Sex kitten cashes in on Ichiro's fly ball

Friday (7/19) rocked Japan when it reported superstar ballplayer and national hero Ichiro Suzuki had been playing a different type of ball game with a sexy young Japanese woman residing in the United States. What the men's weekly didn't tell readers, though, was that the vulgar vixen on the receiving end of the line drive from the Seattle Mariners' outfielder had been doing some major league pitching of her own, according to Shukan Shincho (8/2). Rather than lobbing curveballs, though, the busty 20-year-old pitch involved flogging her story off to the highest bidder.

Shukan Shincho, probably the most respectable of the mass-market weeklies, outlines how its down market competitor listed a conversation between the woman and supposedly squeaky clean Ichiro in which the leadoff hitter basically admits to having an extramarital affair with her and at least one other woman. It goes on to add how Ichiro met the young woman at the exclusive San Francisco nightclub where she worked as a hostess and how she had taped one of their phone conversations to use as proof of their tryst. It continued by exposing a kink in what had previously been regarded as Ichiro's impenetrable armor.

"The hotel's got bathrobes, right? They've got cords, yeah. I thought I might tie you up with one of them. Sounds exciting, huh?" the weekly quotes Friday as having Ichiro say to the young woman.

Shukan Shincho notes it knew about Ichiro's games when his playing partner contacted its editors in mid-June to let them know she was prepared to expose her lusty liaison with the leadoff man provided it resulted in a major league payout.

"Look, I've got no future with Ichiro," the woman, identified only as M, tells Shukan Shincho. "I just want money."

M was apparently anxious to come up with a strikeout in the story of how she'd taken the champion batter past first base.

"You're not the first place I've contacted. I've been in touch with a lot of other places," Shukan Shincho staff quoted M as saying. "Actually, two days from now, I'm due to meet somebody from another weekly."

She later adds, "I'm also going to meet Ichiro in two or three days."

Shukan Shincho notes that the mysterious M has earned a reputation for talent from fields extending further than Ichiro.

"I know her," a source from the San Francisco club where she Ichiro and M are supposed to have met tells Shukan Shincho after seeing the photo of the woman pictured in Friday. "She worked in our club from October to December last year."

A regular from the watering hole added, "She's a really friendly type who gets into the act of things. She can rave on about any topic and never allows the customer to get bored. She's one of the top hostesses and she's so good I wouldn't be surprised to learn she'd been in the hostess business in Japan."

Shukan Shincho says there're few doubts that Ichiro wasn't playing around. But it adds that M remains something of an enigma. Friday staff are hardly forthcoming.

"Everything was in the story," a member of the Friday editorial team tells Shukan Shincho. "Read it and judge for yourself."

Off the record, though, it's a slightly different story.

"It's a fact that she went around trying to sell the story," an anonymous source connected to Friday says. "She apparently got paid more than 1 million yen for it."

July 29, 2001

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/archive/news/2001/07/20010729p2g00m0dm999000c.html