Triangle Offense

DURHAM BULLS ATHLETIC PARK It’s Day 6 of “Matsui Mania” with the Durham Bulls, and not only does the Japanese legend have some work to do at the plate but his team needs to do some bouncing back.

• Photo courtesy Durham Bulls
• Bulls pitcher Matt Torra

And he went 0-for-4 the previous night, as the Bulls took a 7-1 whipping from the Charlotte Knights in the opener of their four-game series. Charlotte has won six of seven in the season series with the Bulls, who sit in an unfamiliar last-place spot in the International League’s South Division.

Game 2 today will pit Matt Torra (2-5, 6.26) against the Knights’ Matt Zaleski (1-1, 7.47). And the Bulls will be celebrating Wool E. Bull’s birthday.

Charlotte has Duke alumnus Jim Gallagher on the roster as well as former Bulls Hector Gimenez – who had four hits Saturday – and Dan Johnson and Ray Olmedo.

But it turns out that today is the Bulls’ day. Durham gets three home runs and another score on Matsui’s mad dash from first in routing the Knights 6-0.

DBAP/ DURHAM—It has been a big home stand at the DBAP, about as close to big-league as the environment ever gets at the ballpark. Hideki Matsui is here. Daisuke Matsuzaka and Kevin Youkilis came through, too, plus all the attendant media and excitement. The world has been watching.

And last night offered more in the way of pageantry. Just two days after the historic Matsui-Matsuzaka meeting at the DBAP, Saturday was "one of the most important nights in the history of the Durham Bulls," as longtime PA announcer Tony Riggsbee, who donned a coat and tie for the occasion, put it. Riggsbee emceed a pregame ceremony on the field to celebrate the induction of former Bulls manager Bill Evers into the International League Hall of Fame. The Bulls also retired his jersey number (20).

Evers, who is now Minor League Field Coordinator for the Rays, has won more games than any other manager in Durham Bulls history, which dates back over 100 years. This was a well-deserved honor, and he was warmly received by the near-sellout crowd. International League President Randy Mobley was on hand, and made a speech. Evers said a few good words. His name and number were colorfully logoed into the grass behind home plate.

Meanwhile, the press box was still packed with Japanese media covering Matsui.

And then, 21 minutes after the game's scheduled start time, Shane Dyer took the mound for the Bulls, and all at once the excitement burst like a lukewarm water balloon.

DURHAM BULLS ATHLETIC PARK It’s the finale of that high-profile series with the Pawtucket Red Sox, and for the second straight night there’s a sellout crowd in the house.

• Photo courtesy Durham Bulls
• Bulls outfielder Jesus Feliciano

Pawtucket’s other rehabbing star, slugger Kevin Youkilis, is back in the lineup tonight as the designated hitter. And the Bulls of course continue to hit Japanese legend Hideki Matsui, who seems to be at the moment in reserve until the Tampa Bay Rays have an opening, in the cleanup spot. Tonight Matsui will play left field for the first time as a Bull.

Clayton product Chris Archer (3-4, 4.71) will go for the Bulls against Ross Ohlendorf (3-3, 4.91).

Durham puts together a huge eighth-inning comeback, escaping with a 6-5 win to split the four-game series.

• Photo by D. L. Anderson
• The Pawtucket Red Sox' Daisuke Matsuzaka warms up in the visitors bullpen at Durham Bulls Atheltic Park, May 17, 2012.

DBAP/ DURHAM—"It felt like Opening Day," said Jim Paduch, the Independent League veteran who is only in Durham because Alex Torres finally pitched his way out of a starting job and who, with 10,000-plus on hand at the ballpark for an All Nippon Airways type showdown between two of Japan's most famous baseball players, ever, threw six shutout innings against the league's best team and made a loser of Daisuke Matsuzaka. The Bulls blanked the PawSox, 5-0.

