He’s already earning his pinstripes.
Almost in a testament to the Yankees penchant for spending big, their newly signed pitching sensation, Masahiro Tanaka is wasting no time putting that $155 mill to good use.
Tanaka wanted to fly from Japan to NYC in style, so he did what any other person would do–paid Japan Airlines $195k to rent a Boeing 787 to take he, his family and tiny poodle to the U.S., via Yahoo:
JAL said the plane had been booked ahead of the heavy snow that hit Japan over the weekend, grounding all regular commercial flights to New York on Sunday and causing travel chaos around the Japanese capital.
Even with the luxury of his own airliner, Tanaka did not escape the weather-induced misery, with his journey from a Tokyo hotel to the airport by car taking eight-and-a-half hours.
Tanaka paid for the plane so he could take part in the team’s camp “in the best of form”, a Japanese baseball official who accompanied him reportedly said.
Ok, so at least we now have some background as to what spurred such a decision. We’ll see if this investment pays off on the field come Spring Training, and if it doesn’t surely Tanaka’s poodle will still be cheering him on.