Call the engravers. Tell them to hold off on that plaque for Cooperstown.

At the very least, we may need to change the name.

That was the message at Fenway Park on Wednesday night, where the baseball gods firmly held up their hands and said, in no uncertain terms, yamero. (That’s "stop’" in Japanese.) Daisuke Matsuzaka may yet have a brilliant, productive major league career with the Boston Red Sox, but after last week’s impressive debut against (giggle, giggle) the Kansas City Royals, it was a good idea to ease up on the accelerator.

From wherever one travels, after all, Cooperstown is a long trip.

"He's going to give up runs,'' Red Sox manager Terry Francona said of Matsuzaka, who allowed three runs in seven innings of the Red Sox’s 3-0 loss to the Seattle Mariners. "I mean, it's kind of hard to go downstairs and say, 'OK, don't ever leave a breaking ball up (in the strike zone).' These guys are human and make mistakes sometimes.''

Damn them.

Looks like we’ll just have to keep waiting for that perfect pitcher to come along.

Of course, this was Matsuzaka’s first career start at Fenway Park, where baseball is regarded as obsession. That alone had the townsfolk so keyed up that they were stuck to the bathroom ceilings. Matsuzaka has spawned an entirely new extension of Red Sox fans since his arrival — the Branch Dice-Kanians? — in much the same way that Pedro Martinez did when he joined the Red Sox between the 1997 and 1998 seasons.

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Don’t misunderstand. Nobody is suggesting that Matsuzaka is going to be the next Martinez. Or Roger Clemens for that matter. (He has to make at least one more start than both.) But what Matsuzaka is doing for Red Sox interest in Japan is akin to what Martinez did in the Dominican Republic, where the Red Sox were Just Another Team before Martinez arrived in Boston. Now the Red Sox are a major league presence in the Dominican, Martinez having passed the baton to the affable David Ortiz.

So it is with Matsuzaka, who drew 14 million viewers in Japan with his first spring start, against Boston College, at 8 a.m. Japan time. (This astonishing fact can never be repeated enough.) According to Red Sox officials, there were a stunning 350 media credentialed for Matsuzaka’s first start at Fenway, an increase of roughly 50 percent over the group in attendance at Matsuzaka’s first start in Kansas City last week.

There was a reason for this, of course.

His name is Ichiro Suzuki.

Indeed, as luck would have it, Matsuzaka’s first home game came against the Mariners, for whom the gifted Suzuki bats leadoff. All of that meant that Matsuzaka’s first career pitch at Fenway Park would come against the most successful Japanese positional player in major league history, so let the record show that Matsuzaka dropped in a 79-mile per hour curveball for strike one at precisely 8:11 a.m., Japan time, on Thursday, April 12, 2007.

For the night, Suzuki finished 0-for-4 with a strikeout (swinging), though it was his team that prevailed. The latter detail was not lost on Matsuzaka, who acknowledged that the hype of facing Suzuki may have distracted him from the ultimate goal.

"He's a hitter that I've wanted to face since his days in Japan,'' Matsuzaka said. "So compared to the other batters, I may have been a little more conscious of his at-bats.''

Translation: I was so charged up to pitch to Ichiro, that I may have more too much emphasis on his at-bats and not enough on the others.

But like his manager said, he’s human.

Of course, the irony in all of this is that Seattle starter Felix Hernandez was anything but, which brings us back to players like Matsuzaka, the American media and our uncanny ability to make most things bigger than they really are.

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Hernandez, lest we forget, is a 21-year-old Venezuelan phenom who has been hyped since he broke in with the Mariners late during the 2005 season. Hernandez had a very mediocre rookie season (2006) before reporting to spring training in much better physical condition this year, and he now seems to recognize his own potential.

Proof? On Wednesday against the Red Sox, Hernandez took a no-hitter into the eighth inning before allowing a clean, leadoff single to J.D. Drew. In two games this season, Hernandez has pitched 17 innings and allowed four hits while striking out 18, the kinds of numbers that inevitably will draw comparisons to some of the greats that have played the game.

"That was good,’’ an impressed Francona said of Hernandez’s performance against Boston. "I acknowledge that what we saw tonight was special.’’

How special? That all depends on your perspective. Like Matsuzaka, Hernandez has a long, long way to go before he’s ready for enshrinement.

But with Matsuzaka’s plaque on hold, maybe we should consider ordering one, anyway?

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