Perhaps no player will travel to sunny spring training with a larger media contingent than New York Yankees outfielder Hideki Matsui. Not only the most revered athlete in Japan, Matsui could well be the most revered person.
Over 100 members of the Japanese media posse will be waiting when he arrives at the Yankees spring training complex in Tampa, Florida. But that's okay with the man known as 'Godzilla'. Unlike most baseball players, he has a special relationship with the media.
Matsui figured out long ago that by giving them what they want, they will respect his wishes and leave him alone when it comes to private time. It's a lesson another fellow Japanese star, the slightly pricklier Ichiro Suzuki, has yet to embrace. Such is the depth of Matsui's relationship with the media that he even swaps porn videos and DVD's with them.
Yes it's true, perhaps the most revered man in Japan and he has one of the most extensive private libraries of adult videos, which he brings everywhere he goes. One of the Japanese writers on the Matsui beat told Time magazine: 'Matsui is a horny guy. All of us are horny, more or less. But Matsui doesn't attempt to hide the fact.'
And that's just another reason, I guess, why Matsui is accorded god-like status in Japan. Presumably, there are no gay porn films in Matsui's vast collection. All Matsui has to do is look about an hour east of Tampa to Winter Haven, home to the Cleveland Indians spring training, to realise how foolish that would be.
Kazuhito Tadano is a rookie Japanese pitcher with fantastic stuff who was signed by the Indians for the major league minimum.