The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks have so many star players that second baseman Kenji Akashi can get lost in the shuffle.
He doesn't have Yuki Yanagita's overwhelming talent, nor is he a venerated veteran like Seiichi Uchikawa, a member of the 2,000-hit club, or the human ball of kinetic energy that is Nobuhiro Matsuda.
Akashi, a veteran who has been with the franchise since its Daiei days, is just one of the guys who seems to step up in big moments to help keep the SoftBank machine humming along.