Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and this week’s honoree is Rie Park, the wife of Phillies hurler Chan Ho Park.

Rie grew up in Japan, as a third generation Korean-Japanese (”Rie” is the Japanese spelling of her name. Her Korean name is “Ri-Hye”). Her father, businessman Park Choong-Seo, is the 76th richest man in Japan.

After graduating from prestigious Sophia University in Tokyo, Rie moved to America to study French Cuisine at the Culinary Institute of America, and actually worked for a time as a French chef before meeting Chan Ho.

The couple was introduced to each other by a mutual friend, and spoke several times on the phone before finally meeting in person. “He was really odd,” Rie recalled. “He kept calling me early in the morning for three straight days.” But when she finally met him, “it felt as though I had known him for a long time.”

After less than a year of dating the couple was married in 2005, in a wedding in Seoul that was attended by Chan Ho’s MLB buddies Hee Seop Choi and Jae Weong Seo.

The couple now has two children – a three year old daughter Elynne, born in 2006, and a 9-month-old daughter born last year, whose name does not appear to be known by the internets.

The two seem to be very much in love, with Chan Ho claiming that his wife’s cooking is even better than his mother’s and Rie saying that Chan Ho scores 100 out of 100 on the good husband scale, particularly praising him because he “willingly changes diapers and bathes the babies.”

Rie’s latest project is a Korean cookbook, entitled Rie’s Kitchen, in which she outlines over 160 different recipes she has cooked for Chan Ho during their marriage. All proceeds are being donated to charity.

More pictures after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and today’s entry is Maki Ofuji, the wife of Seattle Mariners catcher Kenji Johjima.  Born in Kyushu, Maki started modelling in high school and soon began appearing as a model in commercial ad campaigns. By the age of 20, she was already being hailed as one of the “Queens of Kyushu advertising.” She became so popular that she even began appearing in her own line of “idol” videos and photobooks.

Maki met Kenji Johjima when he was a highly touted rookie on the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks. The couple was married in 2000, after which Maki gave up her modeling career to focus on raising a family. Together the couple has three children – sons Yuta and Keita, and daughter Miu.

According to the Japanese version of Wikipedia, Maki and Kenji are famous in Japan for their harmonious marriage. Kenji famously once said “Without the support of my wife and children, my life would not be possible,” which was considered an incredibly moving and sensitive thing for a Japanese man to say.

More pictures after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and this week’s honoree is Julianna Zobrist, aspiring singer of Christian-themed electronic pop/rock music and wife of Tampa Bay Rays utilityman Ben Zobrist.

Little information about Julianna is available on the internets, but we do know that she had quite a busy winter this past year, giving birth to the couple’s first child, Zion, and releasing her self-published debut album, The Tree, the title song of which husband Ben has been using as his entry music at Rays home games.

More pictures after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and this week, in honor of Phillie reliever J.C. Romero’s getting reinstated to the roster after completing his 50-game suspension for a first offense related to performance enhancing drugs, we pay tribute to his wife Erin.

Erin met the Puerto Rican-born J.C. when they were both undergradutates and fellow student-athletes at the University of Mobile. Erin, who played softball, still proudly boasts that she hit more homers one year than J.C. did.

A self-proclaimed fitness nut, Erin has taken the blame for convincing J.C. to go on the regimen of dietary supplements that he claims led to the unwitting ingestion of androstenedione that led to his positive drug test, for which J.C. is now suing the manufacturer, alleging inadequate labeling.

The couple has a young daugter, Jaslyn, who was born in 2006.

Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and today, on what would have been her 83rd birthday, we pay tribute to perhaps the hottest baseball wife of them all.

Pictures after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and this week’s honoree is Heidi DeRosa, the wife of Cleveland Indians infielder Mark DeRosa.

Heidi is a retired fashion model, who used to work the cameras under her maiden name “Heidi Miller.” Other than that very little is known about her, at least on the internets. The couple was married in 2003, and they have one child, daughter Gabriella.

Last fall Heidi DeRosa was voted “hottest wife in baseball” by the readers of fantasy site Fantasy Baseball Dugout. Frankly, we here at UmpBump wouldn’t necessarily go quite that far, as there are many other contenders, but you can be the judge yourself.

More pictures after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and this week’s honoree is Carolina Cruz de Martinez, the wife of Pedro Martinez.

Born in San Geronimo in the Dominican Republic before emigrating to the US with her family, Carolina first met Pedro in 1998 when he was pitching for the Boston Red Sox and she was a sophomore at Boston College. Pedro would often create a stir at BC in those days when he would show up on campus to watch her play in college volleyball matches.

Carolina went on to become a reporter for ESPN Deportes before marrying Pedro in November of 2005.  Today, Carolina run’s Pedro’s charitable foundation, the Pedro Martinez and Brothers Foundation, which contributes to a wide variety of charitable causes both in the US and the Domincan Republic.

In recent years, Carolina and the Foundation have been particularly involved in helping poor Dominicans rebuild after devastating hurricanes, and with Carolina’s personal brainchild, the “Power in Learning”program, which develops programs to help young girls in the Dominican have access to a good education.

More pictures after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and this week’s honoree is Misaki Iwamura, the wife of Rays second baseman Akinori Iwamura.

Born in a small fishing village near the town of Shimonoseki in western Japan, Misaki was working as an “Office Lady” when Akinori saw her while out at an event hosted by mutal friends.

“It was love at first sight,” confides Akinori, who then asked his friends to invite her out again so he could ask her out on a date.

Akinori did his best to conceal that he was a famous baseball player, and Misaki did not find out who he was until she mentioned to her baseball-loving brothers that she had been asked out by some guy named “Akinori Iwamura.” They told her she should accept right away, but she played hard to get, making Akinori ask her out numerous times before she finally said yes.

The couple was married in 2005, and had a son, Taiki, in 2007.  They live in St. Petersburg, Florida.

More pictures after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »