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Daisuke Matsuzaka will pitch his first major league game Thursday, and his next start, his Fenway debut, is next Thursday against Seattle Mariners. The first batter he is going to face, is the most likely first Japanese Hall of Famer, Ichiro Suzuki. It goes without saying that the match up of the two is a huge deal in Japan. First time they met in Japan, May 16, 1999, he struck him out three times in four at bats (he walked last at bat). Ichiro has something to prove, it’s revenge time, and Matsuzaka of course has to show his Boston fans what he has. A friend of mine who works for a newspaper in Tokyo said he is probably not going to sleep till after that day. Yikes. talk about dedication.

This year is Ichiro’s contract year. He has never been a free agent in his 16 years of professional life. He loves Seattle, but is sick of losing. He likes to win, as he showed us at last spring’s World Baseball Classics. Seattle, with its heavily Japanese influenced ownership (Nintendo) would not let him go, but he may be out of their price range. Ichiro himself said something like “this maybe my last opening day at Seattle” this week, according to Nikkan Sports. It is said that best suitor for Ichiro is Los Angeles Dodgers, but look for rumor of him coming to Boston this year, as Boston has the deep pocket and is an annual contender. Imagine Ichiro and Matsuzaka, arguably two of the biggest baseball star in Japan playing in my home team uniform? I can dream, right?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 04/04/2007 @ 8:43 am and is filed under Baseball, Softball, and Judo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.