Great piece in the ProJo about how Sox hurlers Brad Penny and Takashi Saito did a little male bonding back in their LA days over–what else?–“Hey Jude.”

Penny liked to hunt. Saito said he didn’t do much but baseball. Wait, he said, he did sing a lot of karaoke, when he was back in Japan. Penny immediately told Saito they were going out to find a microphone and do some singing.

They went to a restaurant/bar with some of the other players. There was the microphone set up in the middle of the room. Saito didn’t need much prompting. He sauntered up to the mic, asked for ‘Hey Jude,’ and started to belt it out –– ‘na na na’s’ and everything –– to the delight of his new teammates.

“He went on and got up there, and he was awesome,” Penny said.

Of course, the real gold in this piece can be found here:

Now that they’re on their new club together, Penny has made sure the other Red Sox have hung out with Saito and gotten to know him. There has, of course, been some karaoke involved.

“Oh, yeah, oh yeah, it’s incredible. He did it the other night for me and Beckett,” Penny said.

Let me get this straight: Brad Penny, Takashi Saito and Josh Beckett in a karaoke bar? You can shut down the internet right now, for all I care, folks. Ain’t nothing ever gonna top that.