DICE-K, THE MONSTER, GODZUKI or whatever ya call him is coming to America. The baby-faced, somewhat pampered $100 million man (plus perks) isn't exactly Jesus, but he'll be wearing #18, and he brings passion for the hometown team back from the dead as far as the faithful are concerned. Gordon Edes covers the drama in this play-by-play of hardball negotiations (essential reading), which at one point bordered on the absurd (police escort for a physical?).

But if the fear is that Japan's national treasure won't relocate so easily to his new nation (marketing ick-fest), especially amid the outsized expectations for a 26-year-old who's never pitched in the Majors before, we have this tidbit to give us hope that this kid is ready for the madness that is the American League East, even if J.D. Drew is not:

Asked about his expectations for next season, according to Sankei Sport [Matsuzaka] said: "I think getting a good start on the season will be a key to succeed. At this time, I feel Boston fans are welcoming to me, but I heard their character.

"When I'm not playing well, I am sure to have a tough time in Boston. I am going to do my best in order to make Boston fans be more excited."

Matsuzaka spoke with his new catcher, Jason Varitek, in a conference call the day after signing, Boras said.

When the agent visited in Japan this summer, Matsuzaka's wife asked for a favor. "She wanted to know if I could get Daisuke the jersey of his favorite player," Boras said. "I thought it might be Ichiro, or [Hideki] Matsui. No – it was Jason Varitek."

Right on, my yellow brother. Right on.

TRADING MANNY TO BOSTON is the best idea ever. This exchange, buried in The Sports Guy's mailbag:

Q: The Sox should just tell Manny he got traded to Boston. He won't know the difference.

- Mike H, Noxen, N.H.

SG: I love this idea. They could go all out with this: Call him up, tell him he's been traded to Boston, have him pack up all of his stuff, fly him in circles in the team jet for five hours, then drop him off in Cambridge and tell him he's on the West Coast. He might fall for it. By the time the season starts, it will be too late for him to complain. I really think this could work.

I HATE THE VIRTUAL WAITING ROOM, the inevitable and interminable purgatory that is a condition of every Red Sox online ticket sale. Every December, the Red Sox make tickets available for a handful of next season's games (ostensibly just in time for holiday gift giving). So every December, I spend a day sitting in front of the computer, living my life in-between 30-second automated browser refreshes that read:

Welcome to the Boston Red Sox Virtual Waiting Room!

PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT PATRONS ARE SELECTED FROM THIS VIRTUAL WAITING ROOM ON A RANDOM BASIS FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO PURCHASE TICKETS.

We are experiencing very high demand. As a result, all requests for seats cannot be served simultaneously. Please be patient, and your browser will be refreshed in: [30 . . . 29 . . . 28 . . . 27 . . . 26 . . . seconds]

When we refresh your browser, we will determine your status in the waiting room and, if appropriate, give you an opportunity to request seats. DO NOT REFRESH THIS WINDOW. We appreciate your patience.

Tremendous interest for Boston Red Sox tickets may produce lengthy wait times. While waiting, please be sure to read the following important information and check for general availability status below. . . .

Which is what I'm doing right now. And what I've been doing since 10:00am this morning. Waiting. And then, every 30 seconds, checking to see if my wait's over. And then I go back to waiting. And checking. And waiting. Every 30 seconds the message in the browser window refreshes, revealing the same message that was displayed during the previous 30 seconds.

But at the end of one of these half-minute nuggets, the Virtual Waiting Room will suddenly disappear, and I'll immediately find myself staring at a seating chart, plunged into an intense state of panic as I try to assess which seats are left to which games against which teams and on which days. The system allows you mere minutes to secure all your tickets before your time's up, and you can practically feel the good seats disappearing right in front of your eyes. It's the same feeling I imagined as a kid winning one of those 60-second shopping sprees at Toys 'R' Us — except now there's a $4 processing fee for each toy I grab and there are a hundred thousand other kids competing for the best toys right alongside me.

Keep in mind, we're talking about games in April and May, so it's already an act of faith to commit in advance the hundreds of dollars that the eight ticket per person limit represents. Yet the worst part isn't that all of this investment is based on a system that feels so fragile — linger too long or click the wrong button in haste and risk banishment back into the Virtual Waiting Room. And the worst part isn't that a lot of the weird purchasing restrictions and protocols are designed to discourage scalpers — and in fact do absolutely nothing to discourage scalpers — but instead make the process extra tricky for the rest of us. The worst part isn't even that you get to do this twice a year, once today and then some other day when the tickets for the rest of the season become available. The worst part is that, all things considered, this is probably as good a system for online ticket buying as we can expect. Go Sox.

