"You know, it's nice around here, a lot of good people, but it's hard to get used to in a short period of time," said Ortiz. "I mean, I go back to the hotel, I'm a big TV watcher. I got TVs all over my house. My baby's room. My room. Everywhere.
"But here, man, all I can watch is CNN, and I can't watch CNN because it just makes me worry about things, because all they show is people getting shot, things like that."
There was one day last week, when he was being taken to lunch by one of his Japanese hosts, that Ortiz looked as though he had stumbled into one of those cop shows he likes to watch. On the way to the restaurant, they noticed a black car in pursuit.
"All the way, man, he was following us," Ortiz said.
Moments after their arrival, the car pulled up behind them, and a middle-aged Japanese man wearing a dark suit emerged from behind the wheel.
"All he wanted," Ortiz said, "was an autograph."
Winning a World Series can have that effect on people, even in a baseball-crazy country on the other side of the international date line where the favorite US team has always been the Yankees -- never more so than after beloved slugger Hideki Matsui left the Yomiuri Giants to wear pinstripes -- and whose most insanely popular player, Ichiro, is setting records with the Seattle Mariners.
But there were abundant signs that the Red Sox have their fans here. In the Tokyo Dome last weekend were two North Shore guys in full Sox regalia -- Bill Schacht of Reading and Shawn Newell of Swampscott -- leading an entire section of thunderstick-slapping fans in rousing chants of "Let's go, Red Sox."
"I just needed to say thank you to these guys," Schacht said of his willingness to shell out 15,000 yen (more than $140) for a ticket, "and ask them to sign my ball."
