Diamond-Studded Affair : Baseball: Amateur team from Germany plays Master’s and Cal Lutheran as part of eight-game U.S. trip.

Don’t mistake those short pants for lederhosen . The Cologne (Germany) Cardinals amateur baseball team is touring Southern California, and the sight of Germans cavorting on a Southern California baseball field is as startling as Mathias Rust’s Cessna sitting in Red Square.

This baseball trip, however, is no flier.

The Cardinals are honing their skills in games against The Master’s College and Cal Lutheran among others in preparation for the defense of their 1990 German Bundesliga championship.

The trip was organized in part by Frank Mutz, a former player for Granada Hills High and Master’s. Mutz went to Germany last season to pitch for and manage the Cardinals and suggested they return here this spring.

Foreign baseball teams from Latin America regularly tour the United States, but Mutz believes that this is the first time a Bundesliga (the top league for German baseball players) team has come to California to play baseball.

One thing the Cardinals will not have to worry about, though, is a language gap.

“When you hear a baseball coach talk, it has nothing to do with regular English,” catcher Mathias Winterrath said. “So that’s why we use baseball terms in English.”

Winterrath added that players have picked up “stuff like ‘attaboy,’ ” and he directs his defense with a mixture of English and German commands.

“It’s also much faster, it’s easier to say ‘back,’ ” Winterrath said. “By the time you say zuru e ck, you’re in the dugout.”

Most of these players speak English as well as the average major leaguer anyway, but the Cardinals must use baseball vernacular advisedly. Telling an outfielder to get on his horse, for example, could have disastrous results because their home field is a horse arena with watering troughs in the outfield.

So, greener pastures, as well as the opportunity to get some warm-weather workouts and play against quality competition, have led the Cardinals to Southern California for a sort of two-week spring training.

Talk about a round-tripper.

Winterrath calls California a baseball “mecca,” and the Cardinals have scheduled eight exhibition games against college and semipro teams. Cologne played Master’s on Friday. Master’s, playing a lineup of reserves, beat Cologne, 16-7.

A few Americans supplement the 10-player German roster. The Cardinals will play the Cal Lutheran junior varsity at 2:30 p.m. today and have several more games, including a rematch with Master’s, scheduled next week.

Baseball is increasingly popular in Europe. Last year, the Soviets, who had trained extensively in the United States, beat the German team in the final of the European championships.

“What we learn are tactics,” said Yorn Ziesche, the team’s player-manager. “What relays to do in special situations. Our pitchers need practice, and the main thing is batting. . . . With 12-15 ( Bundesliga ) games you don’t get many appearances at the plate.”

Typically, the Cardinals warm up for their Bundesliga season by playing in the Netherlands, but Southern California baseball will prepare them for a higher level of Dutch teams. “It’s not that we’re not used to the speed, but they spot the ball better,” infielder Oliver Heidecker said of U. S. pitchers. “You almost never see a changeup in Germany.”

The Cardinals have sandwiched workouts and games among a trip to Disneyland and other sightseeing excursions, but their main purpose is to play as many games as possible.

Few Germans have much experience with U. S. baseball. Heidecker played high school baseball as an exchange student in Michigan. Winterrath played on Team Europe in the 1986 Big League World Series for 18-year-olds, but the rest of the players’ experience against U. S. teams consists mainly of occasional games against touring teams.

Mutz said the game is played a few RPMs higher in the United States than in Germany.

“One thing they can do is hit the baseball,” said Mutz, who was touched for several home runs while pitching for the Cardinals last season. “Offense wouldn’t be the issue. The weak spot would be the throwing arms.”

The Cardinals tend to have stiff, somewhat clumsy throwing motions, making it difficult to put much fahrvergnugen on the ball. They sometimes boot as many balls as a fussball team.

“They had no one to teach them how to throw,” Mutz said. “They have some kids who would be fantastic ballplayers, but they got started so late.”

Mutz believes Winterrath and Heidecker, both members of the German national team, could play college baseball in the United States, but both are already in their early 20s.

For all its drawbacks, though, German baseball can take pride in the fact that it had nothing to do with Barry Bonds. Baseball is still more avocation than vocation for the Germans. Accustomed to squeezing in evening workouts after work and classes, the Cardinals cheerfully went through a several-hour practice Friday before their game against Master’s.

Germans can watch a couple of major league baseball games a week on their equivalent of ESPN but they still don’t think of the Green Monster when someone mentions the Wall.

The Cardinal players say they are drawn to the game by its cerebral aspects. Winterrath also compared the sport to the decathlon--a sure indication that Rick Reuschel has made few appearances on German television.

Clothing with U. S. sports logos is popular in Europe, but in Germany, baseball equipment is scarce, so one of the first agenda items Tuesday was a visit to a sporting goods store.

“I had to pull them out of there,” Mutz said.

For a sport so recently introduced--it’s doubtful that Martin Luther tacked up his theses with a Louisville Slugger--baseball fever is catching in Germany. Heidecker believes baseball will grow more popular than American football in Germany, and if the Germans learn to hit the curve as well as they play soccer, you can kiss it aufwiedersehen .