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US Major League overshadows local Japanese baseball

US Major League Baseball has pulled in sold-out crowds to the Tokyo Dome as it opened its regular season in Japan, but hometown teams aren't sharing the enthusiasm.

Nearly 45,000 people crowded into the stadium for the two showdowns between the Oakland Athletics and the World Series defending champion Boston Red Sox, starring the Japanese pitching duo of Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima.

But even with a disappointing performance by Matsuzaka, the US games forced coverage of the Pacific League, one of Japan's two divisions which started its own season just days earlier, into the back pages of the country's newspapers.

Senichi Hoshino, coach of Japan's national team for the Beijing Olympics, was not amused.

"Japanese baseball has entered its own season. So why are they allowing our business rivals to play their season-opening games?" Hoshino said on his Web site.

"This is an infringement of our management rights," the former Hanshin Tigers skipper said.

It is not just the Japanese who are upset.

Bobby Valentine, a former manager of the Texas Rangers and New York Mets who led the Pacific League's Chiba Lotte Marines to the 2005 Japan Series title, accused the Japanese commissioners of poor management decisions.

Valentine said the timing of the face-off between the Red Sox and A's was "ludicrous" since Japanese teams were trying to renew interest in games at home.

"It's a bad decision made by those who aren't trying to make Japanese baseball the most interesting. Nippon Professional Baseball has underestimated the Pacific League," Valentine said.

Japanese teams have suffered for years from a drain of talent to the US, where players can earn multimillion-dollar salaries and still enjoy a high standing -- or even enhance it -- back in Japan.

Matsuzaka was awarded a US$52 million, six-year contract with the Red Sox, who also paid US$51.1 million to his former Japanese team just for the right to negotiate with him.

Matsuzaka was on the squad of Seibu Lions when the Yankees came.
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