We'd love to share his pearls of wisdom, his hopes and dreams, his musings on Curt Schilling, Red Sox Nation, and Boston traffic, but alas these matters will take time. Matsuzaka was accompanied by an interpreter, but clearly most of his comments were lost in translation.
Consider this sampling:
Q: I'd like to get your impression of Fenway Park, after pitching off the mound, your initial impression of the park.
A: When the season starts, I'm looking forward to the game.
Now, I don't speak Japanese, but I know Matsuzaka said something more than that. His smile, his hand gestures, and his voice inflection suggested as much. The young pitcher appears to be animated, congenial, even playful.
But he also is in a country where he does not speak the language -- at all. That means he will be relying on someone to express his feelings, and that's a dicey proposition. He is about to immerse himself in a community that is as foreign to him as the streets of Tokyo would be to us. People born in this country have enough trouble learning the quirky ways of New Englanders. Factor in a language barrier, a cultural divide, and a little matter of having to perform on one of the most discerning -- not to mention relentless -- stages in baseball, and you hope this young pitcher can keep on smiling.
That, more than balls and strikes or balks and shutouts, presents the biggest challenge to Matsuzaka in Year One with the Red Sox.
We already know he's good. He has won at every possible level in Japan. His numbers in the World Baseball Classic (3-0 with a 1.38 ERA) were superb. General manager Theo Epstein yesterday said his newest acquisition had five pitches, then corrected himself and upgraded it to six.
"He is a surgeon on the mound," said Matsuzaka's agent, Scott Boras. "It's not just his power. He's almost like a surgeon with a chain saw."
