A Whole New Ballgame

11:05 AM EDT on Wednesday, August 27, 2003

BY STEVEN KRASNER
Journal Sports Writer

Chan Ho Park was getting lit up in a spring-training game in 1995.

The right-hander from Kong Ju City, South Korea, had just been torched for three consecutive home runs while pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

AP photo THERE'S NO HIDING IT: Texas Rangers pitcher Chan Ho Park, a native of South Korea, has a bad habit of revealing his emotions when things aren't going well for him on the mound.

Dave Wallace, the Dodgers' pitching coach at the time, was more concerned about the body language than the home runs. So after the game, he sat Park down on the bench for a chat.

"He had lost complete control of his emotions," said Wallace, now the Red Sox' interim pitching coach. "He was down. You could tell he was beat. So we sat in the dugout for maybe 10-15 minutes talking about your emotions, and how important it is to keep your emotions intact whether you're winning or losing on the mound. Great talk. Understood, we walk away, the day's over.

"The next morning I come to ballpark around 7:30 and he's out on our back bullpen area, and he's going through a shadow pitching workout.

"I said, 'Chan Ho, what are you doing?'

"He said, 'I'm working on my motion.' "

That's when Wallace realized that communication had broken down. Wallace was talking about "emotion." Park was hearing "motion."

"And that was his second year with the Dodgers. Unbelievable," said Wallace. "I hadn't had the translator with us because he knew enough English, or so you thought at the time, that if you took your time and slowly explained things he'd get it. But after that you just shake your head and say, lesson learned here. Let's not assume he understands anything at all."

While organizations are concerned with the foreign-born players' grasp of the English language and culture off the field, the bottom line is that they're even more concerned with communication on the field.

Miscommunication off the field can lead to being served liver and onions instead of a filet mignon. Miscommunication on the field can lead to a loss.

Mostly, that comes into play with pitchers. Communication between the pitcher and the catcher is vital, going beyond just how many fingers the catcher is putting down.

Such communication can be difficult enough with a Spanish-speaking player. That barrier, though, usually can be smoothed out by having at least one infielder who can act as a translator on the mound for those conversations.

It is much more difficult, however, with pitchers from the Far East. While many catchers have at least a working knowledge of Spanish, either because they played winter ball in a Latin country or because they were able to pick it up over their years of professional baseball, communicating with Korean and Japanese pitchers can be more problematic during the course of a game.

"We're lucky that we have a couple of Latin infielders -- Alfonso Soriano and Enrique Wilson," said Yankee backup catcher John Flaherty. "I've tried to learn a few phrases in Spanish that would help them. But you can see when a guy is looking right through you. You're trying to do your best Spanish interpretation and you know he's not getting it."

"Sometimes you get the official head nod, like, 'Yeah, I got you,' " added Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek. "And they don't understand a word you just said. You can tell by looking in his eyes."

AP photo HE KNEW HIS STUFF: Hideo Nomo was so well-schooled in the game when he arrived in the U.S. that language was not a huge factor.

"Number one, Nomo didn't miss a trick. Baseball-wise, he knew the game," said Wallace. "He didn't have to say a lot. You could tell by his body language and the look in his eye whether he was on board with stuff.

"Admittedly, at times there were situations where you wondered if you were getting across what you wanted to through communication. There's always something lost when you go through different languages and you have someone translating for you because part of our communication is body language, expressions on your face, how you mean things," said Wallace.

By the time Nomo got to Boston in 2001, the Red Sox already had featured a Far East flavor, all of it with pitchers. Jin Ho Cho was the first Korean, called up in 1998. Tomo Ohka was the first Japanese native to arrive, in 1999. Korean Sun-Woo Kim joined Boston in 2001. They are all gone from the Sox, but Boston acquired Korean pitcher Byung-Hyun Kim (no relation to Sun-Woo) in a trade earlier this season.

The Red Sox are fortunate to have Chang-Ho Lee on their staff. Lee is an assistant trainer, but also is fluent in Korean and Japanese, putting him in the interpreter's role off the field.

On the field, though, it's the catcher's job to make sure the battery is in sync. Nomo, by the time he got to the Sox, and Byung-Hyun Kim are able to communicate in English with their catchers, but Ohka wasn't so skilled in the English language.

"It's not just about putting down 1, 2 or 3," said Varitek of the pitcher-catcher communication. "Sometimes you might want to give a signal to expand the zone, or things like that, and the language barrier does hinder that communication at times.

"Sometimes that means being crossed up on a pitch quite a bit," said Varitek. "I remember one game in Seattle. Ohka was on the mound. And it was pretty obvious when they had a runner at second that they had our signs. We changed them, but he didn't really understand we were changing them, so he kept bouncing balls past me. So we had to go back to the basic signs again."

But there are times when the universal language of baseball overcomes any communication problem.

On July 9 in Toronto, Byung-Hyun Kim was trying to close out a Red Sox victory in Toronto. Carlos Delgado, the league's most productive hitter, was getting ready to bat in a crucial spot, and manager Grady Little went out to the mound.

Little was considering having Kim intentionally walk Delgado. But the look in Kim's eyes, the tone of his voice and his use of English convinced Little to let Kim pitch to Delgado.

And Kim won an aggressive nine-pitch battle with Delgado, striking him out in an 8-7 Boston win.