Made in Japan : Van Burkleo Breaks Ground as Westerner Groomed for Big Leagues in the Far East

Ty Van Burkleo was determined to savor this home run like no other.

He dropped his Louisville Slugger, took a long look at the ball as it arched toward the outfield wall and began trotting toward first base. As he approached the bag, Van Burkleo exchanged glances with the Marlboro Man, the 30-foot high piece of Americana that reassuringly adorns nearly every minor league park in the United States.

Van Burkleo had played professionally for 5 1/2 seasons, but he knew that faces and all things familiar would be a thing of the past the next time he eased his 6-foot, 5-inch, 200-pound frame into the batter’s box.

As he rounded first base he saw the ball descend out of sight into the Midland, Tex., night. Like the ball, Van Burkleo was going . . . going . . . gone.

Tyler Lee Van Burkleo said sayonara to American baseball on June 1, 1987, and left, with his wife, Chris, and 2-year-old daughter, Britney, to seek his fortune in Japan.

The Seibu Lions, tired of major league players who chilled their hosts while applying icing on their careers, eyed Van Burkleo for more than a year before finally plucking him from the California Angels’ minor league system.

Van Burkleo thus became the first double-A player signed by a Japanese team that had the specific intention of developing him in its minor league system so he could learn the Japanese way to play baseball.

But after spending just half a season beating the bushes in Japan last year, Van Burkleo, 25, is flourishing this season in the Japanese big leagues. In a country where society-changing technological advances are commonplace, Van Burkleo is a pioneer, a product imported from America that is slightly ahead of its time.

“We tried to keep Ty in the minor leagues this season, but he showed us some ability in the middle of spring training,” said Shin Kuzutani, the Lions’ director of foreign affairs. “He’s made a very good adjustment to Japanese baseball and Japanese life. His attitude is very acceptable. . . . different from other American players in Japan. He’s open-minded and always listening.”

His hosts are particularly impressed by Van Burkleo’s studious approach to the game.

“He’s the first American I have seen who writes notes about how he was pitched. That shows his attitude to work hard and be involved.”

The homework has paid off. In a group of foreigners, or gaijin, that includes former major leaguers Ben Oglivie, Doug DeCinces, Bill Madlock, Warren Cromartie and two-time Japanese triple crown winner Randy Bass, Van Burkleo is statistically among the leaders.

Used almost exclusively as a designated hitter, Van Burkleo is batting .293 in 48 games and has hit 12 home runs in 176 at-bats. Four of his 32 runs batted in have been game-winners. His performance, coupled with a rare willingness on the part of an American player to work and fit in, has made Van Burkleo a plum pick in the Land of the Cherry Blossom.

“It seems like more and more people are recognizing me every day,” Van Burkleo said by phone from Japan. “Every time I have a good game, it seems like it’s on a Sunday in front of a lot of fans at the stadium and on national TV.”

Van Burkleo, a dark-haired, strapping left-handed first baseman, envisioned appearances on the NBC Game of the Week when he was growing up and attending Chatsworth High. He was drafted out of Valley College by the Milwaukee Brewers in 1982.

Two-and-a-half years later, he was released.

“June 26, 1984, was the worst day of my life,” Van Burkleo said in 1985. “I was devastated. I told them I knew that I wasn’t through.”

Van Burkleo was right. The following spring, he was signed by the Angels and assigned to Redwood, their Class-A affiliate in the California League. Van Burkleo spent two seasons in the league, batting .276 with 10 homers and 52 RBIs in 1985 at Redwood. In 1986, he batted .268 and had 22 homers and a league-leading 108 RBIs for Palm Springs.

He was the class of Class A, but at age 23, Van Burkleo was no closer to Anaheim Stadium, where rookie Wally Joyner quickly was establishing himself as a fixture. But somebody was noticing Van Burkleo’s progress--it was during those two seasons that Seibu became interested.

Among the many Seibu-owned companies are hotels, transportation systems, department stores, golf courses, amusement parks and a baseball team that has has won four of the past six Japanese league championship series. The Lions are considered the most innovative organization in Japanese baseball.

In 1983, Seibu became the first team to send Japanese minor leaguers to the United States when they placed five players and a coach named Hank Wada with the San Jose Bees, a now-defunct independent team in the Class-A California League.

Wada, a catcher in the Lions organization for 19 years, coached in San Jose for five seasons. He saw in Van Burkleo a hitter with the power to thrive in Japanese parks that are no deeper than 395 feet in center field and 310 down the lines.

Last season, Van Burkleo was tearing up the Double-A Texas League for Midland when Seibu approached the Angels at the beginning of May and inquired about the possibility of acquiring him.

“We could have just said ‘No interest’ and that would have been the end of it,” said Bill Bavasi, the Angels’ director of minor league operations. “Ty was having a hell of a year in Midland. He’s an excellent kid. Probably one of the best we’ve ever had. But he was at a minor league salary, had been playing for a few years and was married with a young daughter.

“If we had said no to Seibu we were shutting down an opportunity for him to make a lot of money.”

A contingent that included Kuzutani, Wada and the team’s player personnel director came to the States to watch Van Burkleo in Jackson, Miss.

In the first game Van Burkleo had four hits, including a home run that the visiting group missed because they arrived late. In the second game, everyone was in attendance when Van Burkleo slugged another home run.

The next day, the Japanese group left to watch another player in Phoenix. Van Burkleo struck out four times.

“The whole thing came out of nowhere and the process ended up lasting about a month,” Van Burkleo said. “It was an exciting time but also a strenuous time. I went from hitting .350 to .330.

“I kept saying to myself, ‘I’ll stay here and make the big leagues.’ Then I’d have a bad day and say, ‘Oh, I gotta get out of here.’ It was a mental strain.”

