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The story
Hiroshima’s Ryosuke Kikuchi had been in fine form — hitting safely in three straight games against Yakult from September 13-15 and batting cleanup for the first time in three years — when, on September 16, the digital edition of “Weekly Bunshun” named him in a report alleging he had assaulted a former teammate, Ryutaro Hazuki. According to a team insider, during a joint voluntary training camp in Shizuoka Prefecture, Kikuchi got Hazuki, who doesn’t drink, drunk, and after Hazuki dozed off, pressed a fork heated with a lighter against his neck. Masaya Yano and Yuya Nirasawa, now with the industrial-league team NTT East, are also said to have been present. On the forum, opinions split not just over condemning the alleged assault, but over whether it was right for Hazuki to testify under his real name.
In the September 13 game against Yakult, Hiroshima’s Ryosuke Kikuchi batted cleanup for the first time in three years, and with the team trailing by three runs in the 8th inning, he hit an RBI double to left field for the team’s only run of the game. The next day, back in the No. 2 spot, he reached base on a single to right field in the first inning to spark the rally that opened the scoring, contributing to a 3-0 shutout win. On the 15th, he added another single to right in the first inning, then drove in a run with a groundout to third in the second. The 36-year-old second baseman has now hit safely in three straight games and remains an active part of the first-team roster.
Then Kikuchi’s name surfaced in an entirely different context. On September 16, the digital edition of Weekly Bunshun named Kikuchi outright, reporting allegations that he had assaulted a former teammate, Ryutaro Hazuki.
According to the article, during a joint voluntary training camp in Shizuoka Prefecture, Hazuki, who doesn’t drink, was made to drink at a meal, and after he dozed off, Kikuchi pressed a fork he’d heated with a lighter against his neck, a team insider testified. Masaya Yano and Yuya Nirasawa, now with the industrial-league team NTT East, are also said to have been present.
Source: asagei.com / Original article here
What people said
This pretty much kills his chances of getting drafted, doesn't it?
That doesn't exactly inspire confidence, lol
Their depth chart's getting way too stacked at this rate
If we're talking Giants, he's veteran-class like Sakamoto (Tatsunori Sakamoto, the Giants' longtime star)
You've got to take violence seriously
Read the room, man…
Hazuki really will talk about anything, huh…
Sure, he probably did get victimized, but
Hazuki's kind of a bad guy himself, isn't he
Going 'It's not just me who's bad, he is too' —
sounds like he's trying to drag someone else down with him
The teammates and the team who pinned all the blame on Hazuki and threw him under the bus as the scapegoat are way more in the wrong
Huh, so that's the kind of mindset we're dealing with
He's supposed to be a future front-office candidate for Hiroshima, and now he's been thrown under the bus
Letting it slide unchecked for this long was way too careless
They're the same age, right? (Yoshihiro Maru, former Hiroshima teammate now with the Yomiuri Giants)
It comes out without anyone even digging, as per usual
They don't need a veteran with no upside left
Guess ex-pros really can join NTT East
Makes the guy who just smoked a regular cigarette during a game look downright innocent by comparison
He got memed on so hard for that, poor guy
Background and Talking Points
The Weekly Bunshun report centers on an incident during a “joint voluntary training camp” in Shizuoka Prefecture. These camps are informal, off-contract training sessions that young and mid-career players organize across team lines, and the fact that the alleged witnesses — Masaya Yano and Yuya Nirasawa (now with NTT East) — were themselves Hiroshima players suggests this stayed entirely within the team. The forum debate centered less on the alleged assault itself and more on whether Hazuki was right to testify under his real name, pitting those who praised the disclosure against those who called it cowardly for dragging others down with him. Note that some comments referencing “zombie cigarettes” point to an unrelated drug scandal involving a different player, which is easily confused with this case. Comments trivializing the “guts burn” hazing practice, or making tasteless jokes tied to Hiroshima and atomic bomb survivors, are a separate matter from the seriousness of the reported conduct and have been excluded from this article.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “Hiroshima’s Kikuchi Accused by Teammate: ‘Pressed a Lighter-Heated Fork to His Neck’.”
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