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The story
Giants catcher Shinnosuke Yamase has reportedly been dating TV personality Chika Yamane, who is older than him. Rather than focusing on the romance itself, 5ch’s reaction spread into a discussion of why so many pro baseball players end up with “older wives,” as well as the playing-time battle within the Giants’ catching corps, including Takuya Kai and Yukinori Kishida.
Giants’ promising strong-armed catcher Shinnosuke Yamase is “seriously dating an older female TV personality”! Happily sporting matching outfits
“At a drinking party thrown by a mutual acquaintance”
A shot of the moment Yamase spoke to Yamane and she smiled back. Both wore sunglasses but showed no concern about being seen
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Why would a photographer normally bother staking out a second-string (minor-league) player?
Well, that's obvious
Seriously, what's with baseball's "older wife" culture?
Same goes for soccer
Actually it's true across pro sports in general
Guys who've been fiercely ambitious since their school days and only look upward don't really go for younger women
By the way, every player on this year's Japan World Cup soccer squad who's disclosed his wife's age has an older wife (Kamada and Mitoma haven't disclosed it, but they're known to be the same age as their wives)
A city woman in her late twenties/early thirties easily reels in a country boy who's done nothing but sports his whole life
Huh???
What do you mean???
Looked at the left side of the second pic and thought "nice," then realized it was someone else
Unlike the old days when things could be hushed up, tabloids don't hold back anymore, and even if the tabloids miss it, it'll get exposed on social media — guys need to be careful
Then again, screwing up is just what baseball players do
Back in the day, unlike now, it was hard to push back even when the media wrote fabricated stories
Whatever the media wrote was treated as 100% true even if it was baseless or made up, and if you were a TV personality you'd get pulled from shows and commercials over it
Cute, but no distinct personality
Looks like she could be in a K-pop/K-drama act
but even with Kai down in the farm league, he's still not getting playing time
If he simply can't beat out Kishida and Oshiro, there's nothing to be done about it
He got called up when Kishida got injured, but the pitchers got hit hard
Once Kishida came back, he was sent down to the farm team
Well then, sounds like the woman might dump him without a second thought
Catcher only has one roster spot, so a position switch is the only option
so the guys complaining about it by dragging sumo into this can save their breath
That's kind of a rude thing to say too
It's basically like declaring "I'll take work as a sumo fangirl ("suujo") and get friendly with the wrestlers, but I have zero romantic interest in them as men"
Is that why she went out of her way to make that declaration — because Saya Ichikawa was stealing her sumo-related work?
Well, Hiramatsu was a good-looking guy though
Nah, I watch sumo sometimes too, but I've got no intention of marrying a sumo wrestler either
Why would that be rude?
It's fine to think that, I just mean you don't need to go out of your way to say it
Background and Key Points
Giants catcher is a role position by nature — Yomiuri carries a roster of catchers because the job requires handling different pitching staffs, and Yamase, Kai, Kishida and Oshiro are effectively competing for one primary job plus backup innings. That context matters here because posters treat the dating story as basically an afterthought to a playing-time argument: Yamase reportedly pushed back on his lack of at-bats during last year’s contract renewal, got a look when Kishida was hurt, and was sent back down once Kishida returned — a fairly ordinary NPB depth-chart story that has little to do with his relationship. Chika Yamane’s agency is Horipro, a major Japanese talent agency, and posters’ suspicion that the “candid” paparazzi shot was staged is a comment on how Japanese tabloid culture (bunshun-style scoops) and agency-managed publicity often overlap, not a claim with any evidence behind it in the thread.
The thread doesn’t really split into camps arguing for or against the relationship; it splits on cause. One line treats “older wife” pairings as a structural feature of elite athletes — kids who specialized in sports young and never developed outside romantic experience get scooped up by older, socially adept women — and backs it with the anecdotal claim that most disclosed wives on Japan’s World Cup soccer squad are older than their husbands. The other line is just soccer-fan needling of baseball, plus a tangent about Yamane’s past statement that she won’t date sumo wrestlers, which posters read either as a reasonable boundary or as needlessly pointed given her work covering sumo.
What outsiders will likely miss: nothing here is confirmed as a “scandal” (fuurin/uwaki) — it’s an unmarried, unremarkable dating report, which is why several posters explicitly call the story trivial and instead pivot to lineup gossip.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread「[Baseball] Giants’ promising strong-armed catcher Shinnosuke Yamase “seriously dating an older female TV personality” — happily sporting matching outfits」.
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