•Jorge Posada? More like Jorge Pissedoffa, amirite? The Yanks' catcher sparks a bench-clearing brawl with the Blue Jays. Pitcher Jesse Carlson suffered a pretty nasty head wound, making this the worst day of casualties in the history of Canadian wars.

•Bills scapegoat Leodis McKelvin woke up to find painted on his lawn: "learn to take a knee, [obscenity]" As of press time it was still there, since while trying to bring the paint thinner out from the garage, he dropped it.

•They say pitchers are never the same after they come back from shoulder fatigue. In the case of Dice-K, they're right; he looked nothing like the pitcher he was before the injury. He was actually good.

•Was Kim Clijsters cheating by having that baby? Studies show that mothers have higher pain thresholds, and better oxygen flow to the muscles. It's one competitive advantage Caster Semenya will never have.

•Roger Goodell says two Saints won't be suspended as long as the courts are still considering the cases of the Vikings who tested positive for the same banned substance. So, NFLers, now's the time to take whatever you want, and not get punished it. Kind of like always.

•Golden State's Stephen Jackson was fined $25,000 by the league for saying he'd like to be traded to Cleveland, New York, or one of the Texas teams. That's the standard $15k fine for publicly wishing to be traded, and $10k for actually wanting to go to the Knicks.

•Finally, Jon Stewart attempts to lure LeBron James to New York with the promise of Shake Shack. Well, the custard is just as likely to pass him the ball as Nate Robinson.

Matsuzaka is still a beloved legend among the Lions faithful, but when he left his team was playing in a dilapidated rundown stadium known as the Seibu Dome. And when the Red Sox lavished an unexpectedly large windfall upon them, the Lions used it to renovate and upgrade the dome, turning the stadium into the class of the Japanese league. They installed the country's largest video scoreboard (165 feet across by 23 feet high), new fake turf for the field, a new outfield fence, upgraded players' lounges, more concessions, more seats, and they gave away free uniforms and gloves to children. Fancy! They even had a few million left over to buy some new, better players. (They won the 2008 Japan Series thanks to those acquisitions.)

But the crown jewels of the new and improved Seibu Dome are the luxurious state-of-the-art restrooms, with more space, shorter lines, and new stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors and electronically warmed toilet seats.

"In Japanese custom, it is very important, the toilets," Takahashi said during a recent tour of the stadium, which opened in 1979. "If you are comfortable in the toilets, then everything is comfortable."

Whereas the old facilities were dingy concrete latrines, state-of-the-art urinals line the men's rooms along with high-tech hand dryers built into the bright blue and white tile - the team colors. But the main attractions are the new toilets with TotTo's Warmlet seats in stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors.

Each stall in the women's bathrooms holds a Toto Washlet, a toilet and bidet in one unit. These $1,500 fixtures provide a luxurious experience for fans, who may spend their time in the restrooms contemplating the full extent of Matsuzaka's legacy with the Lions.

The team considers these thrones to be a loving tribute to their departed star and he must be quite touched. Boston may have won the World Series with Dice-K, but more than a few Sox Nation members would probably trade him and all of Fenway Park for a freshly washed arse.

Seibu Lions' Porcelain and Plastic Memorial to Matsuzaka [NY Times]
Japan: One, Two, Three Wipes You're Out At The Old Ballgame [The Awl]
Seibu Lions Replace Dice K With Toilets [Slow Breaker]

In fact, The Boston Herald says, he has only brought in about $900,000 worth of Japanese endorsements. Heck, that's not even enough to take care of Michael Vick's dogs!

While most estimates have Seattle and the Yankees garnering between $3-6 million annually because of the presence of Japanese outfielders Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui, respectively, the Red Sox' final tally came up well short. Funai Electronics proved to be the sole sponsorship gained because of Dice-K, netting the Red Sox an annual contract of approximately $900,000.

"There was absolutely not this windfall of corporate advertising dollars we thought there may be, or that (Matsuzaka's) representative might have led you to believe during the negotiations," Kennedy said.

