Preppy Boston has always been at the center of American history. From the birth of a great Republic to the creepy brilliance of Edgar Allan Poe, Boston has seen and done it all. The story includes sports. From the Babe Ruth trade all the way to the recent Joe Thornton deal, Beantown is quite good at making people scratch their heads.
The superfluous Boston Red Sox have paid a stunning 51 million dollars just to speak to Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, who has never played in the United States. That doesn't include signing him to a contract. Which makes you wonder what exactly motivated Boston to make such a move.
To cite another sport, we saw something similar with the NHL recently. Europeans are claiming (quite accurately and justifiably) that the NHL is destroying the quality of their leagues. The Russian Elite league, now endowed with some financial muscle, is ready to fight back as they did with the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Malkin affair. But what is Japan's angle in this? Do they fear being raped by MLB? Lest we forget, Japan is the only country with a legitimate professional league outside North America. Do fans order sushi during a game? Just wondering.
And what to make of Boston's logic? In business, any sound business decision is based on one premise: what are the odds of increasing return? Most businesspeople make an educated calculated risk before investing to ensure a reasonable shot at earning profits — or at the very least getting their capital back. We all know business has risk associated with it and the basic axiom goes, "The higher the risk, the higher the return." My imagination leads me to think it was for Machiavellian strategic purposes. That is, a power game. Maybe the Red Sox did this under paranoid duress in an effort to keep the Japanese star from signing with any of the New York clubs. The city-states in Italy during Mack's time always did stuff like this — though more violently — to keep each other on their toes.
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