Hideki Matsui

Hideki Matsui has not played outfield since a June 15, 2008 game in Houston — a span of 173 games — but barring injury Wednesday, the Japanese slugger will start in left field Thursday night against the Minnesota Twins. And Manager Mike Scioscia hinted that Matsui, limited to designated hitter for all 142 of his games for the New York Yankees in 2009, thanks to a pair of arthritic knees, could spend more time in the outfield this season than anyone thought possible.

The field for this fall's playoffs -- not to mention the rosters of three current division leaders -- might be far different if Josh Byrnes, then Arizona's general manager, hadn't approached the New York Yankees' Brian Cashman with an idea shortly before Thanksgiving in 2009. What transpired next may have contributed to Byrnes' firing eight months later. And it no doubt cost Cashman some sleepless nights the next summer. But the three-team, seven-player trade consummated a month later with the Detroit Tigers changed the fortunes of two franchises and set up outfielder Curtis Granderson for one of the greatest seasons in the Yankees' long and storied history.

Hideki Matsui's next paycheck may be lighter than usual after the Angels' slugger broke the windshield of team owner Arte Moreno's new Mercedes CL 600 with a foul ball in Wednesday's 8-6 win over the Kansas City Royals. "You kidding me?" teammate Torii Hunter said while surveying the damage. "Oh, man, that's coming out of his check. You can't hit the owner's car." Matsui made up for that later in the same at-bat, belting a three-run home run, his first as an Angel.

The Oakland Athletics and free-agent slugger Hideki Matsui finalized a $4.25-million, one-year contract Tuesday after he passed a physical. The sides had agreed to terms during the weekend. Matsui can earn an additional $100,000 in bonuses. Oakland introduced Matsui on Tuesday afternoon in a news conference attended by more than 100 media members. Matsui provides a reliable bat in the middle of the order that General Manager Billy Beane was seeking this off-season. The 36-year-old Matsui batted .274 with 21 home runs and 84 runs batted in last season with the Angels.

It is with a straight face that Hideki Matsui, when asked how he thinks fans will react when he is introduced as a member of the Angels before Tuesday's game in Yankee Stadium, says, through an interpreter, "Honestly, I don't know." Seriously? The guy hit .615 (eight for 13) with three home runs and eight runs batted in for the Yankees in the World Series last fall, including six RBIs in the Game 6 clincher to win series most-valuable-player honors, and he doesn't know how New Yorkers will respond?

Some 30-40 Japanese media members were outside the Angels' spring-training complex Tuesday afternoon, waiting to speak to Hideki Matsui while he addressed a handful of American reporters. At the end of the 10-minute interview, in which the Angels' new designated hitter showed a keen sense of humor that belies his usually stoic face, Matsui was asked what the Japanese media might ask him that American reporters didn't. "Maybe what kind of underwear I'm wearing," Matsui deadpanned through an interpreter.

at New York 2, Baltimore 1: Hideki Matsui homered off Jim Johnson in the ninth inning to give the Yankees their fourth victory in a row. New York moved 18 games over .500 for the first time since the end of 2007 season. at Chicago 4, Tampa Bay 3: Paul Konerko hit a three-run homer to back a solid start by Gavin Floyd. The Rays got to Floyd for just three hits -- all homers.

Hideki Matsui began Tuesday with 144 home runs, making him the major league's Japanese home run king. Though the Angels designated hitter's fifth-inning single against the Cleveland Indians on Monday night gave him 1,000 hits, he has no illusions of becoming the Japanese hit king. That title, of course, belongs to Seattle outfielder Ichiro Suzuki , who began Tuesday with 2,055 hits, a figure Matsui would have to switch leagues to catch. "If I played Little League and had a doubleheader every single day," Matsui said through an interpreter, "then I might have a chance."

Hideki Matsui has been seeing red since the day the former New York Yankees slugger signed a one-year, $6-million deal with the Angels on Dec. 16. Now an entire nation across the Pacific -- and the sizable media contingent that follows him -- will have to get used to the idea, as Matsui noted when he was asked upon his arrival at camp on Friday if it felt strange to walk into a new spring-training complex and don a bright red Angels T-shirt and...

The Oakland Athletics and free-agent slugger Hideki Matsui finalized a $4.25-million, one-year contract Tuesday after he passed a physical. The sides had agreed to terms during the weekend. Matsui can earn an additional $100,000 in bonuses. Oakland introduced Matsui on Tuesday afternoon in a news conference attended by more than 100 media members. Matsui provides a reliable bat in the middle of the order that General Manager Billy Beane was seeking this off-season. The 36-year-old Matsui batted .274 with 21 home runs and 84 runs batted in last season with the Angels.