Obviously, Scott Boras is Dice-K's agent. Our favorite part of this story is that Red Sox brass seem amazed by this, that someone whom you feature every five days might be less marketable than someone whom you feature every day, like Ichiro. The good news? Maybe they can sell the patent on the supposed gyroball.

Is Matsuzaka Still Worth It? [UmpBump]

According to CNBC's Darren Rovell, Dice-K is signing baseballs for ... around 450 bucks.

Sure enough, the price for a Matsuzaka signed baseball in English will be $449.99, while his signature with a Kanji inscription will cost $100 more. The public usually pays between double and triple what the player gets per signature. So that means that Matsuzaka is conservatively making $150 per signature, one of the highest in sports memorabilia history.

We've never quite understood the memorabilia business; it's another of those things that takes the games we love and somehow makes them more unseemly. So we wouldn't pay $450 for an autograph even if it were Ankiel signing a copy of Nevermind while watching Husbands and Wives and wearing a Mattoon High School letterman's jacket. But hey, we're not a bored middle-aged banker looking for a reason to keep going, either.

Dice-K Signs With Upper Deck [CNBC]

The upcoming album "Music From The Mound" from Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka features a compilation of Matsuzaka's favorite and inspirational songs from various American, English and Japanese recording artists. The CD is set to debut in stores on July 17.

The album also features the new original track "Gyro Ball", which includes guest performances from former J. Geils harmonica player Magic Dick, former Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt as well as Boston Red Sox television announcers Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy.

You know, we had been wondering when someone was gonna give Nuno Bettencourt and the former harmonica player for the J. Geils Band another opportunity to shine. And with Jerry Remy!

Music From The Mound [Boston Globe]

Among the 36,360 screaming souls in attendance was Seth Mnookin, author of Feeding The Monster and Hard News, a longtime Red Sox observer (and main reason A.J. Daulerio once interviewed Jayson Blair).

The game might not have turned out the way Red Sox Nation might have expected or hoped, but it was still a telling evening. After the jump, Mnookin's report from the evening, which makes us glad once again that we weren't born a Red Sox fan. Too much stress.

————————————

I've been to Fenway Park a lot in my life; there've only been four times when the pre-game frenzy was as electric as it is before a playoff game:

• Yaz's final game. ***
• The home opener is 2005.
• Pedro's return to Boston in a Mets uniform.
• Last night

When Yaz retired, he was the arguably the most beloved Red Sox player of all time (don't start jawing off about Williams - Boston only truly embraced him after he'd retired). Two years ago, the orgasmic flush of the Sox's World Series finally crested in the home opener's ring ceremony. And even us crusty old New Englanders knew enough to celebrate the best pitcher ever to play the game, even if he was wearing orange and blue.

Last night, on the other hand, wasn't a celebration of the past; this was a frenzy fueled by an expectation of what's yet to come. Daisuke Matsuzaka, the baby-faced assassin whose gyroball shrugs off the normal constraints of space and time like yesterday's jock, was making his first start in Fenway Park. On Brookline Ave., vendors were selling Dice-K thunder sticks. Japanese language cheat sheets could be had for a couple of bucks. (Apparently Sox announcer Carl Beane picked one up: When he went through the lineup, he introduced Matsuzaka in his native tongue.) There were so many flashbulbs going off when Matsuzaka pumped in the game's first pitch to Ichiro that third baseman Mike Lowell said he was just glad Ichiro didn't hit a drive down the line because he couldn't see a thing.

As the recently departed Kurt Vonnegut would have said, so it goes. Dice-K pitched well enough - seven innings, three runs, 4 Ks and a walk - and there were many delightful moments when he made the Mariners wave pathetically at the ball. There were also many times when he got hit, and hard. It wasn't a bad performance by any stretch, and if Matsuzaka turns in six years worth of 15-8 ball with a 3.60 ERA, he'll have been well worth his $8 million annual salary. But not bad doesn't cut it when you're expecting transcendent, and by the end of the night, some fans - at least some of the fans sitting near me in Section 17 - were grumbling about how he wasn't worth all the hype.

