For These Beirutis, the Name of the Game--Sometimes--Is Softball - Lebanon: On the playing field, the nation’s religious and political conflicts are forgotten.

Every Sunday, come rain, shine or shelling, 30 or 40 young men meet at the seaside sandlot of the American University of Beirut to play softball.

The players, for the most part graduates of the university, learned to love the game at the feet of their American professors, most of whom left Beirut in 1985 and 1986, when kidnaping became as popular as softball on the city’s west side.

Unlike the world the Lebanese usually deal with, on the softball field it is the best arm that pitches, not the guy from the “right” religion. Indeed, the names heard on the field--Omar, Henry, Hassan, Vic--confirm what one of the players said: Lebanon’s major religious groups are all represented.

Here, Maronite Catholics, Shiite and Sunni Muslims, Greek Orthodox, Druze and Armenians play ball, not politics. Even a few Palestinians who are Lebanese citizens join in. And the only arguments are over balls and strikes, or whether the runner is safe or out.

Eddie Zakhariya, an engineer from American University’s class of 1960, played softball as a youngster as long ago as 1948. He remembers seeing sailors from the 6th Fleet playing here.

“They left their bats and balls behind,” he said, “so we would have decent equipment to play with.”

Zakhariya has passed his skills and love of the game along to his two teen-age sons. He also coaches their team.

In general, the players know the lingo. The terms “foul ball,” “slide,” “strike three,” “safe at home” and the like come to them naturally--as do some others that are rarely heard on American sandlots.

“Play ball!” is apt to be followed by “Yalla!,” which means the same thing in Arabic.

The “tenth man” on the field is Samar Kamal, a 16-year-old girl who has been playing softball for four years. She acquired her love of the game from Dr. Henry MacAdam, a professor of history and friend of her family.

The last American faculty member to play softball here was Alann Steen, a professor of journalism at nearby Beirut University College.

Steen, one of the few American men to stay on after the kidnapings began, left the university campus only on Sunday mornings, and he was taken from campus to campus by car. A Shiite and an Armenian took turns providing the transportation.

Then, in January, 1987, Steen was abducted, along with two other Americans. All three are still in the hands of their captors.

Another friend of softball is Jean Sutherland, the wife of Thomas Sutherland, another hostage. Sutherland, the acting dean of agriculture at American University, was abducted June 9, 1985.

Jean Sutherland brought mitts and gloves back from a trip home to the States. According to one student who plays right field, “finding mitts is a big problem.”

There is no shortage of bats, but balls are expensive and hard to find. One player said they have played with some balls until they were worn down to their plastic cores.

Last year, he said, when the AUB team went to Amman, Jordan, for a regional tournament, they “begged 15 used balls from the teams there.”

The players would rather think about this than their performance in Amman. They lost all six games, including one by a score of 19-0. This was against the U.S. Embassy staff.

The drubbing serves a purpose still. When the team captain wants to put pressure on his teammates, he shouts, “Remember the 19-to-0 in Jordan!”

Another game that will go down in AUB’s softball annals was played last May, in the bright sunshine that is typical of spring in Beirut. For 45 minutes, while the teams played doggedly on, a Syrian gunner six blocks away sent shell after shell toward the blockaded ports of East Beirut, 10 miles up the coast.

Throughout the months of shelling, the players’ blase attitude has faltered only once.

In April, a nearby Syrian gunner caught the players by surprise. When the first shell whooshed overhead, the team captain shouted, “Hit the deck!”

It may not be baseball lingo, but it makes good sense in Beirut.