March 25, 2008: Matsuzaka, Okajima book-end Opening Day win for Red Sox at the Tokyo Dome

The reigning World Series champion Boston Red Sox played two road games to open the 2008 season, then took off five days before resuming the regular season schedule. On one of their “off days,” they played an exhibition game in front of the largest crowd to ever watch any baseball game.

After their last game at their spring-training base in Fort Myers, Florida, on March 19, they took a 19-hour flight to Tokyo and settled in for a pair of exhibition games against Japanese teams from Nippon Professional Baseball, Japan’s highest level of professional baseball, and then two regular-season games against the Oakland Athletics. The March 25 and 26 games were deemed home games for Oakland.

The exhibition games between the Red Sox and Athletics were played at Tokyo Dome. On Saturday, March 22, in a pair of one-run games, Oakland beat the Yomiuri Giants 4-3 while the Red Sox beat the Hanshin Tigers, 6-5. On March 23 Boston beat the Giants 9-2 and the Athletics beat the Tigers 10-2.

Opening Day of the 2008 regular season for the two US teams was March 25, also at “the Big Egg” – the Tokyo Dome. It was the earliest date on the calendar that either a National or American League team had played a regular-season game. The 7:10 P.M. local time game drew 44,628.1 Oakland fans watching from home saw the game start at 3:10 A.M. Pacific time; in Boston, the game started at 6:10 A.M., with fans flocking to bars and restaurants near Fenway Park to have an early breakfast and take in the game on television.2

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori threw out the first pitch, bouncing it once in front of the plate.

Oakland scored first, with two runs in the bottom of the first inning.

Joe Blanton was Oakland manager Bob Geren’s choice to start. Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia (the 2007 AL Rookie of the Year) hit Blanton’s second pitch of the game for an infield single, glancing off the second baseman’s glove, but he was the only Boston batter to reach base in the first.

Daisuke Matsuzaka started for the Red Sox. “Dice-K,” as he was familiarly called in New England, had been signed by the Red Sox in December 2006, following eight years with the NPB’s Seibu Lions. His record with the Lions had been 108-60 with a 2.95 ERA. He had led Japan’s Pacific League four times in strikeouts, three times in wins, and twice in ERA. On November 11, 2004, he had thrown a 5-1 complete game five-hitter and beat a team of Major-League Baseball All-Stars at Sapporo Dome. He was 3-0 for Japan during the 2006 World Baseball Classic and was the tournament’s MVP. For the Red Sox in 2007, his 201 strikeouts set a franchise rookie record. He won 15 games during the regular season and threw seven shutout innings on the way to a win in Game Three of the 2007 World Series against the Colorado Rockies.

One pitch, one out, but the second batter Matsuzaka faced in this game – second baseman Mark Ellis – homered over the fence in left-center. A walk and a hit batsman put runners on first and second. They moved up on a wild pitch. Another walk loaded the bases. Shortstop Bobby Crosby hit a ball that Matsuzaka fielded, throwing to first base for the second out as the runner scored from third. 2-0, Oakland. Matsuzaka got out of the inning striking out third baseman Jack Hannahan. Even though fans had been asked not to use flash cameras, thousands of flashbulbs went off when Matsuzaka pitched.3

In the Red Sox second, the leadoff batter again got on base – third baseman Mike Lowell, with a single. Right fielder Brandon Moss grounded into a force play at second base and catcher Jason Varitek grounded into a double play.

A single and a pair of two-out walks saw Matsuzaka load the bases again in the Oakland second, but he struck out DH Jack Cust.

Boston got a couple of singles in the third and Matsuzaka walked an Athletic. The score remained 2-0, Oakland. Neither pitcher allowed a runner to reach base in either the fourth or fifth.

The Red Sox took a 3-2 lead in the sixth. Pedroia led off with a catchable ball off the right-field wall, a double. First baseman Kevin Youkilis drew a walk. David Ortiz popped up foul along the left-field seats. Manny Ramírez grounded a hit down the third-base line and into left field, past a diving Hannahan, for a double that scored both Pedroia and Youkilis, from first base. Lowell struck out, but Brandon Moss, starting in right after making his major-league debut with 15 games for the Red Sox in 2007, singled between first and second and drove in Ramírez. Alan Embree relieved Blanton and struck out Varitek.

