Yōichi Fukuzawa

Yōichi Fukuzawa is the kind of guy who never makes the highlight reel but quietly holds the whole thing together. Born in 1967 in Iizuka, Fukuoka — deep in the old coalfield belt of Chikuho — there's something inherently gritty about that origin, and I can't help but read it into how he's carried himself through baseball, first as a player and then as a coach. He's not a name that trends on social media or lands on the back page, and honestly that feels right. The guys who dedicate decades to teaching the craft, correcting swings, talking pitchers through slumps — they rarely do. At 177 cm he's got the build you'd expect from someone who spent a career on a diamond. He led the league with a .407 caught-stealing rate as a rookie, but the low profile is almost the point: Japanese baseball has always run on coaches like this, unseen and essential.

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.

Yōichi Fukuzawa is a Japanese former professional baseball player (catcher), coach, manager and commentator born on May 26, 1967, in Iizuka, Fukuoka Prefecture. Standing 177 cm tall, he built his career in professional baseball and later transitioned into coaching. He is a Gemini born in the Year of the Goat. He caught for the Lotte Orions and Chiba Lotte Marines from 1989 to 2003, then held coaching and managing posts with Lotte, Yokohama and Nippon-Ham.

Name (English)

Yōichi Fukuzawa

Name (Japanese)

福澤洋一

Reading

ふくざわ よういち

Born

May 26, 1967 (age 59)

Origin

Iizuka, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

Height

177cm

Occupation

Baseball Player / Baseball Coach

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Goat

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A6%8F%E6%BE%A4%E6%B4%8B%E4%B8%80
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11594008

Tags

• From Fukuoka Prefecture
• Baseball Player
• Baseball Coach

Last updated

November 2, 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.