Baseball News plus Exciting Bonus Material!
The Red Sox recently signed Japanese baseball star Daisuke Matsuzaka to a multi-year, mega-dollars contract. Add to that the "posting" fee sent as compensation to his former Japanese club, and they have spent over $100 million dollars to bring in a player who has never thrown a pitch in the major leagues.

Seems like a lot, right? Well, one thing people need to consider is the Japanese market. Matsuzaka's contract press conference was shown live on 4 of my 5 TV channels this morning. Even before he signed, sports shows over here were already highlighting his future matchups against Hideki Matsui (Yankees) and Ichiro (Mariners). So the market for the Sox TV rights and merchandise just expanded by about 120 million people thanks to one player. Not too bad. You see the Yankees logo on all types of merchandise here thanks to Matsui, and now you'll start seeing a whole lot more Red Sox jerseys and ballcaps as well. Everyone is so concerned over whether or not Matsuzaka will become a good player that they have forgotten the potential Japanese business aspect of the deal.

You may recall how I mentioned that I met a reporter from The Guardian during my time in China. Here is his article he was on his way research at the time, concerning an endangered dolphin species in the Yangtze River. Basically, it doesn't look good.

Link to Guardian Article on Chinese Dolphins

I've also seen this story on CNN.com and Yahoo! News. They both said the dolphin is essentially extinct. That's too bad.


Finally, Donald Rumsfeld officially left his post as Defense Secretary, and I can't say that it is soon enough. But do you expect him to go away crying about it? No, how about having a huge ceremony to crow about your "accomplishments". Read this article and ask yourself, "What kind of parallel universe do these guys live in?" It's certainly not this one. Unfortuntely, their decisions will affect all of us.

Rumsfeld gets big Pentagon Sendoff