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Japan's Starry Gems of the Diamond
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They buy advertising space -- for ads that are often written in Japanese script -- inside American ballparks.
Then they study the fielding positions, hitting proclivities and lineup order of Japanese stars. The object is to calculate where inside a stadium and when in the course of a game an Ichiro or a Matsui might appear on TV with the company's sign in the background.
The most famous hit in the seven-year history of this Japanese guessing game was struck on behalf of Komatsu, a company that makes bulldozers.
When Matsui joined the Yankees in 2003, Komatsu bought a sign in Yankee Stadium.
Before deciding where to place it, Komatsu reviewed the trajectory of the 332 home runs Matsui had hit in Japan for Tokyo's Yomiuri Giants. It bought space for a sign in the upper deck of right field.
Matsui hit his second home run as a Yankee on April 14, 2003. It flew over the Komatsu sign.
A Komatsu advertising manager, Tooru Nakayama, watching the game at home in Tokyo, remembers throwing his arms in the air and shouting:
"Jackpot!"
Major League Baseball exports opening day to Japan to capitalize on the popularity of the Big Three -- and to try to move beyond them.
"The most important reason for bringing the Red Sox and the A's to Japan is to deepen the popularity of Major League Baseball beyond the appeal of Ichiro, Matsuzaka and Matsui," said Small, who runs the organization's office here.
Japan is by far the MLB's most lucrative international market, producing 60 percent of its foreign earnings.
"We have the casual fan in Japan who will watch a game on NHK because Ichiro is playing," he said. "We are trying to take those casual fans and slide them over into the hardcore fan category of people who care about rivalries like Boston-New York."
