Shinji Hamazaki

There's something quietly moving about Shinji Hamazaki — a guy born in 1901 in the port town of Kure, Hiroshima, who somehow made it all the way to Keio University and chased a baseball career at a time when "professional baseball player" was barely even a concept in Japan. Standing about 156 centimeters tall, he was never going to look physically imposing, but that's kind of the point — this was an era when the game was still being wired into Japanese culture from scratch, and the guys who built that foundation did it through sheer stubbornness and love for the sport, not ESPN highlights. As Hankyu's player-manager he set the record for the oldest player in a Japanese professional game, which stood for 64 years, and he was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978. He played, he lived through the whole arc of the 20th century, and he deserves a nod.

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.

Shinji Hamazaki was a Japanese baseball player born on December 10, 1901, in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture. He studied at Keio University, making him an educated figure in the early era of Japanese baseball. He stood 156 cm tall and passed away on May 6, 1981.

Name (English)

Shinji Hamazaki

Name (Japanese)

浜崎真二

Reading

はまざき しんじ

Born

December 10, 1901 – May 6, 1981

Origin

Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan

Height

156 cm

Occupation

Baseball player

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Ox

University

Keio University

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B5%9C%E5%B4%8E%E7%9C%9F%E4%BA%8C
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7497577

Tags

• From Hiroshima Prefecture
• Baseball player

Last updated

September 25, 2026

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.