Boston can be a tough town to play in. Even taking into account the fact that Nomar is batshit insane, he had a legitimate gripe when he complained about the suffocative nature of being a Red Sox hero. David Wells, not exactly one of baseball's shy wallflowers, told me he loved the energy of pitching in Fenway but hated that he couldn't go to a movie with his kid without being mobbed. Even Matt Clement (remember him?) bemoaned the fact that he couldn't bike to the ballpark, as he'd done with the Cubs.

With that level of obsession - an obsession that justifies the highest ticket prices and least comfortable seats in baseball - comes a certain sense of entitlement, an entitlement that was only fueled by the magical postseason run three years ago. Combine that with the vernacularization of impressive sounding statistical terms - OPS, WHIP, etc. - and you've got yourself a frighteningly combustible mix: a small but vocal number of clowns who are convinced they know what they're talking about and feel as if they have the god-given right to share their opinions with the rest of us. (I'm well familiar with this behavior. In my family, we refer to it as N-CAR disease: "never certain, always right.")

To be sure, the N-CAR's are a distinct minority, but in a city like Boston - a city without the distractions of Broadway, or Wall Street, or Bungalow 8 - that minority can suck up a lot of oxygen. On Monday night, I almost drove off the road after hearing a caller on WEEI's "Planet Mikey Show" (does anyone else have an innate distrust of grown men who still use a diminutive nickname?) confidently proclaim that Manny should be traded because "he's done - he has, what, a .200 on-slugging percentage?" There are many good reasons why it makes sense to trade Manny; the fact that, six games into the season, he wasn't crushing the ball isn't one of them. Most players can deal with this type of knee-jerk criticism, just as most players can deal with being booed. But some can't. And some simply don't want to. (Manny - and yes, I know he's also out of his skull - also has cause to complain about the off-field demands of playing in Boston.)

Dice-K could very well end up being one of the game's elite pitchers (just as Beckett could have a great year ... but after only two games, I'm not yet convinced). I've never seen anyone throw four plus pitches as confidently as he does, and that's including Pedro. Thankfully, the language barrier will likely keep him from being subjected to the worst the local populace has to offer. But I couldn't help but notice that while the Mariners were hitting lasers of Matsuzaka, another phenom, Seattle's Felix Hernandez, was pitching an absolute gem of a game. Remember him? King Felix exploded into the baseball universe two years ago. He struggled a bit last year to the tune of a 12-14 and an ERA above the league average. And guess what? Seattle fans didn't try to run him out of town. So far this season, he's 2-0 with a complete game one-hitter under his belt, 18 strikeouts, and a 0.00 ERA. If King Felix pitched for the Sox, they'd be building a shrine on Lansdowne Street. Of course, if King Felix pitched for the Sox, who knows what could have happened last year. Boston can be tough on rookies. Just ask Cla Meredith.

*** Note: there may not have been that much of a frenzy at this game, but I was 11. It felt frenzied to me. Of course, I was also traumatized at that game by needing to pee in one of the blessedly defunct Fenway troughs.

Because we grew up in the middle of a cornfield surrounded by nothing but grain silos and chubby cows, the whole Boston Red Sox/New York Yankees madness sometimes escapes us. But even we can't ignore the inherent excitement of a Dice-K vs. Ichiro matchup tonight at Fenway Park.

If we were having any trouble having our interest nerves rankled, here's a DOUBLE HAPPY SMILEY YOW! quote from Ichiro about the matchup that will stir the souls of even the most placid observer.

"I hope he arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul," he says. "I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger."

Outstanding. Totally reminds us of when Manny Ramirez said something similar about facing Mariano Rivera for the first time.

"You know what would be great right now? A sandwich. Sandwiches are awesome."

They are awesome. They really are.

Dice-K Vs. Ichiro: History To Repeat [Seattle Times]
Our Flag To April's Breeze Unfurled [Soxaholix]

On Wednesday, Daisuke Matsuzaka will make his Fenway Park debut ... and it's not just a big day for him and the Red Sox, it's also huge for the Japanese baseball fans. Because it's not only Dice-K out there; he's going to face Ichiro Suzuki. If only they could pull Hideki Matsui off the DL for a day and let him pinch hit.

