Daisuke Matsuzaka starred with bat and ball as the Boston Red Sox beat the Colorado Rockies 10-5 on Saturday night to move within one game of a World Series sweep.

Boston went three up in the best-of-seven series three years to the day since they last won the title, on that occasion snapping an 86-year drought known in the United States as “The Curse of the Bambino”, dating back to when the franchise let the legendary Babe Ruth join their arch-rivals, the New York Yankees.

Matsuzaka became the first Japanese pitcher to start a World Series game and surrendered only three hits in five and a third innings of work. Because the game was being played at the home of the Rockies, the National League side, pitchers also bat, unlike in the rival American League where their place at the plate is taken by a designated hitter.

‘Dice-K’ as Matsuzaka is nicknamed, duly obliged with the first hit of his Major League career, a single which drove home two of the six runs the Red Sox amassed in the third innings to take a stranglehold on the game.

“I can’t quite say that I’m a confident hitter, but I love hitting,” said Matsuzaka, who left the Seibu Lions in Japan for a six-year, $52 million deal with Boston. “I didn’t want to be the one stopping our momentum."

It was the first Series hit by a pitcher since 2004 and by a Red Sox pitcher since 1975.

All 22 prior teams with a 3-0 World Series lead went on to capture the championship, 19 of them by completing a sweep.

“It’s a great situation to be in,” Jacoby Ellsbury, the Boston leadoff hitter, said.“We’re very confident but we know Colorado is a great ball club. There’s no quit in them. We know it’s going to be a tough one to get the last one."

“It looks like we’re in groundbreaking territory,” Clint Hurdle, the Rockies manager said. “We need to go out and win game four. You don’t need to overreact. You don’t need to underreact. We need to show up and win game four."

Trailing by six runs, Colorado closed to within one, scoring two runs in the sixth innings and another three in the seventh.

But Jacob Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia, the first pair of rookies to bat first and second in the order in a World Series game, hit back-to-back run-scoring doubles in the eighth to give the Red Sox a 9-5 edge and they added another run in the ninth for added insurance.

“We were hanging on for dear life,” Terry Francona, the Boston manager, said. “We finally got something going because they really shut us down for a while there. They really got back into the game. It was nice to spread it out, give us some wiggle room."

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