It sounds less like a scouting story than it does like a scene from Indiana Jones. The discovery of Junichi Tazawa, currently the most dominant pitcher on the Red Sox, required stealth, persistence, courage and, yes, a sense of adventure. 

When the Red Sox began the process of scouting Tazawa in a Japanese industrial league, he remained a relative unknown. That was true not just of American Major League Baseball teams, but also, to a degree, of teams in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball League. 

After all, had the slight right-hander been a known commodity, he likely never would have ended up in the United States or even with his industrial league team, Eneos. But he went undrafted out of high school and even after that.  

“He had passed through at least three drafts where the Japanese teams did not draft him,” noted one American League scout in Japan. 

But that oversight came to represent an opportunity for the Red Sox. Former Red Sox vice president of international scouting Craig Shipley and Pacific Rim scouting coordinator Jon Deeble caught a two-inning glimpse of Tazawa pitching against Cuba at an international tournament in Taiwan in 2007. The right-hander, then 21, was not yet prominently on the scouting radar. 

And so, while trying to get another look at the pitcher for Eneos, the Australian Deeble had to go on a cloak-and-dagger scouting mission. 

“I went to see him pitch up in the mountains in a country town. It was freezing cold, I walked into the stadium and he was just walking to the mound. I was thinking at the time there are no taxis up here -- how am I going to get out of this place?” Deeble recalled. 

Of course, before that consideration came into play, Deeble had to scout the pitcher while trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible so as to avoid tipping off the baseball world to the Red Sox’ interest. But obscurity was easier in theory than practice.

Deeble was the only Westerner at an ill-attended game. Moreover, the fact that he needed to capture video to send back to the Red Sox and Shipley further complicated the mission. Nonetheless, his efforts were rewarded when Tazawa -- then a starter -- pitched well in frosty conditions. 

Still, the day’s challenge was not done. 

“I had to walk back down the mountain for about four miles in freezing cold conditions with gloves, a balaclava and snow jacket,” he recounted. “At the bottom of the mountain, I found a convenience store, [and] I had the lady in there book me a taxi.”

Tazawa was now very much on the Sox’ radar -- to such a degree that the effort to see the pitcher trumped an opportunity to see the Red Sox when they played the Athletics in Tokyo at the start of the 2008 season. 

Even though Deeble and Shipley were the two members of the Red Sox organization who had been most involved in the effort to scout Daisuke Matsuzaka prior to his signing with the Red Sox, at a time when nearly every member of the Red Sox front office was in Tokyo to see the right-hander pitch, the two Australians went to see Tazawa pitch in a late-March tournament. 

“He was amazing,” remembered Deeble. “He struck out 19, showed a 95 mph fastball and a good split and curveball.”

Throughout 2008, with Tazawa dominating the industrial league in spectacular fashion, Deeble and the Sox scouted every tournament in which he played, ultimately getting something in the vicinity of 20 looks at the pitcher – seeing him struggle, seeing him dominate and everything in between. As the year progressed, the team was no longer alone in the endeavor, as both major league and NPB teams familiarized themselves with the pitcher’s body of work with Eneos. 

Finally, in September 2008, Tazawa declared his intention to bypass professional baseball in Japan in favor of Major League Baseball. When he started talking to teams in November, he quickly and decisively reached the conclusion that he wanted to pitch for the Red Sox. 

At the press conference announcing his signing, the right-hander cited three reasons for his decision. 

“One is the development program, which I think is excellent. Another factor is that there are Japanese players here as well as Japanese staff and Japanese speakers who are part of the Red Sox organization,” Tazawa said at the time through a translator. “And the third reason is that the Red Sox were the first team to scout me.”

With the memory of trekking in a ski mask down snow-covered mountains still vivid, such sentiments were tremendously gratifying to Deeble and those who were in charge of the scouting effort -- though not as gratifying as what the right-hander is now doing. 

The Red Sox, according to several team sources, knew that Tazawa had elbow issues when he signed his three-year, $3.3 million major league contract that started in 2009, and that Tommy John was a likelihood if not a certainty at some point. But based on the pitcher’s makeup and work ethic, as well as his young age, the team had confidence that if/when he went under the knife, he stood an excellent chance of a complete recovery. 

Still, it would have been hard to forecast precisely what has happened -- particularly considering that, at the end of 2011, Tazawa was still working around 89-91 mph with his fastball, raising questions about whether his velocity would ever come back. It has -- and indeed it has reached peaks unlike anything he had shown before. 

Tazawa now mixes a 96-97 mph fastball with a splitter that disappears into a vortex at the plate, while also mixing in a slider. He is working with incredible confidence, attacking the strike zone in unyielding fashion. In 31 games this year (including a key out on Tuesday night against Rays slugger Evan Longoria) spanning 38 innings, Tazawa has a 1.42 ERA with 41 strikeouts and just five walks. 

He’s getting stronger as the season progresses and as his March 2010 Tommy John surgery recedes further in the rearview mirror. In September, he hasn’t given up a run while permitting just two hits and a walk while striking out 12 in 6 2/3 innings. 

In a month and season that have been defined chiefly by disappointment for the Red Sox, Tazawa has shown the potential to be a game-ending force, a key part of the Red Sox going forward. 

“You can’t throw a ball any better than he’s throwing it,” manager Bobby Valentine marveled to reporters on Monday. “It’s impossible to throw it better -- it really is.”

Once the subject of international intrigue and mystery, the 26-year-old is now moving comfortably from the shadows into a late-innings spotlight.