IF MATSUI IS GODZILLA, then shouldn't Daisuke be Godzuki? According to the Wikipedia entry on Hanna-Barbera's "The Godzilla Power Hour":

Also included in the series was a cute diminutive Godzilla counterpart, Godzooky, who could summon the monster himself if necessary.

Makes sense to me, allowing that the monster Daisuke summons is the powerful and possibly mythical gyroball (not his pinstriped brethren, Matsui-san).

Anyway, regardless of whether it's necessary to call Daisuke Matsuzaka anything but Daisuke Matsuzaka, or whether we should be wary of reinforcing cartoonish cultural stereotypes, I say Godzuki as a nickname is still way better than "Dice-K". Where did the Globe come up with that? It's not remotely fun to say, nor does it convey the awesome might of a strange radioactive monster from a foreign land, which if nothing else, is at least intimidating. Dice K sounds like a second rate hip-hop artist, if you ask me.

UPDATE: Apparently, Daisuke is pronounced "Dice-K," so, uh, that's where the Globe came up with the nickname – it's his actual name (sorta). But it's still kinda lame. I much prefer the one he threw out there during his press conference:

His Translator: His nickname is the Monster in Japan. Now he’ll become the Red Monster. . . . [he's] very happy and excited to be on the Boston Red Sox.

17TH-CENTURY REALISM MEETS 20TH-CENTURY TELEVISION in "Joseph's Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob" (1630) by Diego Velázquez, now appearing in a really good exhibit at The National Gallery in London. The painting depicts Joseph's jealous brothers cleverly (and guiltily) offering their father false evidence of his favored son's death. Only Jacob's canine companion, straight out of a scene from Lassie, seems to know what the real deal is. One can almost hear the spaniel yapping, "Ruff! Something smells suspicious! Ruff! Ruff!" Apparently, even the masters will indulge in melodramatic plot devices from time to time.

THE MYSTERIES OF THE GYROBALL are illuminated by the Slate's Explainer, including the pitch's shared traits with the equally enigmatic googly:

Whether it has a sharp break or a big dip, some major leaguers and pitching coaches have dismissed the gyro as merely a variation on the cut fastball. The gyro has also been compared to a cricket pitch called the googly, which is also thrown with sidespin.

It's unclear whether Matsuzaka actually throws a gyroball. He's been evasive in interviews, saying that he might have thrown the pitch "sometimes accidentally." Carroll believes he saw Matsuzaka throw a few gyroballs during this year's World Baseball Classic. According to Himeno, at least two other Japanese pitchers use the pitch.

Hope the pitcher – and the pitch – are worth it.

LIFE'S ROUGH WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, especially if you've made a few enemies here and there – like, family. Hopefully, when I'm happy and buried, I won't leave a legacy of bitter, wounded people who post comments like these to my online memorial:

Some of the snubs are blunt. “Everyone gets their due,” a former client writes of an embezzling accountant. Or, “I sincerely hope the Lord has more mercy on him than he had on me during my years reporting to him at the Welfare Department.”

Others are subtler: “She never took the time to meet me, but I understand she was a wonderful grandmother to her other grandchildren.”

“Reading the obit, he sounds like he was a great father,” says another, which is signed, “His son Peter.”

Hayes Ferguson, the company’s chief operating officer, said, “Most often it’s cases of Sue posting that he was the love of my life and then we check and the wife’s name is Mary.”

No rest for the wicked, I suppose.

IT'S NOT YET WINTER, but ticket prices are frozen and it's chillier than normal at Fenway. Limping out of last season and looking ahead to the third season since that happy day, it's clear that little of the magic lingers. Along with having to endure a parade of turncoat idiots, missed aces, front office shenanigans, oppressive media regimes, squandered promise, and unfulfilled potential, we've also had to witness the St. Louis Cardinals win a World Series, which managed to stir up some kind of vague, deeply repressed disappointment – an unsettling flashback from a twisted, parallel dimension.

So when the Sox announce that an unprecedented number of ticket prices will remain unchanged for 2007, it's not just a team acknowledging that a day at the ballpark shouldn't require a second mortgage. It's also a franchise beginning to recognize the limits of the goodwill they earned from a grateful fan base. (Note: I refuse to refer to the fans as "Red Sox Nation" since the organization has managed to mutate that once noble term into a marketing ick-fest, as well.)

