Shinjyo / Shinjo/ SKINjyo?

Back in May of 2001, my future wife and I went to Photo Day at Shea. This was the greatest promotion. It was underpublicized, but the Mets set up a date where the first few thousand fans who showed up early on a chosen Saturday in May were allowed to walk onto the field at Shea and take pictures of all the Mets. You could walk around the warning track that wraps around the entire field, and every player on the roster would be standing or sitting along the perimeter for you to take photos of. We went three years in a row, I think. I don't see it on this years promotional calendar...

Anyway, back to 2001. Like I said, my future wife and I were having a grand old time taking pictures of Bobby Valentione and Mike Piazza, et al, when suddenly my date was called over by a group of Japanese people who had a video camera and a microphone. They were apparently with some Japanese television station, and they were covering the event because of the heralded arrival of Tsuyoshi Shinjo. They wanted to interview her about what she thought of the Mets new acquisition. She had nothing to say about Shinjyo of course, but they didn't want to hear from me, so I told her to tell the cameras she liked Shinjyo because he played "with a lot of flair." It became a bit of a running joke with us for awhile.

Well, Shinjyo's been out of Major League Baseball for a couple years now, and just decided to announce he's retiring from baseball altogether, but apparently he is still trying to show off his "flair."

The enormously popular outfielder is already apparently being swamped with offers for work once he's finished playing.... it seems likely that his baseball uniform won't be the only garments Shinjo plans to shed... Shinjo's thinking about releasing a collection of nude photos... there's also talk of Shinjo and his wife doing a nude shot together.

Good lord. Big Props to Ryan McConnell at Always Amazin' for finding this hilarious news tidbit.