READY OR NOT, HERE THEY COME: Daisuke Matsuzaka is expected to attract thousands of Japanese tourists to the Hub. |
On what will probably be a chilly day a little more than two months from now, Red Sox fans will be waiting for Daisuke Matsuzaka to bring the heat. Depending how the rotation pans out, Boston’s newest starter could be towing the rubber in the middle of Fenway Park as Ichiro Suzuki, the leadoff hitter for the Seattle Mariners, digs in for the first at-bat of the Red Sox’ first home game. Japan’s best pitcher versus Japan’s best hitter. With the dramatic flourish that’s been the Red Sox’ cachet over the past couple of years, the team will consummate its expensive and exhaustively hyped Far Eastern foray. It will mark the beginning of a new era that many hope will mean big things — and big money — for the Sox, and for the city they call home.Fenway’s beery throngs will surely be swept up by the drama. And Nippon Professional Baseball fanatics across the world in Seibu and Yokohama will be beside themselves as “The Monster” unfurls himself, lets one fly, and (hopefully) notches his first strikeout with a knee-buckling shuuto.
But Japanese fans won’t just be cheering from abroad. Ever since Daisuke’s poorly translated news conference on December 14, they’ve been coming to the Hub. Groups of four and five, bundled against the cold in stylish outerwear; strolling the detritus-strewn sidewalks along the empty ballpark and the aisles of the souvenir store across the street; posing for photos under the wide-grinning face on the massive billboard on Brookline Avenue: WELCOME TO BOSTON .jpg)
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Boston does indeed welcome “Pitcher Matsuzaka Daisuke” (as it’s properly phrased). And it welcomes the hordes of avid Japanese baseball fans who will want to follow him. That said, getting them here, and keeping them coming, poses real challenges that will dog even the most seasoned tourist-industry and PR pros, however confident they are that millions upon millions of Yen will soon be clinking into Boston’s coffers.
Land of the rising son
“Baseball has been in Japan for so long that it’s not really associated with America anymore,” says Sarah Frederick, assistant professor of Japanese at Boston University. Introduced to Japan in 1872 by Horace Wilson, a Maine-born professor at Tokyo University, it’s become a near religion in Japan, a multi-billion-dollar industry. Says Peter Grilli, president of the Japan Society of Boston: “It’s been adapted in many ways, and many people consider it as Japanese a sport as any other. It’s a team sport, which works very well with Japan’s social dynamic.”
That said, Japan has its superstars, and ever since a scintillating performance in 1998’s Koshien high school tournament — “the single most important sporting event in Japan,” says Grilli — Matsuzaka has been a goliath. He’s as legendary there, it’s said, as Michael Jordan is here. “They’re like the rock stars and Hollywood stars we have in our culture; it’s baseball in their culture,” says Patrick Moscaritolo, an Eastie kid who grew up playing ball with the late, great Tony Conigliaro and is now president and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau. “The Japanese are such great fans.”
And they’re also great spenders. When Japanese tourists go on vacation, they “stay, on average, 10 to 12 days, and they spend, on average, $3500 per person,” Moscaritolo says. “They work hard, like, 24-7, and when they take their holiday, they take their holiday. They spend money on themselves and their passions. And fortunately, in this case, baseball is one of them.”
Still, (to mix sports metaphors) this does not guarantee a slam dunk. “I’ve seen the Matsui factor. The Matsuzaka factor is also very strong,” says Cristyne Nicholas, who handled marketing for the legendary Yankee left fielder as head of NYC & Co., New York City’s tourism marketing agency, and has been retained by the Convention & Visitors Bureau to do the same for Matsuzaka. All the same, while some have been predicting huge windfalls in added tourism revenue for the state (as high as $75 million annually), Moscaritolo takes a more sober view. “The reality of it is that in New York, Matsui was about $50 million and he played every day. Ichiro was about $20 million and he played every day. So the number we came up with was closer to $14 million.”
Moscaritolo highlights a big difference between Matsui and Ichiro, on one hand, and Matsuzaka, on the other. They’re position players who take the field every day. Dice-K, as he’s now known in Boston, is a pitcher who starts every fifth day. This is a problem not only when it comes to volume — that is, the potential for busloads of fans arriving at the park 81 games a year — but also when it comes to convenience: it’s awfully hard for Japanese tour groups (four of which have reportedly already approached the city) to schedule tour packages with a guaranteed Monster sighting.
