Boston Red Sox right-hander Daisuke Matsuzaka pitches during Game 3 of the 2007 American League Championship Series in Cleveland. The Red Sox won a bidding war with the Japanese team that held his rights and then signed Matsuzaka to a six-year, $52 million deal. AP Photo/Paul Sancya
Boston Red Sox fans spent the weekend refreshing X (formerly Twitter) hoping for good news in the pursuit of free-agent pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
First we learned he was having another dinner with New York Mets owner Steve Cohen. Then he had a meeting with the New York Yankees. There was at least one report about a scheduled trip to Fenway Park.
Baseball analyst Jim Bowden, a former general manager, reported that the Red Sox had offered more than $300 million to land the 25-year-old right-hander. Longtime Red Sox reporter and Spanish play-by-play announcer Marino Pepén posted multiple reports over the weekend that indicated the Sox were all in on Yamamoto.
On Sunday, the pitcher posted a selfie on Instagram. He was sitting on a plane next to his agent Joel Wolfe, with the hashtag “Super Joel” added to the post in Japanese.
The baseball Twitterverse erupted. Was the flight heading northeast to Boston? Was he headed back to the West Coast? Was he really FaceTiming Bryce Harper in Philadelphia?
It was all reminiscent of another flight featuring another highly sought Japanese pitcher. In 2006 the Red Sox won the rights to negotiate exclusively with Daisuke Matsuzaka, a national phenom who was expected to dominate major league hitters.
The rules were different back then. First you had to win the bidding war with the Japanese team that held his rights. The Red Sox did that with a sealed bid of $51,111,111.11. That gave the Sox a month to get a deal done with the pitcher himself.
The days went by, agent Scott Boras holding out for more. With less than 48 hours remaining in the window, the Sox brass flew to California in December to meet with Matsuzaka’s camp in person. With time running out, the pitcher boarded John Henry’s private plane and flew east with Tom Werner, Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino.
There was no deal in place when the plane took off. By the time it landed in Boston, Matsuzaka was a member of the Red Sox, agreeing to a six-year, $52 million deal. The anticipation was so high NESN stayed on the air for six hours tracking the flight and discussing his potential impact on the Boston staff.
Matsuzaka’s career in Boston was enigmatic, but the hype surrounding his arrival in the U.S. was off the charts. There was a record number of global media covering the team’s spring training workouts. While he never did throw the promised gyroball, Matsuzaka helped the Red Sox win their second World Series in four years. Boston hadn’t won a playoff game since winning it all in 2004 and the signing of Matsuzaka was exactly what the franchise needed.
One of the early-season highlights that year was the first start “Dice-K” made at Fenway Park. He lost a 3-1 pitchers’ duel to Seattle ace Félix Hernández. What we remember most from that night was when Ichiro Suzuki led off the game and Fenway erupted as everyone tried to record the historic meeting between the two Japanese legends. The atmosphere was electric.
That electricity has been missing from Fenway Park for a few years. In 2006, the Red Sox realized they would have to overspend to land the biggest pitching prize on the market. While Matsuzaka’s career was cut short by injuries, the Sox won four playoff series in his first two seasons, and came within a game of another World Series appearance in 2008.
Seventeen years ago we waited for a plane to land in Boston with good news. Now it’s 2023 and we keep refreshing our feeds hoping another Japanese pitching sensation will help lead the Sox back into the playoffs and bring the excitement back to Fenway Park next summer.
Tom Caron is a studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on NESN. His column appears in the Portland Press Herald on Tuesdays.
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