Cromartie, Batting .439, Keeps Oriental Perspective

So Will Clark is batting .372 to lead the major leagues. Big deal.

Warren Cromartie, formerly of the Montreal Expos and now star center fielder for Japan’s favorite team, the Yomiuri Giants, can hardly remember .372. In his sixth and, he says, final year of playing Japanese baseball, Cromartie is tearing up the Central League with 25 RBI in 32 games and a .439 average.

Cromartie said this week he isn’t sure how to explain his record-breaking batting pace. “I’m eating the same amount of sushi that I’ve always eaten,” he said.

Cromartie, known in Montreal for the “Cro-bar” candy bar, has adjusted better to the quirks and oddities of yakyu, as baseball is known here, than most American players. One lesson he’s learned well, as he showed during an appearance at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, is to restrain his braggadocio in favor of properly Japanese modesty.

“To be honest, I don’t think I’ll hit .400,” he said as to whether he could become the first in Japan to sustain a Ted Williams-like average through the season. “I’m a realistic person. You’ve got to have a lot of luck, you’ve got to stay healthy and you’ve got to have a bat with eyes.”

But there is no question that Cromartie, 35, has mastered the art of Japanese baseball. Although no one would claim the level of play here can match major-league ball, many American veterans -- including some who came with more impressive numbers than Cromartie -- have bombed out quickly.

Cromartie said he, too, often thought he would pack it in during his first years in Japan. Baseball is one of America’s few successful exports to Japan, and on the surface it looks like the same game -- but only on the surface.

The unrelenting practices, the brutal travel schedule, the sometimes minor-league accommodations -- “to be honest, the first two or three years, I really didn’t think I would make it,” Cromartie said.

He recalled the first time he took part in a game that ended in a 10-inning tie, a peculiarly Japanese modification in a nation where conflict is sometimes shunned. “I couldn’t deal with that,” he said. “Even with marbles, we always had a winner.”

In this cramped nation, Cromartie recalled hotels where he would put his foot in the toilet as he exited the shower. “You’ve got to think small at times,” he said.

And Cromartie recalled some of the foreigner’s difficulties such as the pitchers who throw around him, or at him, but rarely challenge him. He recalled the season-ending day when Japanese pitchers walked Randy Bass four times rather than give him a chance to break the season home-run record set by national idol Sadaharu Oh.

And he remembered the many gaijin, or foreign players, he has seen come and go, frustrated by the regimented practices, the language barrier, the cautious style of team-oriented play.

“Some do fight it, and the ones who do fight it are no longer here,” he said, explaining the secret of his success. “The ones who don’t fight it seem to stick around longer.”

Cromartie has now been here longer than any active gaijin except Greg “Boomer” Wells, who played briefly for Minnesota and Toronto before coming here in 1983, one year before Cromartie. Unlike many major-leaguers, Cromartie came here in his prime, after eight years in Montreal. “I haven’t played in the States yet,” he joked.

After batting .280 in 1984, Cromartie has kept his average above .300, with a high of .363 in 1986. But last year he broke his thumb and missed most of the season. Back in the United States, Cromartie trained hard, he said, for what he says will be his last year before retiring to devote more time to his life as a drummer and lyricist.

“I’m just riding a good wave right now,” he said. “I’m trying to go back where I started: trying to have fun.”