Last year we brought you the news that Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui had secredly wed a 25-year-old office worker from Japan. However, at the time, Matsui refused to divulge her name, and no pictures of her were available, other than Matsui’s rather amateurish hand-drawn depiction of his beloved.

However, in the year and a half since that time, Japanese fans have been diligently at work, scouring video clips for any evidence that Matsui’s purported wife actually exists.

So far, they have come up with two photographs, which Japanese websites agree are almost certainly of Matsui’s wife. Have a look and see what you think…

(pictures after the jump…)

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This week, in honor of the World Baseball Classic, we are coming up with “All-Time Teams” for as many of the participating nations as we can. Having already checked out the Canadians and the Italians, we now turn to the Japanese.

Creating an all-time team for Japan is an interesting exercise because many legitimately great Japanese players never had a chance to play in the Major Leagues, but probably still would have performed well in the Majors if they had ever gotten the chance.

Thus, rather than confining ourselves only to Major Leaguers, which would have been quite boring and predictable, we’ve created a combined list which gets much closer to representing a true list of the greatest players at each position ever produced by Japan.

For the purposes of this exercise, we will allow non-Japanese players who were born as citizens of the Japanese Empire, such as Sadaharu Oh, but exclude foreign-born players who played in Japan, such as White Russian ace Victor Starffin or American slugger Tuffy Rhodes.

Here’s how the squad from the land of wind and ghosts shakes out…

Starting Lineup

Catcher: Katsuya Nomura - Nomura is the second greatest Japanese player when measured statistically.  His 657 homers are second all time in Japanese baseball, behind only Oh, and he did it all while playing the demanding position of catcher.  Nomura was amazingly durable, catching a ridiculous 2920 games and playing across four decades from the 1950s to the 1980s before becoming a very successful manager.

First Base: Sadaharu Oh - Unquestionably the greatest Japanese player ever, the half-Taiwanese Oh smashed a world record 868 homers, and was so good that even given the difference in league talent levels he would almost certainly have been not only a star in the Major Leagues, but actually a major league Hall of Famer (Baseball Guru estimates he would have hit 527 homers had he played the same number of years in the majors).

Second Base: Shigeru Chiba – Chiba is the greatest second baseman in Japanese Baseball history, renowned for his outstanding plate discipline, his blazing speed on the basepaths, and his slick fielding at second, earning him the nickname “Formidable Buffalo” which was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, given that he was only 5′6″ and 140 pounds.

Third Base: Shigeo Nagashima – Nagashima is the second greatest Japanese player ever when measured by how Japanese people feel in their hearts.  A fearsome hitter and an outstanding defensive third sacker, he was Oh’s partner in crime and protection in the lineup when the Yomiuri Giants won 9 Japan Series in a row in the ’60s and ’70s, and with his quirky personality and aura of greatness he remains perhaps the most beloved man in all of Japan to this day, even moreso than Oh.

Shortstop: Kazuo Matsui – Believe it or not, Kazuo Matsui is actually the greatest Japanese shortstop ever. Despite his at times lackluster performance in the majors, the numbers he has put up beat the numbers that could be reasonably projected for other Japanese shortstop greats, and he also enjoyed a fine career in Japanese baseball before coming over.

Left Field: Hideki Matsui - Godzilla’s proven track record of offensive excellence at the highest level playing for the Yankees, in addition to his monstrous production before coming over, make him the choice to play left field, despite his lackluster defense.

Center Field: Ichiro – Ichiro is not actually the greatest Japanese player ever, but he is most certainly the greatest centerfielder, and is well on his way to the Major League Hall of Fame on the merits of his major league numbers alone.

Right Field: Isao Harimoto – A Zainichi Korean (real name: Jang Hoon) and a survivor of the Hiroshima atom bomb, Harimoto is the only Japanese baseball player to record 3000 hits, and he is second in career batting average (by one point) at .319, and third in bases on balls.

Rotation and Closer

Ace: Masaichi Kaneda - Kandeda won an all-time Japanese record 400 games from from 1950 to 1969, averaging exactly 20 wins a year for 20 straight years.

No. 2 Starter: Kazuhisa Inao (pictured) - The Sandy Koufax of Japan, nobody can touch his peak, including 20 wins in a row in 1957 and a Japanese record 42-win season in 1961.

No. 3 Starter: Daisuke Matsuzaka – At age 28, Daisuke is already a living legend and one of the greatest Japanese pitchers ever, and he still has a lot of time left to do more great things.

No. 4 Starter: Eiji Sawamura (pictured) – Japanese pitching legend who once struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Charlie Gehringer and Jimmy Foxx back-to-back-to-back-to-back. The Japanese equavalent of the Cy Young award is named the “Sawamura Award” in his honor.

No. 5 Starter: Hideo Nomo – Nomo was not necessarily a superstar in the slap-hitting Japanese leagues, but he thrived in free swinging America, where he rode his devastating forkball to a productive and strikeout-filled career.

Closer: Kazuhiro Sasaki – Sasaki is as good a closer as Japan has ever produced, having great success in both Japanese baseball and in the Majors with the Seattle Mariners.

