Masato Akamatsu

Masato Akamatsu is the kind of player who never lit up the stat sheet in a flashy way, but if you actually watched him play outfield for Hiroshima, you understood immediately why he stuck around for 13 seasons. That 2010 Golden Glove wasn't a fluke — the man made catches that genuinely looked impossible, including one so absurd it spread online as the "Spider-Man catch." Born in Fushimi, Kyoto and educated at Ritsumeikan University, he came up through Hanshin before finding his real home with the Carp, and that back-to-back leadoff home run feat in 2008 — a first in NPB history — is the kind of footnote that deserves way more attention than it gets. What hits differently when you look back at his career is the stomach cancer diagnosis in 2016, the surgery, the chemo, and then just... coming back and playing. That's not a footnote, that's the whole story. Now coaching the outfield and baserunning for Hiroshima, he's passing on exactly the kind of quiet, disciplined excellence the Carp have always been built on.

Masato Akamatsu is a Japanese baseball player and coach born on September 6, 1982, in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto Prefecture. He attended Ritsumeikan University. Further details of his career and active period are not publicly available.

Name (English)

Masato Akamatsu

Name (Japanese)

赤松真人

Reading

あかまつ まさと

Born

September 6, 1982 (age 43)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Dog (戌)

Origin

Fushimi Ward, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan

Height

182cm

Occupation

Baseball Player / Baseball Coach

University

Ritsumeikan University

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B5%A4%E6%9D%BE%E7%9C%9F%E4%BA%BA

Tags

• From Kyoto Prefecture
• Baseball Player
• Baseball Coach

Last updated

2026-06-02

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.