Meet NYC’s new power couple
WITH APOLOGIES to Hideki Matsui, the Yankees’ signing of Masahiro Tanaka just gave the Bombers a Godzilla-sized ace for their starting rotation, and Gotham’s newest celebrity power couple.
Carmelo and La La, take note.
Lost in all the immediate buzz of the ace righthander Tanaka’s talents coming to the Bronx is the pitcher’s wife, entertainment and pop star Mai Satoda, who is f our years her husband’s s en ior. T he 2 5 -yea r- old Tanaka may be known for his sparkling 24-0 record last year with the Rakuten Golden Eagles and for his split-finger fastball, but Satoda has made her ow n st a mp in the Land of t he R ising Sun, with her pop music a nd T V background.
Satoda, who turns 30 on March 29, has been associated with several musical acts, including the all-girl pop group Country Musume (which translated means “Country Girls”), which formed i n 1999. The group has gone through several incarnations, with Satoda joining in 2002. The band folded in the late 2000s.
But according to several Japanese reporters, Satoda became a household name when she appea red on a “Jeopardy!” - style show called “Quiz! Hexagon.” Satoda’s appeal stemmed from her routinely fielding trivia questions and giving answers that were incorrect — by a wide margin.
“In t he ( C ou nt r y Musume) group, she was not as famous,” said one Japanese TV reporter, who asked not to be named. “When she joined ‘Quiz! Hexagon,’ then she became very famous. She would always give the wrong answer, and i n Japan, the audience likes that. It’s a little cute and funny.” The reporter added that although Satoda’s role on the show might come across as “ditzy,” Mrs. Tanaka was “not looked down upon.
“She became fairly popular. It wasn’t like Paris Hilton,” said the reporter. “She was well-liked for being ditzy.” Tanaka and Satoda married in 2012.
During the Ta n a - ka cour ting process by major league teams, s e veral repor ts said that Satoda was trying to inf luence her husband to choose t he Dodgers, presu mably so she might get a foothold in t he Hol ly wood scene.
But Hiroshi Kanda, an editor with Kyodo News who covered Matsui’s Yankee tenure, said that Satoda was more a “girlnext-door” talent who “cares more about Tanaka than her career.”
“She is one of the most beloved baseball wives (in Japan),” Kanda said. “But I don’t think she’s thinking about her career now.”
That sentiment appeared to be the case last October when Satoda responded to many fans’ concerns about Tanaka’s health following his apparent barehanded catch during the playoffs.
“He’s OK because the ball made a hop before he caught it,” Satoda wrote on her blog. “It wasn’t a direct catch, that would have been scary!”