Has Kuroda ended the Curse of Kei?

Wow. It was like watching Cliff Lee silence us in 2009, never breaking sweat, so efficient was Hiroki Kuroda yesterday. You thought he could have tossed another nine. The Angels of Alzaheimers just kept hitting tape-measure pop-ups. It's been a while since a Yankee starter so baffled the opposition.

I'm not talking about a CC outing, where he just stomps them. Last one like this was Bartolo Colon in those unforgettable nights before he tweaked a gonad trying to cover first. Kuroda yesterday got inside the Angels heads. They're still WTF-ing.

So... are we done crapping our bed with Japanese hurlers? Let's see: There was Hideki Irabu, (above) who killed himself a year ago, Katz Somethorother (a post-Nomo spray-paint redhead around 1993, who threw out his arm in the Arizona Instructional League) and of course, the greatest pitcher in Scranton-Wilkes Barre history, Kei Igawa.

If you want to expand it to the Asian rim, you could almost add Taiwan's Chien-Ming Wang to the list, because of how his career was destroyed so tragically. He was going to be one of the Yankee greats. In some parallel universe, where the Higgs Bosons fall one frequency beyond third base, he's still the Yankees top starter. It still hurts to think of him.

But yesterday, there was Kuroda, handling the Angels like no Yankee pitcher in years, and justifying the Cashman trade-frenzy of January, which enflamed critics - including, ahem, some of us on this blog, ahem.

How good is this guy? Has he just reopened Yankee trade routes to the Orient? Dare we believe?