BOSTON - And so after all of that, after the $51.11 million posting fee and the $52 million contract and the seemingly endless, boundless hype, Daisuke Matsuzaka gets to pitch. In Game 7. Of the American League Championship Series. On Sunday night.

Money?

“After the last few games, I believed I was going to have the chance to throw again,'' Matsuzaka told a pool reporter on Saturday night at Fenway Park, where the Boston Red Sox defeated the Cleveland by a 12-2 score in Game 6 of the ALCS to force a decisive seventh game. “My teammates kept insisting I would have another chance, so I'm going into (Game 7) very excited.''

Of course, how long he remains there is the real question.

So what it's gonna be? Tumbling Dice? Loaded Dice? No Dice? Presumably, only time will tell. During Matsuzaka's first season in the major leagues, after all, Matsuzaka has oscillated from good (for the first four months) to bad (for the last two), and now it just so happens that the most highly publicized international pitching pursuit in baseball history has reached a climactic seventh game in a championship series.

Who writes this stuff, anyway?

Let's back up here for a moment. Lest anyone forget, Matsuzaka was the most sought after pitcher in baseball last offseason on that side of the Pacific. Purely to get the right to negotiate with Matsuzaka, the Red Sox outbid the New York Mets and New York Yankees, among others. Boston's winning bid was a preposterous $51.11 million, a price they paid to the Seibu Lions for the right to negotiate with Matsuzaka's agent, the steely Scott Boras.

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Talk about paying through the nose for a root canal.

When all was said and done, albeit at the 11th hour, the Red Sox and Boras agreed on a six-year, $52 million contract that will keep Matsuzaka under Red Sox control through 2012. All told, the Red Sox paid more than $103 million for the right to have Matsuzaka for six seasons, an average of slightly more than $17.1 million a year for someone whose most meaningful pitches on American soil came in the cute-but-meaningless affair known as the World Baseball Classic.

Nonetheless, Matsuzaka came to the major leagues with the reputation of a big-game pitcher, a title he started building while pitching in high school. His professional career in Japan only reinforced the legend he created, all of which led to last winter, to the $103 million, to a rookie season during which he won 15 games.

“I haven't seen him come up small in huge game yet in his career,'' said Red Sox starter Curt Schilling, he of the career 10-2 postseason record. “I believe based on his makeup, based on his demeanor, he's going to do something special (in Game 7).”

With that price tag, wouldn't you?

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Of course, there is just one small problem: So far this postseason, Matsuzaka hasn't exactly looked like Bob Gibson. Thus far, in two postseason starts covering 9 1/3 innings, Matsuzaka has allowed 13 hits and five walks while posting a 6.75 ERA. That comes following a September during Matsuzaka had a 7.62 ERA, leading Red Sox officials to believe that Matsuzaka simply hit the proverbial wall at the end of a major league schedule that is longer than the baseball calendar in Japan.

Whatever the explanation, circumstances have delivered Matsuzaka to Game 7, an affair that now will quite literally be an international event. The nature of Game 7s is such that Matsuzaka undoubtedly will be on a very short leash — as will Cleveland starter Jake Westbrook — though the Indians certainly did not pay $103 million for Westbrook's services. The bottom line is that the world will be watching when Matsuzaka takes the mound, many of them to see if all of the hoopla about the pitcher was truly warranted.

“Like I said before, I believed that I would have another chance to pitch,'' said Matsuzaka, who seemed devastated by his loss to the Indians in Game 3. “And I did everything I could to be ready when my turn came.''

His turn is here.

To borrow a phrase, show me the money.

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