Akihito Igarashi

Akihito Igarashi is the kind of baseball guy whose record is quietly unique — the only NPB player to both play every position and homer from every lineup spot — and born in Maebashi, Gunma in 1968, standing a solid 6 feet, the image that comes to mind is a quiet, landlocked-prefecture kid who grew up chasing fly balls in the dry summer heat of central Japan. He bounced through three NPB clubs as the ultimate utility man before coaching SoftBank and managing in the independent leagues, and Japanese baseball in his era was full of guys like this, professionals who kept the machine running without ever needing the spotlight. There's something genuinely respectable about that. Not every career fits neatly into a Wikipedia paragraph, and this one feels more like a worn leather glove than a trophy case.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Akihito Igarashi is a Japanese former professional baseball player and manager born on April 12, 1968, in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture. He stands 180 cm tall. A utility player for the Lotte Orions/Marines, Orix BlueWave and Kintetsu Buffaloes who later coached the SoftBank Hawks, he is the only player in NPB history to have both appeared at every position and homered from every spot in the batting order.

Name (English)

Akihito Igarashi

Name (Japanese)

五十嵐章人

Reading

いがらし あきひと

Born

April 12, 1968 (age 58)

Origin

Maebashi, Gunma, Japan

Height

180cm

Occupation

Baseball player

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Monkey

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%94%E5%8D%81%E5%B5%90%E7%AB%A0%E4%BA%BA
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11372152

Tags

• From Gunma Prefecture
• Baseball player

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.