Boston switched pitchers in the Oakland sixth, Kyle Snyder replacing Matsuzaka. Crosby singled up the middle and Hannahan homered to right field. The A’s had taken a 4-3 lead. Snyder retired the next three.

The only batter for either team to reach base in the seventh or eighth was Jacoby Ellsbury, who led off the seventh with a single but was retired on a double play. There were a number of pitching changes, however. For Boston, Javier López replaced Snyder after the first out in the seventh and Bryan Corey took over from López for the eighth. For Oakland, Keith Foulke pitched the top of the eighth.

Closer Huston Street came in to work the ninth, hoping to hold the 4-3 Athletics lead. After Lowell flied out to center, Moss hit a home run just inside the foul pole in right field, tying the game.4 It was his first major-league home run.5 Varitek struck out and Ellsbury lined out.

Hideki Okajima took over from Corey. Again, thousands of flashbulbs were fired. Okajima had relieved in 66 Red Sox games in 2007, leading all American League rookies and setting a franchise rookie record. He had a 2.22 ERA; his 27 holds were the most by any Red Sox pitcher since the statistic was first compiled in 1957. His eight appearances in the postseason were tops on the team. Working 2⅓ scoreless innings in Game Two of the 2007 World Series, he became the first native of Japan to pitch in a World Series game. Okajima had played parts of 11 seasons for the Yomiuri Giants (1995-2005) and the 2006 season with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. The Giants had been Japan Series champions in both 2000 and 2002, and Hokkaido had in 2006. In 642 career innings in NPB, Okajima had 681 strikeouts.

Mike Sweeney reached on a one-out, four-pitch walk, but Okajima retired the other Athletics without any difficulty.

In the top of the 10th, Boston shortstop Julio Lugo beat out a hard-hit single on the line to deep third base. Pedroia sacrificed Lugo to second base. Youkilis struck out. With the open base, Ortiz was walked intentionally. Manny Ramírez doubled off the right-field wall and drove in both runners.6 Street was relieved by Lenny DiNardo, who got the next two batters out. On asking Street to walk Ortiz and then face Ramírez, Geren more or less shrugged: “They’re both great hitters and you have to pick one or the other.”7 Ramírez was using unfamiliar Japanese-made SSK bats because his American-made Diablo bats were colored ones and had not been pre-approved by the Rules Committee.8

Red Sox manager Terry Francona had Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon relieve Okajima. He walked first baseman Daric Barton, then struck out Cust. Left fielder Emil Brown doubled into the gap in right-center, driving in Barton, but Brown was out in a rundown trying to reach third base when Youkilis cut off the relay throw.9 The next two Athletics – Crosby and Hannahan – both singled, but due to his gaffe, Brown was no longer on base. Catcher Kurt Suzuki grounded out to first base, Papelbon covering, for the final out.10

It was a 6-5 Red Sox win in the first game of the season, with Okajima getting the win. The time of the game was 3:39.

At game’s end, given the Red Sox win, the sound system played “Dirty Water” by The Standells, the Red Sox victory anthem.11

Manny Ramírez, with two two-run doubles – including the game-winner – was unsurprisingly named the MVP of the game, winning a check for 1,000,000 yen (said to be about $10,000 at the time) and a Ricoh color copier.12 Ramírez had been on the 2004 All-Star team that played in Japan but had left after three days due to what was reported as a sore left hamstring.13

Matsuzaka acknowledged, “I did feel a little nervous and a little excited and that might have shown.”14

After the return flight to the United States, the Red Sox played three spring-training games against the Los Angeles Dodgers. They lost to the Dodgers, 3-1, on March 28 and 8-0 on March 30. In between, the two teams squared off at the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of a crowd of 115,300. The Red Sox won, 7-4.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Tom Merrick and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and the Boston Red Sox 2008 Media Guide. A telecast of the full game is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbMcVDkdI6w .