Anyway, as Digital Headbutt points out, this is hardly the first time Matsuzaka and Ichiro will meet ... and, historically, Dice-K has owned Ichiro. It's pretty rare you see Ichiro look as bad on three consecutive at-bats as he does in this video. We look forward to it, mostly because it will be SUPER HAPPY FUN TIME YAY!

Japan Is Going To Implode On Wednesday [Digital Headbutt]

• Never Before Has Such A Fuss Been Made Over Beating The Royals. Dan Shaughnessy rolls out all the Daisuke Matsuzaka cliches so that you don't have to! "Dice-K was Ice K. He was also 10 K. And Special K. Maybe even a Japanese Pedro. Or a Pocket Rocket." What, no mention of the Gyro Ball? Matsuzaka struck out 10 over seven innings in his major league debut, leading Boston over Kansas City 4-1. "I can't say that my overall condition was that great today, but I think the role of a starting pitcher is to set up the game and give my teammates the opportunity to win," he said through an interpreter, whose mouth movements were not in sync with the words. "I feel like I was able to do that today, so I was satisfied." Matsuzaka (1-0) allowed six hits, including a sixth-inning homer by David DeJesus, and walked one. Manny Ramirez had an run-scoring double in the first, and Julio Lugo doubled in the fifth, stole third and scored on a throwing error. Oh, sweet fancy Moses, Shaughnessy; we just now saw this: "So go out and buy that No. 18 jersey and have a bowl of Dice Kream and top it off with a Dice-K Tini at the Ritz-Carlton." Stop. It.

• First Things First. If the Nationals could just get through the first inning, things wouldn't be so bad. Jason Bergmann needed 50 pitches to get through a three-run first, as the Diamondbacks went on to a 4-3 win. Washington has been outscored 8-0 in the first inning over four games.

• Oh, Alex. Maybe it's all that negative chatter that's causing Alex Rodriguez to fail in the clutch. With the bases loaded in the eighth, A-Rod popped out against rookie reliever Brian Stokes, the Devil Rays beating the Yankees 7-6 in Andy Pettitte's return to New York. Elijah Dukes hit his second homer in his second Major League game for the Devil Rays.

• They're Cubtastic. We love the passed ball ... it's like the prison escape of sports. Except when it happens to the Cubs and leads to the go-ahead run, because haven' t they suffered enough? Michael Barrett's passed ball in the seventh did the damage, helping the Reds to a 5-2 win. Jeff Conine's pinch-single tied the game with two outs in the seventh. Scott Hatteberg had a two-run homer in the eighth.

• We Like Mike. Mike Piazza, full-time DH. We suppose the Athletics know what they're doing, because his homer with two outs in the ninth beat the Los Angeles Angels 4-3.

What is the gyroball? New pitch from outer space? Nothing but the Japanese version of a slider? A type of hamster wheel that runs our servers? A pitch that's contractually obligated to be the subject of an in-depth piece on every major sports Web site? The answers are shrouded in mystery. But Texas Rangers hurler C.J. Wilson is endeavoring to find out, claiming that the pitch is real, and that he will have it in his repertoire by the beginning of the regular season; becoming the first U.S. pitcher to use it in a game. From his blog Cactus Tracks:

The ball does some mysterious stuff. Ron Mahay and I were playing catch before my mound session and he said the ball actually took off just like it's supposed to. he said he can see the spin is much different than a normal fastball. it rises first, and then tails a bit into a lefty (with the 2 seam style grip) and then does the same but cuts if I throw it the other way. I successfully threw 10 of them in a row.

The pitch is supposedly used in Japan; that's Daisuke Matsuzaka — now of the Red Sox — allegedly throwing one above. Wilson says that he's developing his gyro ball with the help of a Japanese scientist, which we think is great. Because we need all the Japanese scientists we can get to counteract the effects of the rampaging, radiation-mutated Barry Bonds.

Gyro Update [Cactus Tracks]
Unwinding The Mystery Of The Gyroball [The Big Empire]

Now, we know that baseball players don't exactly have to be the most perfect physical specimens, and hey, it's not like they're really into the steroid use in Japan. And we also don't like to be the type of people who make fun of another person for their weight, unless they're someone who doesn't like us.