By the end of May, the Japanese were prepared to offer Van Burkleo a two-year contract. He was earning $1,400 a month at Midland and the Japanese were offering a reported $65,000 for the first year with the possibility of making, with incentives, as much as $200,000 the second year if he made the big leagues.

Making a decision, however, was not easy. Van Burkleo, like most ballplayers, grew up dreaming about playing in the same stadiums that were the stages for the baseball stars of his youth.

“The Angels gave me all of my scouting reports and let me read them,” Van Burkleo said. “I was having a great year, but I wasn’t a can’t-miss prospect like Devon White.”

Thus far, Van Burkleo has been more successful in Japan than anyone expected.

Before the season, agents for major leaguers in the States besieged Seibu to see if they were interested in having their clients fill one of the two roster positions available to foreigners. Harry Steve, general manager of the Class-A San Jose Giants and former owner of the San Jose Bees, acted as an intermediary between the agents and Seibu.

“The agents were told that Seibu was going to start the year with Ty Van Burkleo,” Steve said. “I think all of them thought, ‘Who the heck is Ty Van Burkleo?’ But the way things have turned out, I don’t think Seibu could be any happier.”

Other than the loneliness that the language barrier presents, the Van Burkleos say they, too, are enjoying their experience in Japan. Unlike Americans who have played for the Lions in the past, the family does not live in the Westernized and diplomat-populated Hiroo area, which requires a 1 1/2-hour commute each way to travel to Seibu Lions Stadium.

Instead, the club pays for the Van Burkleos’ four-bedroom apartment in Kotesashi Heights, about 40 minutes by Seibu-owned train from downtown Tokyo and 15 minutes from the ballpark.

“I like living out here where it’s peaceful and I can be with my family,” Van Burkleo said. “If we were in Hiroo, those three hours on a train each day would be wasted time I could be spending with my wife and daughter.”

In a country where a pizza and a pitcher of beer can cost $50, the family eats together at home as often as possible. Van Burkleo, however, has sampled much of the local fare, including raw whale meat, aquarium snails, octopus, squid and raw liver.

“At home our diet is as American as we can make it,” Van Burkleo said. “But on the road I eat Japanese-style with the team. I don’t mind. I like going to Japanese restaurants and slurping up some ramen. “

Van Burkleo also has become acclimated to a steady diet of breaking pitches. In Japan, few pitchers are candidates for the nickname “Orient Express.”

“Guys who can only hit the heat will never see it in Japan,” said Marty Kuehnert, an American-born broadcaster who calls games in Japanese and English. “In the States, if a guy has a good fastball, it’s like a showdown at the corral. There’s not many of those in Japan.”

There are, however, bunches of bunts. Japanese teams play for the big inning about as often as the Seattle Mariners win a pennant.

“There’s no doubt it’s a different game,” Van Burkleo said. “We’ve got some guys here who can play and it would be interesting to see if they could compete in the major leagues back home.”

Training methods are also different from those in the West. Spring training, for example, is anything but the relatively laid-back affair fashioned by big league teams in the United States.

The Lions begin their two-month spring training on Shikoku Island in Southern Japan. No wives are allowed and there is no access to any of the country’s $250-per-round golf courses. Also missing are arguments around the batting cage among players who say they are being cheated out of swings. Of course, when a player is required to take 1,000 swings a day. . . .

“They count every pitch you swing at,” Van Burkleo said. “On the field, they mark where every ball was hit and whether or not it would be a base hit. There are six or eight batting cages and they have hired a guy to stand behind every cage and count each swing.

“After practice, you go back to the hotel and take a shower, eat, have a meeting and go to a tent and take more swings until you get it up there right around 1,000.”

Van Burkleo also discovered that Japanese sports medicine is also slightly different than what he grew accustomed to in the States.

At the start of spring training Van Burkleo was suffering from a sore Achilles’ tendon that caused him to also aggravate his knee. He hobbled through drills for a few days before the team sent him to a doctor. There was no receptionist, no insurance forms and no X-ray machines.

“He gave me a raw egg that he said was ionized and told me to drink it,” Van Burkleo recalled. “Then he told me to sit down on a tatami mat that he also claimed was ionized. Meanwhile, they got this hot tub ready that was about as big as a washing machine. It was tiny and I could barely fit into it, but after I got in, I sat there in the fetal position with water up to my knees.

“The guy said, ‘Here’s some ionized water, drink as much as you can in the next 30 minutes.’ I drank three liters of water and he told me to get out and lay down on the tatami mat. Then he started jabbing me all over my body with this poker.

“I have to admit, after the treatment, I felt better.”

There is little remedy, however, for the loneliness that sometimes besets the Van Burkleos. Ty has learned some Japanese, but still finds it difficult to communicate with teammates. Most of Chris’ conversation is with Britney.

“I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have her,” Chris said. “I talk to her like she’s a 25-year-old adult.”

For Chris, it can also get lonely at the ballpark. When a Japanese ballplayer goes to work, his wife stays at home. Chris, however, attends every home game.

“It’s not for them (the other wives), but I haven’t changed,” she said. “I feel the pressure and I get the looks when I show up because I’m the only wife there.”

Despite the hardships Van Burkleo is not against returning to Japan next season if the terms of a new contract can be worked out.

The ballclub seems interested in having him return.

“Ty works hard and is favored by the Japanese players, coaches and manager,” Kuzutani said. “He’s a 25-year-old boy. If he can be successful here he can play for 10 years.”

If he is successful, he can also return to the Angels.

“We still consider him part of the family,” Bavasi said. “If he ever parted company with Seibu, he could be back here in a heartbeat.”