His arm didn’t fall off
Feb 18th, 2007 by Rob Bradford
Just a quick update: Daisuke Matsuzaka threw 40 pitches to Jason Varitek. He started warming up at 10:14 and pitched from 10:17-10:25. Pitching in the same group were the other four starters, Jonathan Papelbon, Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling, and Tim Wakefield, along with Japanese reliever Hideki Okajima, who threw alongside Matsuzaka.
The group then went to field hard grounders and line-drives from Terry Francona and Pawtucket manager Ron Johnson. The balls they used were softer than normal. The drill morphed into a competition as to who could stop the most. After Matsuzaka missed the first one Francona yelled out, “How do you say ‘zero’ in Japanese?’”
When the pitchers collected on the next field to do more fielding practice, they were greeted with a chant from a group of Japanese kids, who had all come primarily all from a Japanese school in Miami. The chant was “Matsuzaka senshu gabate!” It means, as mentioned in previous blog, “Good luck (player) Matsuzaka!” The other players seemed to get a kick out of it.
2 reader comments to “His arm didn’t fall off”
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1Mike said:
Rob,
Did you watch all the new conditioning stuff they did yesterday? If so, who stood out (good or bad)?
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2Anonymous said:
BRADFORD RULES!!!!!
