FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Accidental fame doesn't give you much of a heads-up.
You can be minding your own business one minute, sweating up a storm while doing your job. The next minute, your face is being transmitted halfway across the world, like you're the next Elvis or something.
"Elvis Presley? Wow," George Kottaras said yesterday. "It was . . . The guy just wanted to play catch."
Kottaras is still at the point in his career where his name is a line in "Transactions."
BOSTON, Aug. 31 -- Red Sox trade David Wells to the San Diego Padres for Triple A catcher George Kottaras.
But for the 15 minutes Daisuke Matsuzaka needed someone he could throw a baseball to, Kottaras unexpectedly found himself on the receiving end of international celebrity. The gloves went on, and so did the cameras.
Had he ever experienced anything like it?
"For a game of catch?" Kottaras said. "No, not really."
It was Matsuzaka's first day in Red Sox training camp. It hasn't officially opened yet, but that was of no consequence to the paparazzi assembled to record the moment -- 12:01 p.m., a minute later than the Sox estimated -- when the Japanese pitcher pulled into the parking lot in a black Cadillac Escalade. Matsuzaka was behind the wheel, though surely the Sox, who have thought of everything else, would have furnished him with a driver. He drove in just behind Sachiyo "Sachi" Sekiguchi, the new Japanese media liaison. Sachi was in the gray Nissan. A man from Matsuzaka's marketing firm in Japan, Architect Inc., rode shotgun with the pitcher.
The first man to greet Matsuzaka was Charles Cellucci, the former deputy superintendent of the Boston Police Department who heads the Sox security detail. Matsuzaka, wearing a gray T-shirt, gray shorts, black Nikes, and carrying a black gym bag with the familiar swoosh on the side, followed him through the front door of the facility, which was deserted except for a handful of players.
One of those players was Kottaras, the 23-year-old catcher who is viewed by the Sox as a candidate to succeed Jason Varitek one day, but not this year. Come Opening Day, Kottaras, who is from Toronto and had sufficient Greek ancestry to play for the motherland in the 2004 Athens Olympics, figures to be in Pawtucket, catching every day.
Yesterday, Kottaras had been working all morning on catching drills with Gary Tuck, the new Sox bullpen coach, when Edward "Pookie" Jackson, one of the Sox clubhouse men, stuck in his head and said Matsuzaka was looking for someone to play catch with.
" 'OK,' I said," Kottaras said. " 'It doesn't matter. I'll do it.' "
