TORONTO -- Red Sox manager Terry Francona was astounded yesterday to learn of a common practice in Japanese baseball known as "kantoku show," in which a manager doles out cash to players he considers deserving of a little bonus after a victory. Something extra in the envelope, for example, for Daisuke Matsuzaka.
"You're kidding me," Francona said when told of the "manager prize," as it is translated, according to an article in yesterday's
"It should be the other way around," he said with a laugh. "If I manage a good game, he should give me something."
Despite another superb outing by Matsuzaka -- and a dazzling three-K inning by Japanese teammate Hideki Okajima -- there would be no payoff of any kind for the Sox, who fell, 2-1, to the Blue Jays before a raucous crowd of 42,162 in the Rogers Centre.
Matsuzaka, pitching for the first time against an opponent he had not laid eyes upon before facing, gave the Sox six innings in which he was all but untouchable except for one hiccup. It would prove to be a costly one, as Matsuzaka could not survive an infield roller, three walks, and a tough, potential double-play smash that shortstop Julio Lugo could not glove in the fourth inning, when the Blue Jays scored both of their runs.
"He's definitely a good pitcher," said Frank Thomas, the Jays' newly imported strongman who drew a walk between Vernon Wells's one-out dribbler for a single and Lyle Overbay's RBI single that skipped past Lugo, then scored the winning run when Matsuzaka walked Gregg Zaun with the bases loaded. "But I don't think he's on his game yet. He had enough to shut us down. He had that one inning where he was a little wild and ineffective, but he's got pitches to finish people.
"He was as advertised. He's one of those guys you know in your mind that he's got pitches that can finish you."
Despite 10 strikeouts in six innings, which enabled Matsuzaka to match another international sensation, Fernando Valenzuela, with 10 or more whiffs in two of his first three big-league starts (Fernando did it in 1981), Matsuzaka came up a loser for the second time this season. This, despite giving up just two runs to the major leagues' hottest-hitting team (.294, 52 extra-base hits) coming into last night.
"I'd seen him pitch before," said Wells, a World Baseball Classic alumnus, who said the Jays managed to lay off Matsuzaka's rising fastball, a pitch they'd swung at in their first at-bats, to draw the walks in the fourth. "Obviously, he has great stuff. It was a matter of us trying to do a better job than he did. We didn't do much, but we did enough."
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