"They made one of the stables a makeshift maternity ward," Okimoto said. "I was literally born in a stable. My parents named me Daniel, because of the metaphor of Daniel in the lion's den."
He chuckled. "You could say I got off to a fast start," he said. "The year I was born, 1942, was the Year of the Horse. Maybe I should have been named after a horse."
Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino has been friends with Okimoto since they were classmates at Princeton. Okimoto roomed with Bill Bradley -- All-America basketball star, Rhodes Scholar, NBA player, and senator -- and later was a top policy adviser in Bradley's presidential campaign.
"Any time we think of doing something with a Japanese component," Lucchino said, "my first call is to Dan."
That was true in San Diego, when Lucchino was with the Padres and Okimoto spearheaded the team's doomed pursuit of Hideki Irabu, who insisted on pitching only for the Yankees even after the Padres acquired his rights. And it remained the case after the Sox entered a bid on Matsuzaka and Lucchino placed a call to Okimoto, who had overcome his humble origins -- the US government formally apologized for the internment in 1988 -- to become a professor of international studies at Stanford.
"I was working in my office last fall when Larry called," said Okimoto. "He said, 'Hey, Dan, we made a bid for Matsuzaka. If by chance we do win the posting, will you help us as an outside adviser to sign Matsuzaka, to help us develop our strategy?' "
Okimoto had gotten himself mixed up in baseball by chance. He'd been visiting San Diego, where he was raised after his family was released from the camp, and saw a picture of Lucchino in the paper. "I hadn't seen him since we were undergraduates at Princeton," he said. "I didn't realize he was president of the Padres.
"The next day, we had lunch."
