DIAMOND DETENTE : Thousand Oaks’ Bushart Back From Tour to Promote Good-Will and Help Soviets’ Fledgling Baseball Program

What’s with all these weapons we have pointed at the Soviet Union? Billions of dollars are spent and, as it turns out, only one arm was needed to defeat the Red Army--the lean left arm of John Bushart.

Bushart, a pitcher from Thousand Oaks, turned back the Red Army baseball team, 7-3, during a recent two-week barnstorming tour of the Soviet Union, Finland and Sweden with a team called the Baseball Ambassadors.

The secret?

Pssst. The Reds can’t touch the deuce.

Can’t do much with a country fastball, either. It didn’t take a KGB defector to figure that out after the first couple of days. “They were big and they were great athletes, but they had absolutely no baseball skill,” Bushart said.

Yet what the Soviets lack in fundamentals they make up for in curiosity and enthusiasm for the U. S. national pastime. “One of their coaches said they like the game because it reminds them of chess,” Bushart said.

The fundamentals will come, Soviet officials are certain, as long as American teams continue to share the game’s nuances in the spirit of glasnost. A stream of teams from the United States have toured this summer and a collection of minor leaguers, including former Simi Valley High infielder David Milstien, is set to go this month. For additional pointers, and for equipment, the Soviets turn to their Cuban comrades.

“Most of their gloves were stamped, “Hecho (made) en Cuba ,” said John Meiers, Arcadia High baseball coach and coach of the Ambassadors.

The Soviets have been playing baseball seriously for three years and their goal is to build a team capable of winning an Olympic medal by the turn of the century. Baseball has been a demonstration sport in the past two Olympics and will make its debut as a medal sport in Barcelona in 1992.

“I hope the Americans stay champions in this century,” Soviet sports specialist Irakly Kutateladze told the New York Times two weeks ago. “In the next century, we shall see.”

The Ambassadors, who instructed neophyte Soviet players at clinics in debris-strewn warehouses on rainy days and weathered questionable cuisine and primitive playing facilities, heard the same boast.

“ ‘We shall see,’ ” Bushart said, imitating the pet Soviet phrase. “That was their low-key way of popping off. We heard that before our game with the Red Army. ‘You are good players, but we shall see.’ ”

The Soviets got to see firsthand the array of pitches Bushart, 18, will bring to Cal State Northridge next year as a freshman. In 5 2/3 innings against the Red Army, he struck out 10 and allowed only two hits and two earned runs.

That Aug. 8 victory was the Ambassadors’ third in as many games against teams from Moscow, first stop on the tour. The team then took a train to Leningrad--defeated the team there, 12-0--a bus to Helsinki, Finland, and a cruise ship across the Baltic Sea to Stockholm. The only game the Ambassadors lost was a 5-2 decision to the Swedes the day after the all-night cruise.

“The purpose of the tour was to promote peace and good-will,” said Meiers, who has compiled a record of 270-96 during 14 seasons as coach at Arcadia. Over the past eight years, Meiers has taken Ambassador teams to several European countries, China, Japan, Fiji and Australia.

“I only invite players who are interested in teaching the game to people who have little proficiency,” he said. “The players have to be talented, so we can demonstrate quality baseball, but possessing quality character is foremost.”

Bushart, who was recommended to Meiers by Thousand Oaks High Coach Jim Hansen, fit the requirements.

“I needed a left-handed pitcher and I’d heard from scouts that John was real good,” Meiers said. “His coach assured me that he was the type of person we were looking for. John was a class act all the way.”

Bushart and his teammates, for example, kept their complaints to a minimum when they were served hot dogs, peas and warm cola for breakfast their first morning in Moscow. And while their hosts at the People’s Friendship University were “very friendly, they really worked hard to make our trip the best,” according to Bushart, daily Soviet life could best be described as drab.

The players stayed five to a room in student dorms at the university.

“It’s hard to believe students lived in those rooms. They were like jail cells,” Bushart said. “There was a radio in our room that could get only one station. Every morning it came on and the same voice spoke in a monotone. It reminded me of Big Brother in (George Orwell’s novel) 1984.”

In 1989, clearly, the Soviets are trying to catch up on the diamond, most of which are rough cuts. The nation’s first baseball stadium, at Moscow State University, is under construction and the Ambassadors played their games on soccer and archery fields at state-run Olympic training facilities. Pitcher’s mounds were nothing more than rubber mats and baselines were drawn with masking tape.

Most of the players were men in their mid-20s who were slightly less than world class in another sport. They’d been farmed out to the fledgling baseball teams.

“One guy ran 10.2 in the 100 meters but was only sixth or seventh best in the country, so he was made the center fielder of the Leningrad team,” Meiers said. “Another guy was a 7-4 high jumper. The third baseman was a world-class javelin thrower past his prime. They were athletes, real studs.”

And they were humbled by a bunch of American kids just out of high school who had grown up with the game. The Ambassadors defeated the People’s Friendship University team, 18-2, and the Moscow University Aeronautics team, 30-3, before beating the Red Army--the best Soviet team--and Leningrad. The Ambassadors, composed mainly of players from Arcadia and San Marino, hit 13 home runs in the first two games.

“One of the outfielders on the Aeronautics team started playing behind the fence,” Bushart said.

Yet when the Ambassadors began to ease up late in the game, an irate Soviet official complained to Meiers.

“From a good-will standpoint we didn’t want to embarrass them,” the coach said. “But they insisted that the game was not interesting if we stopped playing hard. They wanted to see double plays, running catches, hard swings, everything.”

The Soviets obviously considered the spankings administered by the Ambassadors a necessary part of learning a complex game. “It blew me away how much they know already,” Meiers said. “I was unbelievably impressed. Their skills just need to catch up with their knowledge.”

As baseball fever firms its grip, the government is firming its resolve to produce a strong national team. The Soviet Baseball Federation has more than tripled to 50 teams and 1,500 players in the three years it has fielded teams. This fall, two of the nation’s 28 special youth academies for sports prodigies will be staffed with baseball coaches.

“The players now will never be the Olympians,” Meiers noted. “These guys are being groomed to be the first crop of coaches.”

Alternate sources of baseball knowledge are available. A pitcher in Leningrad asked Bushart to help him develop a forkball and the Ambassador obliged. It wasn’t the Soviet’s first trick pitch.

“He threw me a knuckleball and it dropped off the table,” Bushart recalled. “I asked him where he learned it and he said from reading Jim Bouton’s book, ‘Ball Four.’ ”

Sharing culture came as easily as exchanging pitching tips. Bushart handed out a shoe box full of baseball cards to opposing players and had ample opportunity to barter off the field as well.

“Black market traders who spoke English sort of forced their way into our rooms,” he said. “They didn’t seem trustworthy; we were kind of scared.”

Nevertheless, Bushart exchanged T-shirts and a pair of old shorts for an authentic soldier’s cap, a Soviet flag, a fur hat and assorted souvenirs.

But the memory of defeating the Red Army team will endure longer than any memento.

“The first two games we had no intensity, but for the Red Army game we were amped. We came out like it was a championship game,” Bushart said.

In the first inning, he struck out the leadoff batter, got the next on a comebacker and struck out the No. 3 batter, an enormous man with a thick beard.

“He took the most hellacious cut I’ve ever seen on strike three, a curve down and in,” Bushart said. “I K’d him three times.”

Psssst. The Reds can’t touch the deuce.