Word: matsuzaka
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...Lions towel wrapped around his neck, Koike spends the entire game bobbing like a prizefighter in Seibu's official cheering section, where well-drilled fans in blue and white drum and sing personalized anthems every time a Lion comes to bat. One player is missing though--superstar pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, who left for the Boston Red Sox this off-season after eight years with Seibu...
Koike's travel plans should worry the corporate overlords who run Japanese baseball. Matsuzaka is just the latest in a series of Japanese players who have left their home league at the peak of their career. The emigration has done wonders for the worldwide reputation of Japanese baseball players but not for baseball in Japan. While Dice-K (a fratty phonetic rendering of Daisuke that has become his new American nickname) can't blow a bubble without the media watching, attendance at Japanese professional games has sagged. TV ratings for the Yomiuri Giants, by far the country's most popular...
...grip on the Japanese soul. Every summer Japan is transfixed by the national high school baseball championship tournament, so passionate that it makes March Madness look like a pickup game at the YMCA. Ratings for local pro games may be low, but millions of Japanese will tune in to Matsuzaka's Red Sox games. If Japanese pro ball can liberalize--perhaps by sharing revenue to add competitive balance--there's no reason it can't recapture Japan. After all, there are some aspects of the Japanese game that the U.S. will never be able to beat. "Seibu Lions fans...
...showed up, and even posed in a goofy T-shirt, along with new San Francisco Giants teammate Barry Zito ("Don't ask me ... ask Barry!" the shirts read, with arrows pointed to one another). Some 200 members of the international press corps surrounded rookie Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka - to watch him warm up! ESPN even broke into a college basketball game this week to report that New York Yankees right fielder Bobby Abreu might miss two weeks of spring training because of an injury...
...Matsuzaka isn’t even a safe bet. Many Japanese players are less of a force on this side of the Pacific. Matsuzaka may become synonymous with the international mega-flop and could destroy the American market for Japanese players. No general manager would risk paying significant money for another export. Closing the door between Japan and America would be a big step back from the increased internationalization of recent years, which culminated in the celebrated March 2006 World Baseball Classic...