But then again, whenever ownership needs to bolster fan sympathies – and open fan wallets – there's always plan B. Or more accurately, plan NY. In the Boston Globe article, Larry Lucchino says, "Our challenge is to protect those lower prices for fans and families on a tight budget while still improving revenue. We still must compete with those with much deeper pockets, and we still must continue to make improvements to Fenway Park." He simultaneously acknowledges the financial limits of "regular" fans while also invoking our hatred for the Yankees as if it was a money-making incantation: "Abacadabra! If you still want to beat the Yankees, then sit your butt in those seats, stuff another Fenway Frank in your mouth and don't complain about how much it all costs."

In the end, the decision to freeze a majority of the ticket prices is a small gesture. (After all, the "lower prices" Lucchino says he wants to "protect" still help make Fenway the most expensive ballpark in all of Major League Baseball.) And clearly, the overall vibe on Yawkey Way is still one of desperation. This upcoming season could be the first in this ownership's reign where interest in the hometown team actually drops off. No more victory tours for The Trophy. Even fewer familiar faces to remind us of past glories.

Is this the last shot for the once infallible management to bring back the magic? Is this the year when the fans who were swept up by the euphoria of 2004 finally begin to stray? (Of course, the lingering anxiety for me is the possibility of discovering that my own interest could wane, as well. No one likes to feel passion fade away. . . . )

Sure, leaves are still falling, football's in full swing, and Mirabelli's on his sofa testing free agency in preparation for his next emergency police escort. But the stove is stoked with coals and you can already smell the grass at Fort Myers — it's just that the odor is a little different this time around. And all we can do is save our pennies for a seat at the park and see what fortunes the spring brings.

MY GIANT ONLINE MEDIA EMPIRE is kinda freaking me out. I've just added an iLike profile to go along with my Friendster page, my MySpace page, my Amazon.com wish list, my Netflix Friends profile, my homepage, my other homepage, my blog, my old Monster.com resume, my old HotJobs resume, my old Creative Hotlist resume, and whatever else Google can dig up. It's all out there for the world to see. And like the guy at The Sneeze, I don't even know why I signed up for half of these things in the first place. Maybe I should get myself a good alias. Because at the same time that I'm glomming onto every web template within clicking distance, I'm also terribly concerned about my privacy. Can you overexpose yourself and still have no one know who you are? Has the Internet turned us all into megalomaniacal, self-absorbed, social networking, paranoid cyber-stalkers? Or is it just me?

NIGHTY NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT, don't let the Cimex lectularius infest your home, drag you into legal battles with your landlord or co-op, force you to throw out your mattress and vacuum all your books, and generally make life miserable. Apparently, bed bugs don't just bite, they terrorize. And while everyone else in New York is trying to get rid of them, this guy keeps 'em as pets:

"People are afraid to admit they have bedbugs, because they feel it means that they haven’t had proper cleaning or hygiene in their apartment,” said Louis N. Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. (He keeps a small colony of bedbugs in a glass jar at his office and lets them feed on his arm.)

FEMALES ARE SCARY, pretty much no matter the species. Even so, there are so many creepy moments in this article about cannibalistic sugar mamas, I don't even know where to begin. Well, I suppose this description of dead suitors leaving behind their leftover genitalia seems a good a place as any:

Scientists have found other species in which males encourage their own cannibalism. One remarkable twist on this strategy is seen in a species of orb-weaving spiders. The males suddenly die as they mate. The male’s death may be a strategy for preventing other males from mating with the female. In death, its sexual organ becomes stuck in the female’s receptacle. Even if she feeds on the rest of his body, the organ remains behind, preventing her from receiving more sperm.

Um. Jeez.

A POX ON THE SOX or some kind of epidemic has surely stricken the hometown team. Not only did Jon Lester get back problems from a fender bender on Storrow, but now he's been diagnosed with lymphona. Plus, apparently Papelpon's arm fell off last night. Tek has a bad knee. Trot has strained biceps. Gonzo has a strained oblique. Papi has heart palpitations. Manny has a bum knee, too. Wily Mo has a messed up wrist. Wakefield has a stress fracture in his rib cage. Schilling's missing his next start with a muscle strain. Beckett just kind of sucks. And then once Wells got healthy and proved to be effective, we dealt him away. It just turned September, but the white flag is already waving over Fenway.