Henry Wrigley was drafted in the 14th round in 2005 and toiled for six years in the Rays' farm system before finally playing his way up to Triple-A. Now he has hit a home run off of Dice-K: a three-run blast, a moonshot, on a hanging 3-2 breaking ball, way over Ye Olde Snorting Bull. It put the game away in the sixth inning.

On Wednesday night, after the Bulls lost their second straight game and fell to 15-26, manager Charlie Montoyo pinpointed two reasons why his team was in last place: too many walks, and too many guys left on base.

Thursday, they walked four—as opposed to 11 (!) the night before. They put exactly one runner in scoring position, and that one only because of the second catcher's interference call on Ryan Lavarnway, with Hideki Matsui batting, in as many nights.

That one RISP scored on Wrigley's homer.

This... is a simple game. You hit the ball... (etc.)

• Photo by HAMedia
• Can you find Hideki Matsui in this picture?

DBAP/ DURHAM—There are suddenly many more things to observe than usual at the DBAP. There is the riveting preoccupation of witnessing the difference—ineffable yet undeniably profound—between great major-leaguers like Hideki Matsui and Kevin Youkilis, and minor-leaguers like, well, almost everyone else on the field last night. There is the sideshow of the two dozen or so Japanese media members at the ballpark, doting on Matsui's every at-bat and word. There is the vexing surprise of attending to a team that, after five years of success, is quite simply bad—and attending to its manager, who is in a very unfamiliar position.

But after the Pawtucket Red Sox beat the Durham Bulls, 5-4, last night—the PawSox' sixth straight win over Durham in less than a month—a simpler, quieter, more fleeting observation offered the most useful perspective on the way things are in the Bull City.

After we reporters—the three of us local, Triangle-based reporters, that is—did our customary postgame interview with Bulls manager Charlie Montoyo, we were extended an offer to interview Hideki Matsui. Matsui, as you probably know, just became a Durham Bull on Tuesday, less than three years after becoming the MVP of the World Series as a New York Yankee.

Of course we accepted this offer, and we were happy to wait a few minutes while Matsui went to his locker, peeled off his uniform, and then hit the showers. After he got down to a base layer, Matsui sat for a few head-clearing moments in the chair before his locker—silent, still, meditative.

What was most arresting about this moment was Matsui's posture, which was upright yet comfortable, like a yoga pose. Ballplayers tend to be slouchy and curved-spine. They throw themselves around like big puppies, are often loud and surprisingly ungainly when not engaging in the elegant beauty of playing baseball, are in each others' space and, it often seems, not really in full possession of their own.

Yet there was Hideki Matsui, composed and straight, calm and self-knowing, and it seemed in that moment that therein lay the change from major to minor, between winners and losers.

• Photo by Al Drago
• New Durham Bull Hideki Matsui prepares for a pitch.

Joining the Bulls on a minor-league contract with the Tampa Bay Rays and batting cleanup is Hideki Matsui, trying to make his way back to the big leagues after failing to get a contract following a .251-12-72 season with Oakland in 2011. The former Yankee and Yomiuri Giant will be playing his sixth regular-season minor-league game.

Matsui’s appearance is the first of several established major leaguers scheduled to appear here during the series with the Pawtucket Red Sox. Third baseman Kevin Youkilis is set to join the PawSox on a rehab assignment beginning Wednesday, while Daisuke Matsuzaka will start on the mound for Pawtucket on Thursday.

About 35 Japanese media are credentialed to follow Matsui’s tenure in Durham, and that number is expected to swell past 50 when Matsuzaka makes his start on Thursday.

The Bulls are coming off a decent road trip, having won three of four in Rochester over the itinerant Empire State Yankees after going 1-3 at Syracuse.

Durham is in an uncharacteristic last place in the International League’s South Division. The Bulls come into the game with a 10-7 home record, but are 0-4 against the PawSox.

Matt Torra (2-4, 5.63) will go for the Bulls against Brandon Duckworth (4-0, 4.10).

Each hits two home runs but the visitors’ blasts come with guys on base, and Pawtucket takes the opener 8-2.