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK200803250.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2008/B03250OAK2008.htm

Notes

1 The crowd was overwhelmingly rooting for Boston. “It was Red Sox land out there,” A’s starting pitcher Joe Blanton said. “But that’s the way it goes.” Joe Stiglich, “BoSox Tag Street in Late Innings to Win Series Opener, A’s Lose 6-5,” Oakland Tribune, March 25, 2008. https://www-proquest-com.mcpl.idm.oclc.org/docview/352286209/B312B8132F7C45A3PQ/23?accountid=69, accessed May 30, 2008.

2 Associated Press, “Breakfast Instead of Beer for Boston fans,” Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Illinois), March 26, 2008: Section 2, 10.

3 The same was true when Hideki Okajima took the mound later in the game. Dan Shaughnessy said the admonition was followed “the way Bostonians follow the order of no public drinking on St. Patrick’s Day.” Dan Shaughnessy, “With Late Heroics, a Sunny Start,” Boston Globe, March 26, 2008: D8. Several game stories commented on the blinding profusion of flashes.

4 It was 328 feet down the line in both right and left fields. The wall in right field was about 15 feet high. It was Moss’s first major-league home run.

5 Moss thus had his second run batted in of the game. He was truly a last-minute addition to the lineup; J. D. Drew had hurt his back during batting practice. Moss later played three seasons with Oakland. He was only the third Red Sox rookie to hit his first home run on Opening Day. The prior two had been Tom Winsett in 1931 and Ben Steiner in 1945. “I didn’t have any time to even be nervous,” he said about unexpectedly starting in the game. Amalie Benjamin, “Moss’s effort is irreplacable,” Boston Globe, March 26, 2008: D7. In fact, because both rosters had more than 25 players because spring training was still in progress. The New York Times explained, “Moss was one of the extra players the Sox were allowed to bring to Japan because they were exempt from having to trim their roster to 25 players because of their early start date. While the other 28 big-league teams are still in spring training, the Sox and Athletics were staging the earliest regular season opener in big-league history.” See “Boston Red Sox Beat Oakland Athletics in MLB Season Opener in Tokyo,” New York Times online, March 25, 2008. https://www-proquest-com.mcpl.idm.oclc.org/docview/2222438093/B312B8132F7C45A3PQ/13?accountid=69. Accessed May 30, 2021.

6 Ramírez thought he had a home run, and almost did, the ball hitting high off the wall. Ramírez had paused to watch the ball, then had to run hard to reach second.

7 Howard Ulman (Associated Press), “Opening Excitement,” Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Illinois), March 26, 2008: Section 2, 10.

8 Gordon Edes, “Papelbon a Little Thrown Off by Schedule,” Boston Globe, March 26, 2008: D8.

9 Sportswriters called it “an egregious base-running mistake.” See, for example, “Boston Red Sox Beat Oakland Athletics in MLB Season Opener in Tokyo.”

10 Kurt Kiyoshi Suzuki was a fourth-generation Japanese American, born and raised in Hawaii.

11 For the author’s first-person account of the experience attending the various games – the exhibition games against Japanese teams and the two Red Sox-Athletics games – see Bill Nowlin, “The Red Sox in Japan,” Red Sox Magazine, second edition 2008: 18-27.

12 Joe Stiglich, “Harden Leads Revenge on Red Sox to Split Series,” Oakland Tribune, March 26, 2008. https://www-proquest-com.mcpl.idm.oclc.org/docview/352251860/94E8C81F82A14603PQ/3?accountid=69. Accessed May 30, 2008. Ricoh was the lead sponsor for the Opening Series in Japan. One wonders what Ramírez did with the large business-sized copier.

13 Gordon Edes, “Ramírez Cuts Short Japan Tour,” Boston Globe, November 8, 2004: D2.

14 Ulman. He added, “I’d like to apologize to all the fans who turned out and wanted to see me go deep in the game.”