Makoto Kaneko

Makoto Kaneko's career is a quiet argument for the value of the guy who just keeps showing up in the middle of the diamond. He came out of Joso Gakuin High School in Chiba, took Pacific League Rookie of the Year in 1996 with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, and won two Golden Gloves at second base — then got moved to shortstop and handled that too. Position changes break a lot of infielders. Their footwork is muscle memory, their throwing angles are burned in, and asking a Gold Glove second baseman to relearn the job from the other side of the bag is asking a lot. He did it, at 185 cm, which is tall for the position. He also played for Japan at the 2004 Athens Olympics and came home with a bronze. Later he moved into managing. Fielders like Kaneko rarely get the poster or the highlight reel, but they are the reason a team's defense holds together for a decade.

Name (English)

Makoto Kaneko

Name (Japanese)

金子誠

Reading

かねこ まこと

Born

November 8, 1975 (age 50)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Rabbit

Origin

Abiko, Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Height

185 cm

Occupation

baseball player

High school

Joso Gakuin High School

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makoto%20Kaneko%20(baseball)
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E5%AD%90%E8%AA%A0
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1073025

Tags

• Chiba Prefecture
• baseball player

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.