<i> BESUBORU</i> FEVER : Japanese Baseball Is Whole New Ballgame for American Players

No matter how you say it, there’s no sport quite like “besuboru.”

The thrill of a “sayonara” -- game-winning home run. A fastball pitcher whipping a called third “sutoraikku” past the hitter. The umpire yelling “out-o!” on a close play at the plate.

Baseball, it’s said, is the most talked-about subject in Japan after the weather, the yen-dollar rate and sex. America’s most prominent legacy here, along with Mickey Mouse, has been a national mania since Abner Doubleday’s heyday.

This summer, major-league attendance is soaring, the pennant races are heating up and the Giants are in first -- just like in the States. It sounds as familiar from afar as the crack of bat on ball.

But transplanted players swear it’s not, from ballpark fare that features fried octopus and eel to managers bowing to umpires to -- get this -- virtually no contract disputes.

It’s been 117 years since baseball was introduced by a visiting U.S. professor named Horace Wilson. It may be another century before Americans figure out exactly what the Japanese have done with their national pastime.

Larry Parrish leans on his bat behind home plate and gestures toward his Yakult Swallows teammates doing repeated outfield sprints before the game.

“You watch these guys when they come in to the dugout,” he tells a visitor. “They’ll be drenched with sweat from practice. It’s that way every day. They have nothing left for the game.”

Then the 6-foot-3 Parrish, who hit 256 homers in 15 seasons with Boston, Texas and Montreal, steps into the batting cage and puts on a display of American brawn. He sends pitch after pitch sailing deep into the left-field seats of the Tokyo Dome, a near-clone of Minneapolis’ Metrodome, to the “oohs” and applause of early-arriving fans.

For all the progress the Japanese have made in catching up to American baseball, no one crushes balls like a “gaijin,” or foreigner.

With a few notable exceptions, such as three-time Triple Crown winner Hiromitsu Ochiai and the retired Sadaharu Oh, U.S. retreads or washouts annually dominate the power-hitting categories. The late-August (Aug. 22) home run leaders with their totals in parentheses: Cecil Fielder (35), Ralph Bryant (35), Parrish (29), Greg “Boomer” Wells (28), Mike Diaz (29), Willie Upshaw (29).

There are three ways the Japanese compensate for their relative lack of clout: practice, practice, more practice.

Last year’s Central League champions, the Chunichi Dragons, went 162 days without a day off, the whole team often going straight from the airport to four-hour voluntary workouts. During a similarly “voluntary” month-long training camp in the offseason, players spend 10 hours a day on the field in hand-numbing conditions each January.

Robert Whiting, an American-born resident who has written two books on Japanese baseball, says the attitude was typified by Manager Suishu Tobita, still known as the god of Japanese baseball.

“If the players do not try so hard as to vomit blood in practice, then they cannot hope to win games,” wrote Tobita, who died in 1965. “One must suffer to be good.”

A standing joke among American players is that the umpire’s traditional cry at the start of the game should be amended here to “Work ball!”

Warren Cromartie, the former Montreal Expo, has starred for six seasons as center fielder for the Yomiuri Giants, the favorite team of more than half the Japanese. This summer his batting average is hovering around .400 as he bids to become the first player in the 54-year professional history of Japanese baseball to top that figure over a full 130-game season. “Kuromatti-san” owns one of the highest salaries, an estimated $1.44 million this year, and even does TV endorsements, holding up a bottle as he says: “Kirin beer: Banzai!”

But while fond of the Japanese, the 36-year-old Cromartie remains mystified by what he calls their regimented approach to the sport.

“Here, practice is more important than the game,” he says. “And it’s repetitive -- over and over and over again. ... These guys don’t have fun. They’re not encouraged to think for themselves.”

What they do have, as Whiting points out, is “wa” -- harmony, team spirit and unity.

“The game reflects the culture -- the group ethic and the work ethic,” explains the author of the newly published “You Gotta Have Wa.”

“They took the philosophy of martial arts -- endless training and development of spirit -- and grafted it onto baseball.”

The first thing that strikes an American visitor to a baseball game in Japan is the crowd. Even at a midseason game, many of the spectators are in a constant frenzy worthy of the seventh game of the World Series.