But still: For all the mystery and madness surrounding Dice-K ... the first piece of information we got on him was that he's a little more portly than your traditional 100 million free agent. Everyone's watching the guy now, and all we know now is that he's a little easier to find than we had initially thought.

Dice-K: Phat, or Fat? [Red Sox Monster]

Red Sox fans, take heart: You can now see Dice K himself, Daisuke Matsuzaka, pitching in a Red Sox uniform, kind of. In this ad for Asahi beer — we love that people can physically drink the beer in Japanese commercials — Dice K dons the duds and even throws a pitch, albeit with some less-than-convincing cut-and-pasting.

Sad thing is: We guarantee you half our Red Sox readers just got erections. And the other half are women.

Because the former Miss Shibata is significantly older than Matsuzaka (she's 31, he's 26), she was viciously criticized in the Japanese media for "seducing" Matsuzaka when the couple began their liason in 2000 when he was only 19 years old. Because of the difference in their ages, they began dating in secret, and a huge scandal errupted when it came out that Matsuzaka's car had been towed for being illegally parked overnight in front of Shibata's house (it was such a big scandal that the Seibu Lions even suspended Matsuzaka for a few games).

Also, she is known as "Rockets," because of ... well, because of her cans, apparently. And by cans, we mean "breasts," and by "breasts," we mean "rockets."

HBW: Tomoyo Matsuzaka [UmpBump]

As we marvel at a shockingly entertaining column from Dan Shaughnessy this morning, we wonder, once again, how little Matsuzaka must understand what he's in for. We don't mean that in the normal way, which implies that an athlete like Matsuzaka is somehow simple-minded and confused about these Crazy American Sports. We mean that the level of assimilation and comfort he must muster almost immediately — there's a press conference at 5 p.m. today; fingers crossed that Epstein wears the gorilla costume again — seems like a bar too daunting to reach. We agree with one section of Shaughnessy's column: Throw away the AM radio.

Some Friendly Suggestions For Matuszaka [Boston.com]

Anyway, we keep hearing reports from Michael Silverman from The Boston Herald that Matsuzaka is on a plane to Boston, but we can't confirm them, because the Herald's Web site is down right now, something that is probably causing their Web editors to bash their heads against the wall. (We know the feeling.) Regardless, the deadline is tomorrow, so soon this will all be over and we'll be able to get on with our lives. With this in Boston and Iverson in Philadelphia, the anticipation out there is decreasing productivity on the East Coast to NCAA Tournament levels. Is D-Mat on a plane or not? Does A.I. know there are bowling alleys in Minneapolis? The questions we obsess over, sports fans, are why this is all so great and maddening.

Doctor, Doctor [Soxaholix]

It's bizarre and amazing, and Red Sox fans are still trying to make sense of it themselves. One soul has gone so far as to compare Matsuzuka to the Nissan Skyline GT, a car previously available only in Japan, and the rest of us have to wonder how much the guy would make if he actually had pitched in the majors before. What if he tears his labrum in his first game? Sure, injuries aren't inherently as much of a crapshoot as we think they are, but still: You never know.

Whenever huge deals are signed like this, there's a temptation to throw your hands in the air and say, "Hey, it's not my!" This argument makes no sense; after all, it is your money (it's not as if sports franchises just have their own printing press). The amount of money is staggering, not just for its volume, but it's lack of historical context. We're fully expecting So Taguchi and Scott Spezio to sign $22 million deals each in the next few weeks.

Baseball's Mad New World [Yahoo Sports]
Daisuke Matsuzaka is a Nissan Skyline GT-R [Get Untracked]
The Upsize Revolution [Soxaholix]

(UPDATE: They're having a great discussion about this at Yanks Fan/Sox Fan.)

We were curious, though, if Matsuzaka, uh, has any idea what he's in for. We don't deny that Boston is as beautiful a place on earth to play when matters are going well, but when they're not, well ... we just wonder if Boras has taken the time to explain what exactly the history is of each of the teams bidding for his services. Not to say that Matsuzaka is clueless about American baseball, but, on the whole, we're just hope he knows what he's getting himself into. Not that Yankee Stadium wouldn't be fun either ...

Wait May End Tonight [Boston.com]