Are you ready for Dice Kream?

Brigham's Ice Cream asserted today that rumors it was renaming one of its "Hall of Fame baseball flavor" Dice-Kream was "a bit of an April Fool's Day joke."

If the Arlington company's press release is to be taken at face value on the first day of Boston's baseball season, rumors were rampant in the local ice cream community last week that Brigham's was pondering changing the name of its "Curse Reversed!" flavor to honor Daisuke Matsuzaka, the Japanese import whom Red Sox fans have such high hopes for.

Indeed, Brigham's plans to change the name of "Curse Reversed!" And it is holding a contest to solicit proposals for a new monicker at its web site, brighams.com, by noon of April 9.

The winner will not only receive a baseball season's supply of the flavor, but the winner's name will also be immortalized on the ice cream's packaging, Brigham's said.

In May of 2004, Brigham's debuted its Reverse the Curse flavor of vanilla ice cream loaded with chocolate-covered peanuts and caramel bits; according to company lore, the recipe and first batch were "blessed by spiritualists in order to exorcise the curse."

With the Red Sox winning the World Series that year, the flavor became the most successful product launch in the company's 93-year history, Brigham's said, and after the victory, Brigham's renamed the flavor "Curse Reversed!"

While Brigham's is hoping baseball fans will be up to the task of a devising a new name, the company wants to assure all hands that this flavor's "treasured ingredients" will not be tampered with.

In a statement, Brigham's chief executive Chuck Green said: "It's time to retire anything related to a 'curse' and bestow a new name more fitting to the dream for the team in 2007."
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)