Forty-two million? Just for the right to negotiate? With a Scott Boras property? Which could conceivably run us somewhere in the neighborhood of, say, 80 million clams when all is said and done?

Throwing that much money at an arm that’s yet untested in the MLB? I gotta admit, as sweet as it seems to reach in and pluck one out from under the Yanks, it makes me nervous. Maybe it’s all just a calculated bluff. Or some way of making amends with Japan for that Kevin Millar thing. Man, that money could get us a Clemens and a D-Train or Mulder.

But, hell, I’m just happy to be hearing baseball talk on the radio, in the subway, at the deli counter, and in the casinos. If we sign Matsuzaka, it could be the single greatest coup of Theo’s career. Or the biggest bust in baseball history. Either way, here’s the man himself, bringing sexy back:

Oh, and congrats to Hanley Ramirez.