symbol of Japan's recovery from the massive destruction caused by the war. Iwamoto had batted .257 in 92 games for the Hankyu Braves in 1949 and followed his career year with a .251 average in 99 games for Hiroshima in 1951; that year his 7 triples placed him among the league leaders. He had one more good season in 1952, hitting .268 in 87 games for the Carp, before falling to .155 in 1953, his final season as a pro, when Kenso Zenimura took over his starting job in the outfield.

He remained active with Hiroshima in various capacities after his retirement, serving as a coach in 1961 and 1962. He was also a coach for the Hanshin Tigers in 1965. He was also a broadcaster.

He is not to be confused with another player named Akira Iwamoto, who was a pitcher in the 2010s.