Matsui's got a nice wife, but can she cook a mean hamburger?

As indicated by the content of newspapers like Nikkan Sports and Sports Nippon ("Suponichi"), reporters who cover athletes and reporters who cover show-business personalities are almost interchangeable. Though tabloid sportswriters are expected to have specialized knowledge of the sports they cover and tabloid showbiz reporters aren't expected to know anything beyond the details of a subject's most recent divorce, in the end they both trade in celebrity fascination.

So it was odd that the journalists who covered the press conference in Florida where slugger Hideki Matsui announced his marriage went about their work so awkwardly. Even by the usual standard of inarticulateness that applies to professional athletes, Matsui is opaque, but he's more willing than most to talk to reporters, which he obviously believes is part of his job. In Florida, he was clearly embarrassed at the prospect of discussing a matter this private, and the discomfort infected the press corps, who tossed their predictable questions at the New York Yankee outfielder as if afraid they might reinjure that famously delicate left wrist. If they had been real showbiz reporters they would have shown no mercy, but as a celebrity Matsui is often treated as if he were a member of the royal family.

Thanks to a scoop by Sankei Sports, everyone knew that Matsui had already wed the unidentified woman from Toyama Prefecture in New York City. But they didn't know much else and Matsui didn't give them a lot to work with, the main reason being that his bride is an ippanjin, or "regular person." She didn't enter into the union as a celebrity, and is thus off-limits. She remains a mystery, and the two crude drawings of the young woman that Matsui displayed at the press conference — one sketched by him, the other by his architect brother — may have prompted observers to wonder if all this marriage business wasn't some kind of premature April Fool's joke. TBS's "Sunday Japon" elaborated on the idea by commissioning its own drawing of the woman that looked like something from Picasso's cubist period.