Happy Easter!

And to celebrate, let me give you a couple of goodies for your Easter basket. Like... this choice little story about Dustin Pedroia, from right before Friday's game against the Hanshin Tigers:

About 30 minutes before the game, Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia stood in the dugout working over the handle of his bat with a pine tar rag. Out of nowhere, a blunt noise filled the stadium. Pedroia pirouetted toward left field. A band of Tigers fans in left field had begun a chant. Then drums joined in. Then a horn. And clapping.

"What the (expletive) is that?" Pedroia asked.

Get used to it, he was told. That's Japanese baseball.

The answer seemed not to suffice.

"Shut up!" Pedroia yelled toward the fans.

Four hundred feet away, they couldn't hear Pedroia, and even if they could, his bellyaching would not have deterred a thing. Baseball games in Japan are spectacles in simplicity: quiet, bordering on silent, during the opponents' at-bats, and fervent, with cheers and whistles and other such chicanery, during the home teams'.

It was enough to keep Manny Ramirez awake.