Seiji Kamikawa

Seiji Kamikawa (上川 誠二)

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 5' 8", Weight 154 lb.

• High School Minoshima High School

• Born March 27, 1960 in Hirogawa, Wakayama Japan

BR register page

Biographical Information

Seiji Kamikawa played 12 seasons in Nippon Pro Baseball.

He played for Sankyo Seiki and Dai Nihon Seishi in the industrial leagues after high school, then was signed by the Chunichi Dragons as an undrafted free agent. He got his first NPB hit off Tetsuo Nishii and his first homer against Tsunemi Tsuda. He hit .227/.269/.288 as a rookie in 1982. He hit .286/.286/.514 with 6 RBI in six games in the 1982 Japan Series and won the Fighting Spirit Award as the MVP of the losing team. He hit a 3-run homer in Game 3 to start a comeback win.

In 1983, he batted .249/.297/.352 and his 22 errors were second-most in the Central League. He improved his batting to .309/.357/.450 in 1984, stole 17 bases in 22 tries and hit 26 doubles. A free swinger, he only had 16 strikeouts and 27 walks in 126 games. He just missed the CL top 10 in average and made the top 10 in doubles (tied for 4th with Kiyoyuki Nagashima and Sadaaki Yoshimura), triples (5, tied for 3rd with Kaname Yashiki and Akinobu Mayumi), steals (6th) and intentional walks (1st, 13; 5 ahead of the runner-ups who included more prominent hitting threats like Warren Cromartie, Leon Lee and Masayuki Kakefu).

Kamikawa slumped to .255/.289/.366 in 1985 with 4 steals in 9 tries. He still legged out five triples to tie Yashiki, Yutaka Takagi, Ken Hirano and Hirokazu Kato for the CL lead. He drew only 11 unintentional walks in 119 games, explaining the low OBP. In 1986, he produced at a .295/.333/.384 clip with 5 more triples while cutting his error total to 9. He tied Kato and Takagi for 3rd in the CL in triples. He was then traded with Kazuhiko Ushijima, Shigeru Kuwata and Sadaharu Hiranuma to the Lotte Orions for legendary Hiromitsu Ochiai.

With Lotte in 1987, his batting line dropped to .256/.287/.370 with no triples. He hit .261/.313/.343 in 1988 and .285/.337/.435 with a career-high 12 home runs in 1989. He remained steady at .292/.314/.433 in 1990. By 1991, he was a backup to Koichi Hori, who was emerging as a productive player. The team became the Chiba Lotte Marines and he hit .221/.260/.284 in a backup role in 1992 then was 4 for 16 in 1993.

For his career, he had hit .271/.312/.381 in 1,170 games, with 325 runs and 282 RBI. He stole 59 bases in 96 tries and had only 178 walks and 186 strikeouts.

He later coached in the minors for Chiba Lotte (1994-1995) and the Chunichi Dragons (1996-1999) then was a baseball commentator on the radio from 2000-2005. He coached for the Rakuten Golden Eagles in 2007 and the Marines from 2008-2012.