It’s Busman’s Holiday, Japanese Style : Baseball: Vacation to the Yomiuri Giants is a bit like winter league, complete with U.S. coaching advice.

PALM SPRINGS — Only two weeks after winning the World Series of Japan, the Yomiuri Giants have come to this resort mecca for a little R and R.

Of course, in the case of the Giants, with their commitment to the Japanese work ethic, R and R is defined as Review and Refinement.

First baseman Norihiro Komada, the most valuable player in the Japanese World Series, is seeking to improve his discipline at the plate, hoping to hit more than his 11 home runs of 1989.

Left fielder Tatsunori Hara, a .300 hitter who usually hits 30 home runs and drives in more than 90 runs a year, is hoping to correct flaws that reduced his 1989 average to .261 and lowered his home run total to 24.

For the second consecutive winter, the Giants have gone to the considerable expense of flying 31 players and their coaching staff to Palm Springs for two weeks of specialized instruction at the Angels’ spring facility with an American coaching staff that includes Don Drysdale, Jim Fregosi, Don Baylor, Ron Fairly, Claude Osteen, Del Crandall, Mark Cresse of the Dodgers, Jim Bush, the former UCLA track coach and now a conditioning coach with the Dodgers, and Todd Maulding, a Dodger batting practice and bullpen aide.

Is Drysdale impressed?

“If American kids listened and had the discipline that these players do, there’s no telling how good our game would be,” he said. “Their mechanics and regimentation are outstanding. You only have to tell them something once. They want to learn.”

The camp is a spinoff of discussions three years ago at a golf tournament between former American and Japanese baseball players at Mission Hills here.

Among the participants were Drysdale and a close friend, Tatsuro Hirooko, who have since become president and vice president, respectively, of Japan Sports System USA, which owns the Visalia club in the California League, where four of the Giants’ minor leaguers played this year.

The ultimate goal, Drysdale said, is a global World Series. In fact, as part of an ongoing JSS USA project, he left the Palm Springs camp the other day to attend what he called a U.S.-Japanese summit seminar on baseball relations and operations in Tokyo.

Is the world ready? Would the Yomiuri Giants have provided more competition for the Oakland Athletics than the San Francisco Giants did in the World Series, which the A’s won in four games?

“The only difference between this team and the A’s would be power and a little speed,” Drysdale said, giving the A’s an edge in those two categories but calling the pitching a tossup.

“There was a time when everything the Japanese threw was finesse and sidearm,” Drysdale added. “They’re getting bigger now. They have kids here who throw in the 90s.”

Said Osteen, the former Dodger left-hander who works in the club’s farm system:

“From a pitching standpoint, this team can probably put just as good an arm out there every day as Oakland can.

“And (the Yomiuri pitchers) research the hell out of the plate.

“They have a purpose for every pitch. It’s beautiful to watch the pitcher and catcher work together. There’s no lack of communication. And I’ve seen enough to know they seldom beat themselves.”

For Fairly and Baylor, working with the Giant hitters, the task is more formidable. Fairly, a 21-year major leaguer who is a member of the San Francisco Giant broadcasting team, leaned on the batting cage and cited the similarity of the stances and swings, the absence of individualism.

“They get to the ball in better position to hit it than our players do, but they don’t finish the swing,” he said, suggesting that they are only trying to make contact.

“They’re paid on the basis of batting average and booed if they strike out. You can’t blame them for wanting to go three for four. Our players strike out, strike out, then hit a three-run homer. The philosophy is different. I don’t mean to say that we’re trying to make home run hitters out of these guys because we’re not.

“But they’re stronger than they’ve demonstrated, and we’re trying to get them to attack, to hit it harder, so that their ground balls have a chance to get through the infield and the ball in the gap has a chance to get through the outfield.

“They pick it up quickly, but I don’t know how long it will stay with them. In the back of their minds, I don’t think they want to swing and miss.”

The Giants will put their new techniques to work Feb. 1, when they begin spring training.

Their coach, Akihito Kondoh, speaking through an interpreter, cited the demands of a training regimen that continues throughout a 130-game season and said the current camp was a chance to unwind and learn at the same time.

“There are so many requests for the players after the World Series that it is good to get away,” Kondoh said. “Beautiful weather. Train a little and play golf.

“There is much relaxation here.”

R and R. The Yomiuri Giants define it in many ways.