Final Verdict: The Japanese squad is truly formidable across the board, and would match up well with just about anybody.

In a bizarre drama, Hideki Matsui announced on Thursday that he has secretly gotten married, but he refuses to divulge the identity of his wife, showing only sketches of her drawn by himself and his brother.

What made the whole situation even more bizarre is that Matsui may have married her in order to win a bet he made with teammates Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu.

According to the terms of the bet, if Matsui got married first, he would win an undisclosed sum of money from the other two, but since Matsui was considered more likely to get married first, Jeter and Abreu were given handicaps of 1 year and 6 months, respectively.

This means that if Jeter can get married in the next year, or Abreu can get married in the next 6 months, they won’t have to pay anything to Matsui, but both players are already conceding that Matsui has won for sure and say they will pay up now.

According to Jeter, there is “no chance” that he will be married by next March.

But while UmpBumpers are certainly curious enough about the identity of this mystery woman Matsui has married, the far more pressing question has to be, is she a Hot Baseball Wife?

While the sketch above implies a certain level of hotness, if you sort of tilt your head sideways and squint at it funny, more information is needed to return a verdict of “hot” – so let’s go to the evidence…

1. Matsui is a Major League ballplayer, one of Japan’s most instantly recognizable public figures, and has often been referred to as “the most eligible bachelor in Japan.”

This means she is likely to be hot.

2. She is 25 years old and Japanese.

This information increases the likelihood that she is hot.

3. According to Matsui, she quit her job at a reputable sporting goods company about 1 year ago.

Well, having no job at all is not so hot, but then again, gold-diggers are often hot.

4. “Matsui became attracted to her personality as well as her discretion and proposed to her,” sports tabloid Sankei Sports reported.

Hmm. When people start talking about “personality” and “discretion,” actual hotness starts to be questioned.

5. At his press conference Matsui declared, “In short, I fell in love at first sight.”

Well, maybe she was pretty hot after all if Matsui fell in love just by looking at her.

6. “She is reserved and is not so sprightly,” Matsui said. “I think she is a person who is very considerate to others.”

Uh, okay. “Considerate to others” is hot, but “reserved” and “not so sprightly”? That sounds kind of un-hot.

So what do you think? Is this woman likely to be hot? You make the call:

more at twiigs.com…

Hideki Matsui returns to the Yankees tonight as the team’s DH. Just in time, too. Because the Yankees are really hurting for hitting, currently fielding only 7 all-stars in their batting order.

With Matsui’s return, the question becomes, who will the Yankees keep for their postseason roster? Or, more to the point, who will they cut?

Teams get 25 players to take into the postseason. You figure the Yanks will take four starters, a closer, a setup guy, a couple of middle relievers…all told, probably around ten pitchers. Which leaves them with 15 position players. They’ve got to take two catchers, so that means Posada and Fasano are in. You know they’ll take A-Rod, Jeter, Cano, Giambi, Abreu, Matsui and Damon. That’s nine. But after that it gets sticky.

It’s a safe bet that Sheffield (provided he heals in time), Bernie Williams, Melky Cabrera, Craig Wilson, and Miguel Cairo will make the team. That leaves one more spot.

You’ve got to figure that last spot will go to scrappy infielder Nick Green, b/c he’s the only guy who can play SS besides Jeter and A-Rod. If A-Rod or Jeter goes down, the Yanks will need Green.

That means Aaron Guiel and Kevin Thompson get the axe. Oh well.

And that, in a nutshell, is your Yankees postseason lineup. Not too shabby.

Pitching for the Empire will be Wang, Johnson, Mussina and Lidle. That’s not too shabby, although, as good as Wang has been, I’m still a little bit hesitent to consider him the kind of number one ace that a team needs to win the World Series. Wang is good, but he’s no Schilling. And he’s certainly no Santana. 

The New York Times oversells it just a teensy bit today. The paper of record’s description of Hideki Matsui’s broken wrist in the first inning:

As stomach-turning injuries go, Matsui’s could rank with the broken legs of Joe Theismann on “Monday Night Football” and Tim Krumrie in the Super Bowl. The twist was that it happened to the foremost ironman in baseball.

Ugh, dudes? This may be Red Sox-Yankees—and believe me, as a card-carrying member of the Fenway Faithful, I know each game seems like the Super Bowl—but it’s still just one of 162 regular season games. It’s still just May. Krumrie’s leg bones snapped in three different places, and Theismann ended up with his tibia and fibula literally sticking up out of his flesh. Matsui didn’t exactly get slammed by linebackers, “foremost ironman” or no. We’re not talking a head-to-head collision in the outfield or a Tony C-type beanball or a hard liner back to the mound. Yeah, it’s not mysterious knee stiffness. It’s not an unexplained “medical issue.” It’s hardly akin to the minor woes of a certain centerfielder.

Matsui will need surgery and he’s not going to be back anytime soon. And I realize that New Yorkers have a rather myopic view of the world (ie, they think the midwest starts somewhere in Jersey and that Boston is on the border with Canada) but compare Matsui’s break with these and then tell me where it ranks.

Ugh!! That hurt…