THE PERILS OF CELEBRITY ACTIVISM IN CHINA are revealed in this article about Yao Ming trying to dissuade Chinese from eating shark fin soup. (Apparently, shark fin soup is bad for sharks.) All very noble, indeed. But be careful not to offend Chinese tradition too much or you might end up like this poor girl:

And when Zhao Wei, a popular singer, donned a Japanese military flag for a fashion shoot — disrespecting not just government policy but perhaps the sensibilities of Chinese still angry over the war with Japan — her career began to fizzle. At a concert, she was tackled by a construction worker who said his grandparents had been killed during the war. He smeared her face with feces.

Old grudges are hard to give up, I suppose. Also, more evidence that the Chinese only hurry at change as long as change means more moolah. And more moolah means more shark fin soup, naturally.

NOMAR WILL ALWAYS BE NOMAH even if he is playing in blue instead of red:

One of Garciaparra's ex-teammates in Boston said the Dodgers and Yankees made the same offer, but Garciaparra chose LA because, ''He always considers himself a Red Sox. That's one thing people don't understand about Nomar. He would have never signed with the Yankees because he always thought of himself as a Red Sox player."

It's a character trait that reminds us why we don't miss Johnny D. as much as we thought we would. Then again, who knows what would have happened had the Yanks offered Nomar $14 million more to play in pinstripes, as they did with Damon? (I still like to think Nomie would have done the right thing.)

WHY WE SUCK is well-stated in Robert Wright's review of books on anti-Americanism. This bit pretty much sums up why we can't all get along, whether we're talking about conflicts of nationality, race, class, gender, sexuality, age, weight, baseball teams, or even musical preferences:

In other words: We're not obnoxiously evangelistic, just obnoxiously self-involved. So even if Bush doesn't reflect the real America, and is replaced by someone who does, we'll still be in trouble. At least, we'll be in trouble if much of the problem is indeed, as Sweig argues, the longstanding "near inability of the United States to see its power from the perspective of the powerless." Changing that will require not a leader worthy of the people, but a leader willing to lead the people.

Sweig complains that "Americans think of themselves as kings and queens of the world's prom." But, actually, we can't escape that role, at least for now. In wealth and power we are No. 1. The question is whether we'll be the typical prom king or queen — resented by most at the bottom of the social hierarchy and many in the middle — or instead the rare prom king or queen who manages to be really, truly, you know, popular.

Americans may be bad at doing what Sweig recommends — "seeing ourselves as others see us" — but we're not alone in this. People in general have trouble putting themselves in the shoes of people whose circumstances differ from theirs. That's why the world is such a mess — and why succeeding at this task would qualify as real moral progress.

NATURE'S A MOTHER in this warm and fuzzy New York Times article, which arrives just in time to brighten everyone's Mother's Day:

Researchers long viewed infanticide and similar acts of maternal skulduggery as pathological, a result of the mother's being under extreme stress. A farmer's child pokes around in a rabbit's nest, for example, and the mother rabbit responds by methodically consuming every one of her eight baby bunnies. By standard reckoning, it made little genetic sense for a mother to destroy her young, and maternal nurturing was assumed to be a hard-wired affair.

More recently, scientists have accrued abundant evidence that "bad" mothering is common in nature and that it is often a centerpiece of the reproductive game plan.

Along with a bunch of other fun-filled examples of mothers from hell, the author also sneaks in a reference to birds called "blue-footed boobies". So, basically, the whole article is a non-stop laugh-fest.

WHAT'S GREAT ABOUT AMERICA is that Stephen Colbert wasn't immediately brought outside and shot twice in the head by Secret Service agents for his surreal antics at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Maybe freedom is still alive, after all. (Nah.)

JUDAS COMES BACK TO FENWAY AND IT ISN'T PRETTY. Johnny Damon tipped his hat even as the faithful booed. It probably shows he's a classy guy – which certainly counts for something, but not so much that it could stop the jeering. Joe Torre can't understand it: Johnny gave Boston four great years and a championship title. Are we really so ungrateful? But it's not just because Damon's a traitor or because he chose money over loyalty (five years for $52 million to play for the Yankees, instead of $40 million to spend eternity as a Boston legend). No, I think we boo because if we didn't, then we'd be making a mockery of the rivalry itself. Johnny's defection stings. But his belief that we'd welcome him back to Fenway wearing pinstripes is an even bigger insult. We loved him and we cheered him because he helped us beat the hated Yankees in the greatest comeback ever. If we also cheered him in his return as the enemy, then it's as if we never really loved him in the first place. Or to put it another way: If the rivalry doesn't matter, then why are we even watching?

