WAITING FOR MATSUI.(baseball player Hideki Matsui )

Yoshihiro Ando had performed the ritual of observing Hideki Matsui emerge from a sport-utility vehicle and duck into Yankee Stadium. Having been assured that Matsui would lift weights and hit baseballs for no less than four hours, he had decided it was safe to retreat to the warmth of the McDonald's on the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue. He was joined by Takahiro Horikawa, a colleague from the Asahi Shimbun. There seemed no risk of getting scooped, on this frigid Saturday morning, since most of the other Japanese reporters and photographers on the Matsui beat were already tucking into their Egg McMuffins and poring over the local tabs.

Matsui, a tall, handsome outfielder who hits for both power and average, signed with the Yankees in January. In Japan, this was Godzilla-calibre news. Matsui was the best and most beloved player on Japan's most popular team, the Yomiuri Giants. The idea that he would abandon the life of a deity to risk failure in New York has made for a story that is likely to dwarf the frenzied coverage of the Japanese stars who came before him, such as Hideo Nomo and Ichiro Suzuki. A few weeks ago, a Japanese sports daily hired a helicopter to capture the image of Matsui's first jog across the Stadium outfield. In the paper the next day, Matsui appeared to be little more than a dot. No matter.

Ando arrived in town three weeks ago, on the same flight from Tokyo as Matsui. They nodded to each other on the plane (Ando, who is thirty-seven, had covered the Giants for the previous two seasons), but did not chat. Upon landing, Matsui went straight to the Stadium, to work out and get the better of his jet lag. Ando positioned himself outside the press gate and, in the company of his fifty or so competitors, waited five hours for Matsui to come out.

Spring training, in Tampa, was still weeks away; Matsui had come to New York early, in order to adjust to a new time zone and find a place to live. He was staying at the Regency, but word had it that he was looking at apartments on the Upper East Side. The apartment story, Ando and Horikawa agreed, had the makings of a nifty scoop.

"We could chase him," Ando said, laughing. "Chase his car. That's the last resort."

Ando believes there are rules about that sort of thing, though, and he was not inclined to break them. He was already worried that he might be in trouble for breaking one on his first day. The Yankees had insisted that the Japanese press corps not camp out in front of ...