Baseball writer Robert Whiting has come out with an expose on how Bobby Valentine got screwed by a trio of Koreans using every dirty trick in the book (and then some) during his final year as skipper of the Chiba Lotte Marines baseball team in Japan:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0100117j1.html (registration might be required)
http://saltocean.blogspot.com/2010/0...valentine.html (re-printed in whole here)
One of the gruesome threesome was a fortune-teller named "Yoko":
A key, if unusual, combatant in the effort of the front office to discredit Valentine was a moon-faced, middle-aged woman named Yoko Yoneda, who, at the start of the 2009 season, had been elevated to the No. 3 spot in the front office, in charge of media relations and VIP suites.
With a fondness for garish fashion "” black, zebra-striped polyester shirts and loud pink dresses "” and carrying a mauve business card that described her as a "fortune teller" who did "character and color analysis," she was surely one of the strangest NPB executives in the annals of the game.
Yoneda made news at the beginning of the season, when she ordered reporters to stop wearing jeans and to use keigo, or formal Japanese when speaking to the players. This was the cause of great mirth to some observers, since most reporters had nothing else in their wardrobe and most players, for their part, were so uneducated they could not understand honorific Japanese.
A former cheerleader at high school baseball powerhouse PL Gakuen and an employee at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., which manufactures Pocari Sweat, a Japanese soft drink, Yoneda had been introduced to Akio Shigemitsu, by the president of Otsuka, and had been given a job in the Lotte front office in 2006.
No one could figure out what the nature of her relationship was with the diffident billionaire's son, who denied there was anything romantic going on. He simply explained in a news conference that Yoneda was an "eccentric character" who told his fortune.
Setoyama was just as surprised at her elevation to the top ranks of Lotte as everyone else.
From spring training on, Yoneda had pressured scribes to criticize Valentine more in print and, in one case, demanded a reporter to write Valentine had chosen the wrong pitcher. She complained that Valentine's lifelong friend, coach Frank Ramppen could not even hit fungoes properly.
As head of the VIP suites, she cut off access to Valentine's wealthy supporters (including an American corporate executive who spent $15,000 a year on tickets to Marines games but who, Yoneda said, had damaged a VIP room carpet).
She then turned around and granted entree to the families of select Marines players like star infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka in an effort to curry favor with them (and was even seen spotted playing Nintendo Wii video games in one of the $2,000 suites)....
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-b...0100117j1.html (registration might be required)
http://saltocean.blogspot.com/2010/0...valentine.html (re-printed in whole here)
One of the gruesome threesome was a fortune-teller named "Yoko":
Quote:
...A key, if unusual, combatant in the effort of the front office to discredit Valentine was a moon-faced, middle-aged woman named Yoko Yoneda, who, at the start of the 2009 season, had been elevated to the No. 3 spot in the front office, in charge of media relations and VIP suites.
With a fondness for garish fashion "” black, zebra-striped polyester shirts and loud pink dresses "” and carrying a mauve business card that described her as a "fortune teller" who did "character and color analysis," she was surely one of the strangest NPB executives in the annals of the game.
Yoneda made news at the beginning of the season, when she ordered reporters to stop wearing jeans and to use keigo, or formal Japanese when speaking to the players. This was the cause of great mirth to some observers, since most reporters had nothing else in their wardrobe and most players, for their part, were so uneducated they could not understand honorific Japanese.
A former cheerleader at high school baseball powerhouse PL Gakuen and an employee at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., which manufactures Pocari Sweat, a Japanese soft drink, Yoneda had been introduced to Akio Shigemitsu, by the president of Otsuka, and had been given a job in the Lotte front office in 2006.
No one could figure out what the nature of her relationship was with the diffident billionaire's son, who denied there was anything romantic going on. He simply explained in a news conference that Yoneda was an "eccentric character" who told his fortune.
Setoyama was just as surprised at her elevation to the top ranks of Lotte as everyone else.
From spring training on, Yoneda had pressured scribes to criticize Valentine more in print and, in one case, demanded a reporter to write Valentine had chosen the wrong pitcher. She complained that Valentine's lifelong friend, coach Frank Ramppen could not even hit fungoes properly.
As head of the VIP suites, she cut off access to Valentine's wealthy supporters (including an American corporate executive who spent $15,000 a year on tickets to Marines games but who, Yoneda said, had damaged a VIP room carpet).
She then turned around and granted entree to the families of select Marines players like star infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka in an effort to curry favor with them (and was even seen spotted playing Nintendo Wii video games in one of the $2,000 suites)....
