Dice-K dazzles in highly anticipated big league debut

	Daisuke Matsuzaka gets a visit from pitching coach John Farrell and catcher Jason Varitek in the seventh inning, which would be his last frame of the day. AP
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We'd seen Daisuke Matsuzaka dazzle in the World Baseball Classic last March. We'd seen him mow through a bunch of Spring Training rosters. We'd heard all about his legendary high school no-hitter and his jump into a long professional career in Japan, and about his ability to throw and throw and throw. We'd read all about his amazing repertoire of pitches. We knew, because it's been pounded into our heads for more than a year now, that Matsuzaka is, with no argument, the best Japanese pitcher alive.

And then Matsuzaka climbed the mound Thursday on a chilly afternoon in Kansas City's Kaufmann Stadium and proceeded to show us, against a big-league team -- well, the Royals, anyway -- in a game, finally, that actually counted, that he still has plenty to show us.

It'd be hard to imagine a more highly anticipated pitching debut than Matsuzaka's on Thursday. We've had Japanese pitchers come over to the Major Leagues before, guys like Hideo Nomo and Kazuhisa Ishii, and even the reliever Kazuhiro Sasaki. We've had young phenoms from Latin America lately (Venezuela's teen sensation Felix Hernandez, for instance) and great young minor-league pitchers from America (Dontrelle Willis and, for another example, the Royals' starter on Thursday, Zack Greinke).

For sheer unbridled expectancy, though, you'd probably have to go back to May 2002, when the Cubs' Mark Prior made his Major League debut as a 21-year old in Wrigley Field, to find a debut with anywhere close to this much hype. Prior was considered by some to be the greatest American college pitcher ever. He was considered by many around Wrigley Field to be the Cubs' savior.

This opening was that big and more, and not because the Red Sox are putting anywhere near that kind of weight on Matsuzaka. They're not. The Sox don't need saving. What they need, especially after their investment of $103 million in the man they call Dice-K, is an ace to go with Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett and a pitcher who can hold his own against the Yankees and the rest of the brutal American League East.

Thursday against the Royals, in a game televised live in Japan at 3 a.m. local time and watched in Kansas City by more than 100 journalists from two continents, Matsuzaka proved he certainly has the stuff to do all that, just as we all were told. His line was impressive enough: seven innings pitched, six hits, one run, a walk and 10 strikeouts. He earned his first victory, too, in a game that Boston ended up winning, 4-1, making a hard-luck loser of Greinke, who also pitched well.

Matsuzaka's pitching line, though, was not nearly as beautiful as how the line was built. He threw fastballs in the low 90s, to both sides of the plate and up and down in the strike zone. He mixed in a generous number of curveballs, throwing them on just about any count. He showed a deadly good slider. He even threw a few splitters.

The mysterious gyroball? If he threw it, he didn't need it.

He dominated early, setting down 10 straight hitters in a stretch that included a fourth inning in which the right-handed Matsuzaka struck out the side. After a single by David DeJesus to lead off the game, not one Kansas City batter hit the ball hard until lefty-swinging Ross Gload lined out to right in the fifth inning.