Tomoaki Kanemoto
| Tomoaki Kanemoto | |||
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| Hanshin Tigers – No. 6 | |||
| Left fielder / Manager | |||
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Born: April 3, 1968 Minami-ku, Hiroshima, Japan |
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| NPB debut | |||
| June 2, 1992, for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp | |||
| Last appearance | |||
| October 9, 2012, for the Hanshin Tigers | |||
| NPB statistics | |||
| Batting average | .285 | ||
| Hits | 2539 | ||
| Home runs | 476 | ||
| RBI | 1521 | ||
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As player
As manager
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| Career highlights and awards | |||
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| Last updated on: October 10, 2012 | |||
As player
As manager
Tomoaki Kanemoto (金本 知憲 Kanemoto Tomoaki?, born April 3, 1968 in Minami-ku, Hiroshima, Japan) is the manager of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB). In his career as a player he spent 11 years with the Hiroshima Carp before moving to the Tigers in 2003, where he spent another 10 years. He holds the world record for consecutive games played without missing an inning (1492, ending on April 18, 2010).
The Tigers' former cleanup hitter, Kanemoto is regarded as one of the most accomplished hitters in Japanese professional baseball history. His 476 career home runs are the most by a left-handed hitter who throws right-handed and tenth overall on the all-time NPB list. Kanemoto retired as a player at the end of the 2012 season and rejoined the Tigers as their manager for the 2016 season, replacing Yutaka Wada. At the time of his retirement, Kanemoto was ninth on the all-time hit list for Japanese players across Japan and MLB. He is now 10th on the all-time list in both hits and home runs.
Kanemoto was born in Minami-ku, Hiroshima, as a third-generation Korean (he obtained Japanese citizenship in 2001). He began playing baseball in the fourth grade for the Hiroshima Central Little League club, but quit the team after a year because he could not keep up during team practices. After playing both baseball and softball for various teams while attending junior high, Kanemoto enrolled in Koryo High School, where he became the team's cleanup hitter in his second year (the equivalent of eleventh grade in the United States) and played in the outfield as well as at third base and pitcher. Although Koryo High had a reputation as a baseball powerhouse, they failed to reach any national tournaments in Kanemoto's three years there. He hit 20 home runs during his high school career.
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