from the New York Daily News
TOKYO - Alone and exhausted, Hideki Matsui was unsure of his next move. He grabbed a brush, did a quick groom. A cook in the player's kitchen handed him some orange juice, then bowed deeply, reverently. He retreated to a bench in front of his locker and pantomimed a universal motion, sweeping his hand across his forehead, punctuating it with a sigh. Whew. Could his charmed life get any sweeter, any more dramatic? Joe Torre was in the interview room, feeding the beast that consumes everything Matsui. Chatting excitedly, all the other Yankees headed for the bus, leaving behind the object of their affection.
"Pretty unbelievable, huh?" said Derek Jeter, gesturing back to the clubhouse, Matsui's sanctuary.
Only minutes earlier Matsui had twirled reluctantly on the familiar Tokyo Dome home plate, waving like a beauty queen, the adoring crowd refusing to let him go. He accepted the MVP award, the Fighting Spirit award, and offered the Japanese fans his deepest appreciation and gratitude.
It's not often good will and hard work converge so spectacularly. It's not often the Yankees encourage solo acts, either, but that's exactly what Torre did Sunday when he decided to show his honor and respect for a country that proudly gave its most treasured icon to New York.
"You're allowed to be bigger than the game," Torre told Matsui, his left fielder and No. 6 hitter, as he was eating a pregame lunch. Rising above the team is opposite to all Matsui knows to be true, which is what makes him so special. But for one game, one super-hyped exhibition against the Yomiuri Giants, the team that literally owned Matsui for a decade, he would bat cleanup and play center field, his former position.
"Immediately I understood he was doing this as a service to Japanese fans," Matsui said through a translator after a 6-2 Yankee win.
If Torre's instinct is always this prescient, the Yankees can start selecting diamonds for their next ring. In the top of the second, as the dome glittered with exploding flashbulbs, the sing-song chant "Home run Mat-su-i, home run" was at fever pitch. Brass bands rocked the bleachers; fans banged on painted frying pans and taiko drums, blew whistles and trumpets, shouted through megaphones. Matsui obliged, sending a 2-2 pitch far into the bleachers in right-center. He has a flair for big moments - that grand slam in his first home game as a Yankee, a three-run home run in Game 2 of the World Series - but this one left him with a special glow, even if he was too modest to acknowledge it.
The beauty of Matsui isn't confined to his sweet swing, or his passion for running out grounders in sweaty sprints. He owns an apartment here, yet insisted on staying in the team hotel. His father Masao, a religious shaman in the Ishikawa Prefecture, runs a shrine dedicated to Matsui - come see the bat he used in high school, when he earned the nickname Godzilla! - but refuses to charge admission because, as he once explained, "It wouldn't be right for the heart." In turn, Hideki has never betrayed a boyhood promise to Masao to always be kind.
"His character, his values, the way he was raised, the way he is respectful and dignified," said Jean Afterman, Yankees vice president/assistant general manager, ticking off Matsui's considerable non-baseball qualities.
She is a large reason why Matsui will be wearing pinstripes Tuesday, Opening Day against Tampa Bay. Afterman was in Tokyo in November 2002, finalizing the club's synergy partnership with the Giants, when Matsui, free from his indentured servitude to Yomiuri, announced he would "challenge for the majors."
"He said some things in the press here that were very tantalizing. He mentioned he'd like to play in the Northeast, for a team rich in tradition," said Afterman. "My throat went into contraction. What if he meant the Red Sox?"
Afterman sent Matsui a letter on Yankee stationary, in English, "telling him how much we wanted him, how much our owner wanted him." It was personal, heartfelt, the perfect way to romance an icon without offending Japanese protocol.
One month later, Matsui dotted the i's on a three-year, $21 million Yankee contract and the letter went to his father's shrine. The backlash against Japanese players who want to spread their wings is often strong, but Matsui earned his countryman's blessings with an eloquent speech remembered here in the same reverential tones as Lou Gherig's.
Matsui promised he would take everything he had been taught and diligently apply it in the U.S. The future of Japanese baseball doesn't rest with one person, he said, but with children and their dreams. He made an entire country feel as if it were going to New York in his carry-on luggage.
The connection between Japan and Yomiuri is scary powerful - the team's success is invariably linked to either an economic upswing or the national suicide rate. Without Matsui in center, batting cleanup, the Giants finished in third. The manager and his entire staff resigned in shame.
Yomiuri's owner, media magnate Tsuneo Watanabe, insists on a military adherence to rules. Players must sprint to the dugout after each inning. They must encourage each other in loud voices. They can't travel overseas without the club's permission. Fittingly, Matsui kept using the Japanese word for "business as usual" to describe his homecoming.
"I didn't feel melancholy about it," he said.
"He has ice water in his veins," said Torre.
A home run, a hard single, two walks (which were really sprints), and now it was the top of the ninth with Matsui down two strikes to Brian Sikorski, the ex-Texas Ranger who once rode a shutout into the eighth against the Yankees. Sikorski got Matsui looking.
Again the stadium erupted, this time with fans lustily booing either Sikorski, the home team pitcher, or the umpire, for daring to make such a call. Matsui gave both respectful nods. Those who didn't make the mad dash for the parking lot stayed to honor their beloved son. He was in the midst of his zillionth bow when someone asked Sikorski what advice he had for MLB pitchers hoping to extinguish the flair.
"I had a tough enough time," Sikorski said. "Sorry, but they're on their own."