If Sunday was, indeed, Hideki Matsui's last game as an Angel, he went out with a bang. The Japanese designated hitter clubbed a two-run home run to right field in the fourth inning to help the Angels defeat the Texas Rangers, 6-2, in the season finale at the Ballpark in Arlington. Peter Bourjos snapped a 2-2 tie with a solo home run to left in the sixth, and Mark Trumbo , the former Villa Park High School star, capped a three-run ninth with a two-run single for his first big league hit. Dan Haren gave up two runs and seven hits in six innings, striking out three and walking none, to improve to 5-4 with the Angels, and Rich Thompson , Kevin Jepsen and Jordan Walden each threw scoreless innings.

Reporting from Seattle — Ichiro Suzuki came within inches of robbing Hideki Matsui of a home run Wednesday night, leaving the large Japanese media contingent in Safeco Field feeling somewhat robbed. Matsui's two-run shot over the outstretched glove of Suzuki in the seventh inning turned a one-run deficit into a one-run lead and pushed the Angels toward a 4-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners. Had the acrobatic right fielder come up with the catch to deny the Angels' designated hitter, it would have been one of the biggest stories of the season in Japan.

The waiver wire is bustling this time of year, with teams jostling to add a piece to boost their World Series hopes and non-contenders looking to dump salary or trade a veteran for a prospect or two. It is not known whether Angels designated hitter Hideki Matsui has been on waivers, but if he has, and a team wins a claim or trades for him, he will come with a little baggage in the form of the 40 or so Japanese media members who cover him on...

Reporting from Minneapolis Peter Bourjos has blazing speed, the one tool you can't teach and that never goes into a slump, but the 23-year-old center fielder knows that to stick with the Angels, he will have to do more than run really fast. "You have to produce up here," Bourjos said. "If you can just run but you're not getting on base, you're not getting hits, you're not going to stay. You've got to produce on defense and offense. " Bourjos, showing there is more to his arsenal than speed, produced in a big way in Target Field on Saturday, leading the Angels to a 9-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins that moved them to within seven games of Texas in the American League West.

Reporting from Boston — Just when it seemed the Angels had exhausted their supply of clutch hits, breaks and team meetings and were on the brink of irrelevancy in the American League West race, they found some inspiration in a place that for them is usually filled with darkness. Energized by a 25-minute players-only meeting called by Torii Hunter, the Angels ended a three-game losing streak and a nine-game losing streak to the Boston Red Sox with a 7-2 victory in Fenway Park on Thursday night.

The Angels were so thoroughly baffled by Toronto left-handed starter Marc Rzepczynski on Friday that Manager Mike Scioscia compared his hitters to Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov's dog. "We were being led in a direction, and we didn't make the adjustments we needed to make," Scioscia said. A day later, against another Blue Jays left-hander, it was as though the Angels had snapped their leash and sprinted to freedom. Bobby Wilson hit two homers and drove in a career-high five runs and Hideki Matsui, making an increasingly rare start against a left-hander, added a season-high four hits to power a 7-2 victory Saturday at Angel Stadium.

The Angels got their first taste Wednesday of the media sensation that is Hideki Matsui, with Japanese reporters cramming a stadium interview room a good half an hour before a news conference to introduce the team's new designated hitter. Two walls were lined with about 20 television cameras, and when the 35-year-old slugger donned an Angels cap and jersey (No. 55) for the first time, a panoply of camera flashes illuminated the room like a planetarium light show. "It's been like this since day one of professional baseball for me, so from that sense, I'm used to it," Matsui said through an interpreter.

By Bill Shaikin The All-Star game comes to Anaheim this summer for the third time, and this time the Angels might have one of their own in the starting lineup. In 1967, the Angels had three players — shortstop Jim Fregosi, first baseman Don Mincher and pitcher Jim McGlothlin — selected as reserves. In 1989, they had outfielder Devon White and pitcher Chuck Finley selected as reserves, and Finley did not get into the game. The Angels have emerged as an elite franchise since then, but the only players elected into the starting lineup over the last two decades are Troy Glaus (2003)

Reporting from Detroit — Hideki Matsui was given Sunday off in part "to take a break," Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said, the third time in the last seven games that the designated hitter was out of the lineup. Matsui could soon find himself on an extended leave unless he pulls out of a slump in which he has hit .204 with four home runs and nine runs batted in in his last 27 games. Scioscia offered his most forthright assessment of Matsui's season before the game, saying, "His downturns have been a little longer this year than we would have anticipated.

Coming out of the All-Star break, Manager Mike Scioscia said he expected Hideki Matsui to "be very productive in the second half" and to end up with "numbers that are comparable to what he did in New York last season." So far, the numbers don't add up. Matsui hit a two-run home run in the seventh inning of Tuesday night's 10-2 win over the Yankees, but he's batting .249 with 11 homers, 49 runs batted in, 26 runs and 70 strikeouts in 96 games, putting him on pace for 18 homers, 82 RBIs, a career-low 43 runs and a career-high 118 strikeouts.