HBW: Tomoyo Matsuzaka
Now that Daisuke is officially a major leaguer, you know what that means… HBW Time!!!!
Mrs. Matsuzaka, formerly known as Tomoyo Shibata (?? ?? – thanks wikipedia) was a TV announcer for Nippon TV.
Even though her beautiful visage was broadcast (daily?weekly?) on national TV in Japan, there are very few websites with good pics of Tomoyo.
Fortunately I was able to scrape a few decent pics to make this collage.
Enjoy!
UPDATE (by Nick)
Here’s a bit more information about Mrs. Matsuzaka that I was able to scrounge up… She was a well known TV news personality until she married Matsuzaka in 2005, after which she went into semi-retirement to be a good Japanese housewife and raise babies. As a TV announcer, the pinnacle of her career came when she covered the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup.
Because the former Miss Shibata is significantly older than Matsuzaka (she’s 31, he’s 26), she was viciously criticized in the Japanese media for “seducing” Matsuzaka when the couple began their liason in 2000 when he was only 19 years old. Because of the difference in their ages, they began dating in secret, and a huge scandal errupted when it came out that Matsuzaka’s car had been towed for being illegally parked overnight in front of Shibata’s house (it was such a big scandal that the Seibu Lions even suspended Matsuzaka for a few games).
Although they may not look so impressive to the American eye, Shibata has garnered the nickname “Rockets” (Roketsu) in Japan for the size and shape of a certain part of her anatomy. The eponymous “rockets” can be evaluated in the following video advertisement for a new style magazine (please note that you must enter your gender, age, and location to get the video to play):
http://broadband.biglobe.ne.jp/program/index_beauty.html
In addition, we here at umpbump have been trolling the internet all day to find some more pictures of Tomoyo. See some of what we found after the jump…
And another…
And one more…
There’s actually plenty more here.
December 18th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
I don’t believe the Sox are interested in trading Manny anymore. For whom? For what? The only major piece still missing in Boston is a closer, and Theo has been stockpiling arms. Word here is that he’ll try to exchange some of his extra relievers for a closer.
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December 18th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
Oh yea… you have to have Windows XP in order to play the video…
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December 19th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
I think you’re probably right, although indications are that a lot of his teammates are sick of Manny. It might benefit the team to be rid of his attitude, even if it would hurt to lose his bat.
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December 19th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
His teammates are sick of “hurt” benchwarming Manny. No one is sick of 40 homers, 120 RBI, hitting-behind-Papi Manny.
He’s not an angry, clubhouse cancer kind of guy, though his behavior drives the media into a rage. He’s just one of those semi-autistic, clueless-but-benign idiot savantes.
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December 20th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Yeah, but several players have spoken up and said it might be best for the team if Manny were traded. Schilling (big shock) was the most recent, but I don’t think he was the only one.
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December 20th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
you also need to be using IE and not Firefox.
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December 20th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
There’s actually plenty of pics online – but you have to search for her name in japanese:
?? ??
not in english
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December 20th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
In Japan, female announcers have almost a cult-like following. Websites feature nightly screencaps of their favorite announcers and there are magazines devoted to announcers.
Also, an announcer marrying a pro athlete is becoming quite a common thing in the Japanese entertainment world.
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January 5th, 2007 at 4:38 am
[...] As we begin to learn a bit more about Daisuke Matsuzaka, the newest sliver of heroin to the junkies of Red Sox Nation, we, as we all tend to do, take a look at his homelife. Specifically, his wife, Tomoyo Shibata, who, according to the outstanding research of UmpBump, has caused a stir in Japan for rocking the cradle, being a golddigger (not that we’re sayin’ that!) and working as (gasp!) a sideline reporter. Because the former Miss Shibata is significantly older than Matsuzaka (she’s 31, he’s 26), she was viciously criticized in the Japanese media for “seducing” Matsuzaka when the couple began their liason in 2000 when he was only 19 years old. Because of the difference in their ages, they began dating in secret, and a huge scandal errupted when it came out that Matsuzaka’s car had been towed for being illegally parked overnight in front of Shibata’s house (it was such a big scandal that the Seibu Lions even suspended Matsuzaka for a few games). [...]
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August 31st, 2009 at 10:32 pm
[...] we first broke the background story of Daisuke Matsuzaka and his wife Tomoyo back in 2006, there wasn’t a lot of time to search for pictures, so we just went with what we could find [...]
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