Some events in baseball are of obvious and immediately apparent significance; they change the game. When Luis Gonzalez chipped a Mariano Rivera cutter into center field in the bottom of the ninth inning in the last game of the 2001 World Series, for instance, everyone watching knew at that moment that the Joe Torre dynasty as it had been known was over. Similarly, people still talk about the home run Albert Pujols hit in the bottom of the ninth to win the fifth game of the 2005 National League Championship Series for good reason. The Cardinals didn’t even win the series, but with that home run Pujols announced that he had taken over from Barry Bonds as the best player in baseball.

It was apparent well before the start of last night’s game that a similar confluence of events had settled on Fenway Park, and that important things were in order. Daisuke Matsuzaka, fresh off a brilliant debut against the Royals, was making his first home start for the Boston Red Sox with the baseball world ready to anoint him the heir to Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez. The first batter due up against him was Ichiro Suzuki, a transcendent figure and one of the game’s great pioneers, the man who more than anyone else established that Japan was a world class baseball power and a nation whose best players ranked alongside the best to be found anywhere.

Japan’s best hitter and best pitcher facing off in an American ballpark. Ten years ago, who would have thought it?

What this means for baseball in a broader context won’t be known for years, but there are clear precedents here, and we can make an educated guess: Matsuzaka has joined Suzuki as a member of a generation that will change the majors’ style of play.

The incorporation of Japanese talent into the American game is just another step in a process that began in the 19th century, gained power with the game’s desegregation, and will probably end some day with a fully globalized game. The closest parallels are of course to the absorption of black and Latin players into the game, and those followed a time line roughly similar to what we’re now seeing. You have, first, the early pioneers. Among black players, the most important was Jackie Robinson; among Latin American players it was probably Luis Aparicio, though you can make an argument for Chico Carrasquel. These are the figures roughly comparable to Suzuki; their importance is to make everyone aware that the group from which they came is capable of playing at the game’s highest levels, and that teams who invest in that group will enjoy a competitive advantage. (It’s not a coincidence that the 1950s Dodgers and White Sox, and the Mariners earlier in this decade, were successful teams.)

After the first generation makes clear that baseball will have to adjust to an influx of new talent, the second step of the process begins, in which teams don’t merely incorporate the new players, but adjust to take the best possible advantage of them. To oversimplify, black players brought a much more aggressive style of play with them from the Negro Leagues and played a huge role in the return of tactics and strategies that hadn’t been seen in the majors since the 19th century. Fifteen years after Robinson’s debut, Maury Wills becamce the first man since 1891 to steal 100 bases. Latin players played an equally important role, bringing new defensive techniques that helped tamp down scoring in the 1960s and eventually proved perfectly suited to the age of artificial turf. Venezuelan shortstops from Dave Concepcion to Omar Vizquel have been the direct descendants of Aparicio, and any time you see a shortstop glove the ball deep in the hole and nail the runner on a bounce, you’re seeing the influence of Latin baseball.

How will the majors change to take advantage of the Japanese style? It’s hard to say, partly because it’s hard to define that style, but last night’s much-hyped matchup between Suzuki and Matsuzaka probably gave a pretty good glimpse of what baseball will begin to emphasize more in coming years: Pitching based around a mastery of speeds, locations, and breaks; hitting based more around bat placement and speed than raw power. This makes perfect sense; the entire history of the game has been cyclical, moving from eras of power to eras of inside baseball. In a game based around power, the team with a heterodox approach gains an advantage, other teams imitate it, and soon the rules are slightly changed to adjust to the new approach. That’s how it’s been, and how it will always be, an endless pattern of innovation and adjustment spurred on by the constant incorporation of new styles and new ideas from all over the world.

If Suzuki vs. Matsuzaka was a glimpse of baseball’s future, the future will be worth the waiting. In the much anticipated first at bat, Matsuzaka changed speeds from the high 70s into the high 90s, flashed several breaking balls, and read that Suzuki was fixated on the outside pitch perfectly; Suzuki, for his part, quickly adjusted within the at bat, showed his trademark aggressive patience, and chopped a fastball back to the mound that missed being one of his perfect singles up the middle by inches. It was baseball as chess, a welcome change from the endless chest thumpers with their endless massive swings at endless macho fastballs down the middle of the plate, and it’s something I can’t wait to see more of.

tmarchman@nysun.com