I QUIT SMOKING FOR THIS? Skimming the online edition of the Los Angeles Times, I clicked on the headline, "State's Air Is Among the Nation's Worst". According to an EPA report, "Californians are breathing some of the most toxic air in the nation, with residents of Los Angeles and Orange counties exposed to a cancer risk about twice the national average." My first thought was, "Whew, I glad I got the heck out of there." Which was soon followed by a haughty, derisive, "Hah, you silly, smoothie-slurping, tracksuit-wearing, image-worshipping, smoking-in-bars-banning exercise freaks! Your precious SUVs spell your doom." Of course, the third paragraph of the article reads, "New York tops the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list" for highest chance of contracting cancer from breathing the air. Curses, foiled again.

THERE'S SOMETHING FISHY GOING ON AT AMAZON.COM and it has to do with the new Iron Maiden concert DVD. Even though I agree with the reviewers who are critical of Steve Harris' atrocious, hyperactive editing, I can't help but be suspicious of the six most recent one-star reviews (dated March 7–8). Or is it perfectly normal for users named Pitchulo Dun Dun, Poverty "Tungan", Kael, Gergellor, Patherson and Carmarthen — who apparently live in places called Filha de Uma Puta, Puta Que O Pariu, Jugland, Supimpalândia and Zunder — to post nearly the exact same review in two days? Even more bizarre, five of the six use the word "edition" when they mean to say "editing". I can't even begin to form a theory, unless some nutso metalhead actually has six different Amazon.com identities and felt compelled to post a negative review under each. But that's just crazy.

THE NEW YORK TIMES SPREADS FEAR AND DESPAIR with this wonderful oddity of an article about "iconic crimes" in today's metro section. I don't know whether they publish this sort of thing to give publicity to the writer's new book or to drive down housing prices, but it's still fun to read this doozy of a closing thought over tea on a lazy Sunday afternoon:

The crimes that become iconic etch themselves into the collective consciousness because they suggest a frightening truth: that the universe does not rely on cause and effect. If that is true, there's no possibility of control, and that thought opens an abyss of despair. People speak of "senseless" killings, but every crime makes sense to the criminal who commits it. Iconic crimes are those that are senseless to the victims, and to the public. They are a reminder that there is no way to guarantee safety. If a police officer mistakes you for someone else, you can be shot 19 times. If you go for a jog, you can be raped, beaten and left for dead. If you send your child to school, he may never come back.

And if you linger over a drink after closing time, your battered, empty body can turn up in a desolate place, under a lone streetlight, far away.

Just the thing to get you fired up for another Monday morning.

LAST NIGHT I HAD FOIE GRAS and it was delicious. This morning I found out how they make it so delicious. Alas, no more foie gras for me. But all is not lost. Because, luckily, animals can be happy and tasty, too.

WEIRD. I THINK I AGREE WITH DAN SHAUGHNESSY. Apparently, New Englanders can no longer watch the Sox once a week for free on UPN. Basically, if you don't pony up for cable, you don't get to watch the Sox. Or more specifically, if you don't pony up for NESN, which the Sox own, you don't get to watch the Sox. Not very neighborly of the hometown team.

By the way, the New York Times owns part of the Red Sox and the Boston Globe. Corporations call this "synergy." Shaughnessy calls it "the cartel." I call it "the suck." Who the heck are you supposed to trust when the newspaper of your hometeam's biggest rival co-owns the hometown newspaper, as well as a significant percentage of the hometeam itself, which also belongs to a group of owners who own the only channel that will broadcast the hometown team's games (except for the handful of Fox broadcasts). Well, at least people who can't afford the ol' cable TV can still listen to the games on WEEI, which ain't entirely a bad thing.

UPDATE: I guess I jumped the gun on WEEI. Apparently, WEEI's contract with the Sox is up for re-negotiation next season.

HOPEFULLY, MANNY BEING MANNY is a phenomenon we get to enjoy close-up for many, many seasons to come. The Sport's Guy's email exchange with Curt Schilling reminds me why idiot savant baseball can be way more fun than regular baseball:

SIMMONS: My favorite "Manny being Manny" moment happened in the final game of the regular season — he had just crushed a home run, the cameras caught you guys sitting next to one another in the dugout, he was talking excitedly about what pitch he had hit, and somewhere along the way, you just started staring at him in disbelief, as though he had just said something like, "I knew it was going to be a slider because I started craving a pork sandwich, and that always means a slider's coming!" And you just kept staring at him, and then he walked away to another part of the dugout, and you started shaking your head in shock like, "Wow, I will never, ever, ever figure that guy out." How many of those Manny encounters happen per season?

SCHILLING: Three to four per day.