Dice-K makes splash on first day; Grapefruit guide

	Daisuke Matsuzaka warmed up on his first day of camp with the Red Sox on Thursday. AP

Also in this column:
• Zambrano's money matters
• Possible spring trades
• Grapefruit League primer

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Daisuke Matsuzaka is the first $100 million player out of Japan (although he gets to keep barely more than half of the $103.1 million it took the Red Sox to secure him). He is also the single-biggest curiosity of the spring. It's about the sky-high posting price, the mythic stamina, the international intrigue, the endless repertoire, the gyroball. It's about everything.

Even though Matsuzaka wasn't scheduled to show for about seven hours, 30 Japanese reporters camped out in front of Boston's minor-league clubhouse early Thursday morning. They stood in the drizzle for hours for a long-shot chance to catch a glimpse before he was to be put on display for everyone.

Matsuzaka is the man on two continents. Word from the scouts is that Matsuzaka is a new Greg Maddux. A Maddux who throws in the mid-90s. With a better curveball. And much more.

Boston's gambit was also their coup.

Matsuzaka met all the media late Thursday afternoon here in Fort Myers, the 30 who waited most of the day and the 120 who joined them. He promised to stay humble, a seeming impossibility.

The real intrigue and interest comes when he takes the mound, perhaps this weekend. He will have his skeptics (remember, a few scouts were denigrating Ichiro for his lack of pop his first spring with Seattle) but everyone in the know who's seen him insists he does have game. He also is the story of spring.

But he's far from the only storyline. Here are 11 more spring storylines:

1. Will Alex Rodriguez find peace and happiness inside the Yankees clubhouse and happily coexist with Derek Jeter and Joe Torre?

Perhaps we'll never know exactly how strained things are as long as everyone in that high-powered trio keeps pretending everything's A-OK between A-Rod and the other two. What Torre's accused A-Rod of doing (smiling through his slumps) is close to what they're all doing here: putting a happy face on some seriously strained relationships.

The schism that exists between Jeter and A-Rod goes back to those dumb, unflatteringly quotes A-Rod gave to Esquire about Jeter back in 2001 (Jeter doesn't understand saying anything aloud that's inflammatory about a friend or enemy, and the two were close at the time). The divide between Torre and A-Rod is much harder to understand. Torre's great strength is dealing with people, and he's previously had trouble getting through to only the selfish or lazy (and maybe a reliever or two he's misused or overlooked). But you could practically see Torre's frustration that October day he lost it and batted A-Rod eighth.

Rodriguez is always on time (fulfilling Torre's one big pet peeve) and he outworks almost everyone. That he smiles through his slumps is no great crime, either. Rodriguez is polite and engaging, and he loves the game, so it's hard to fathom why he hasn't been able to break into the cool clique.

But that he hasn't is obvious to anyone around there, and there's no evidence he will anytime soon. Somehow, even when he does right, things turn out wrong, like when even his recent children's book signing turned into a public brouhaha.

This soap opera of stars has at least one more season to run, but maybe just one more.