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Yankees superstar Matsui honoured by hometown museum
December 7, 2005
TOKYO (AFP) - New York Yankees outfielder Hideki Matsui, one of Japan's biggest sports stars, was honoured with a giant museum in his hometown.
The three-story museum, with about 1,000 items of memorabilia on display, opens to the public on Thursday. It has a parking lot big enough for 110 cars and 30 buses.
"The starting point of my dreams lies in the fields here," Matsui, 31, said at a ceremony to unveil a bronze statue of the millionaire slugger holding a bat as a child.
"Nothing has changed in the way I feel since the times when I chased the white ball as a child," he said at Matsui Hideki Baseball Museum in Nomi, a coastal city some 300 kilometers (190 miles) northwest of Tokyo.
Matsui's popularity in Japan, where baseball is the king of sports, is comparable to that of English football superstar David Beckham.
Exhibits include the ball Matsui hit for the 400th home-run of his career in a game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in September, and a cup commemorating his 500th hit in his Major League career since 2003.
A life-size wax model of Matsui in a pin-stripe Yankee uniform is one of main attractions along with gloves, bats and spikes, which were made to his specifications and can be touched by visitors.
The facility was built at a cost of 500 million yen (4.2 million dollars) on a 5,000-square-meter (55,555 square feet) plot where a Matsui exhibit hall of smaller scale had stood since 1994 when he was still with Tokyo's Yomiuri Giants.
A three-time most valuable player of Japan's Central League, Matsui signed a three-year, 21 million-dollar contract with New York after the 2002 season.
Last month, the New York Yankees signed him to a new four-year deal reportedly worth up to 52 million dollars, making him the highest paid Japanese player in the major leagues.
"The overall theme is dreams and we show how Mr. Matsui has followed his dreams," Nakako Kobayashi, a public relations agent for the museum, told AFP.
An outdoor monument displays pictures by pupils from Hama Elementary School, which Matsui attended.
There is also a picture by Matsui drawn himself when he was six. "It is signed 'I want to be a baseball player,'" according to Kobayashi.
Matsui came home last week amid rumours about his romantic links to Japanese actress Naho Toda, which he did not deny.
In his three years in New York, he has hit .297 with 70 homers and 330 runs batted in.
Of players debuting after 1940, Matsui and Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals are the only two players to record 100 RBI in each of their first three seasons.
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