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Matsuzaka Masterpiece: Glimpses of Greatness in Arm of Teenager (JACK CURRY, 2/11/07, NY Times)

Daisuke Matsuzaka had dirt on both knees of his gray uniform pants, dirt splattered on the front of his jersey and dirt smudges near his right elbow. He had pitched 16 innings, thrown well over 200 pitches, and now this stained, resilient athlete was warming up for inning No. 17.

Eight and a half years ago, Matsuzaka established his legendary status in Japan with a feat of endurance that is still hard to fathom in the context of Major League Baseball, where pitch counts are closely monitored and even 100 pitches by a starter is considered substantial.

Yet here was Matsuzaka, throwing pitch after pitch and barely resting between innings. With the 17th looming and Matsuzaka needing to get his 49th, 50th and 51st outs of the game, he stayed loose by tossing a ball along the left-field foul line.

Of the countless details that can be culled from analyzing a videotape of Matsuzaka's performance that day in Japan's prestigious Koshien high school tournament, the sight of him warming up when many pitchers would have been falling down was as revealing as any. There would be no rest for this 17-year-old.

After he unleashed his 250th pitch, he kept his right leg dangling in the air at the end of his delivery to see if his slider would finally end the game. When it was called a strike, when Matsuzaka had secured Yokohama's 9-7 victory over PL Gakuen, he simply lowered his head. [...]

Matsuzaka appeared in all six of Yokohama's games in that tournament, going 5-0 with a 1.17 earned run average, with five complete games and one save. On the day after the 250-pitch outing, Matsuzaka saved the semifinal victory for his team. On the day after that, he pitched a no-hitter in the championship game.

By that point, Matsuzaka was willing to celebrate. After the final out, he clenched both fists and pumped them, then was mobbed by his teammates. Soon, the players lifted him off the ground, carrying him the way he had carried them for days. Across the last four steamy days of the tournament, he threw an astounding 535 pitches.

"When he was finished at Koshien," said Craig Shipley, Boston's vice president for professional and international scouting, "he was a legend."