“The games are all like USC-Notre Dame games,” says Cromartie. “There’s non-stop whooping and hollering all season long.”

Banners wave, whistles blow and bands play from the moment the games start punctually at 6 p.m. “Oendan,” highly organized cheering groups of fans wearing “happi coats” in their team’s colors, explode into action when their side comes to bat, waving their arms, clapping in unison, swishing their pom-poms and singing each batter’s personal fight song.

The only thing missing is “Auld Lang Syne.”

Ushers who bowed as the crowd arrived collect foul balls from the unobjecting spectators during the game. Unless a player homers into an opposing team’s “oendan” -- then the ball is hurled back onto the field like garbage.

In a land of corporate dominance, billboards and advertisements are plastered all over the park -- over 100 in the Tokyo Dome alone. All 12 ballclubs, named after their parent companies, are tools to publicize a newspaper, hawk soft drinks or draw shoppers to a department store.

“The Nippon Ham Fighters’ main purpose in life is to sell pork,” Whiting explains. “As long as they’re on TV every day and in the morning papers, the company considers them a success.’

On the field, the differences are a bit harder to spot.

The ball is marginally smaller. Japanese players are smaller, averaging 5-9 and 170 pounds. Ballparks are smaller, generally 300 or 310 feet down the lines. Some have all-dirt infields. The strike zone is wider. Tie games are allowed.

But managerial and game strategy is cautious, to say the least. It’s a game of walks, sacrifice bunts in the first inning and virtually no three-pitch strikeouts, according to Whiting.

“There’s no element of surprise here,” Cromartie complains. “Everybody manages the same. If the first guy gets on, the next guy’s going to bunt.”

With runners on first and second and only one out, Parrish still draws walks. And infielders play in whenever there’s a runner on third.

But when it comes to technique and team play, Cromartie says “gaijin” players could learn a few things. In Japan, overthrowing the cutoff man is an unforgivable sin.

“They’re more fundamentally sound than American players,” he says. “These guys are the greatest bunters in the world.”

How do they stack up overall?

The way things are going in the American League East this year, the Hiroshima Carp or the Yokohama Taiyo Whales could probably make a swim for the pennant. But the general consensus puts the overall caliber of Japanese ball between Triple-A and the major leagues.

“They hit the ball where it’s pitched and they hit to all fields,” says Whiting. “They’re excellent at contact-type batting.

“But they should be better than they are. Because they don’t have a deep farm system, their talent is not well developed.”

About 20 to 30 players, he figures, could make it in the majors. But there is no free agency, and even pondering jumping to a U.S. team is considered tantamount to treason.

One top player who tried to make the move in a recent offseason was dissuaded by immense public pressure, including a newspaper interview with his mother who begged him in a huge headline, “DON’T GO!”

The only Japanese player in big-league history, Masanori Murakami, crossed the Pacific amid great controversy and made the National League All-Star team as a reliever for the San Francisco Giants in 1965. After pitching for just two seasons, he came home.

Never has a major-league superstar in his prime played in Japan, either, although it’s a possibility next year in the event of an owners’ lockout. Here’s some food for fantasy: Would Wade Boggs hit .420? Could Canseco reach 50-50 in homers and stolen bases? How about Nolan Ryan fanning 400 hitters?

Not likely. Even the most successful of the two dozen Americans (maximum two per team) who have played here say it’s a much tougher job for them here than back home.

“It’s a survival thing over here,” Cromartie says. “It’s not as easy as it sounds.”

Ask Bob Horner, who hit .327 with 31 homers in an injury-shortened stint in 1987 and walked away from a three-year, $10 million offer. Ask Randy Bass, who even after hitting a Japanese-record .389 in 1986 was widely criticized for an over-long absence after flying home in midseason to be with his hospitalized son. Ask Parrish, who pays for his fat salary with a mysteriously expanded strike zone and special scrutiny.

“I have a special place in my heart for the Japanese,” says Cromartie, who says he will retire after this season. “But being a foreigner here has its limitations. We’re constantly looked at, constantly being criticized. We’re the ones that are supposed to do it all.

“Our best day is when we get paid. That’s what we’re here for.”