Chinese Are Learning the Rite of Summer

For the few Chinese who count themselves baseball fans, a dirt lot diamond tucked between waves of grain and pig farms is the nation’s field of dreams.

The grassless diamond and a nearby bullpen gymnasium, adorned with a poster exhorting readers to “Unite and Strive for the Motherland,” are the headquarters of China’s national baseball team, which has yet to attain that championship season.

While the major league seasons are just starting in the far-off United States, the Chinese still are hard at work to sharpen batting eyes and breaking balls at the Institute of Sports Technology in Lucheng, an isolated rural village southwest of Beijing.

A national tournament is approaching, followed by competitions in Japan and South Korea this summer and a tournament in Beijing in September for nine teams from such diverse baseball powers as Australia, Guam, India and North Korea.

The coaches acknowledge that China faces the prospect of yet another mediocre season at “bangqiu,” or batball in literal translation. But they have a dream nonetheless.

“Our hope is to someday beat Taiwan,” said a wistful Y.Z. Cao, the team’s head coach and a baseball veteran who peppers his Chinese with scraps of English like “slider” and “double play.”

“We’ve played the Taiwanese six times. We lost all the games,” Cao admitted. “Now our objective is to learn from Taiwan.”

Baseball came to China long before communism but has never caught fire in a country obsessed by volleyball, soccer and of course, table tennis. The national team was founded only 11 years ago.

The squad has fared poorly overseas behind Asian powerhouses Japan, South Korea and arch-rival Taiwan. Yet its 25 players, far from the world of the free agent and the multimillion-dollar bonus, struggle at the sport of the possible.

The earthen-floored Lucheng gymnasium, equipped with a batting machine cage and bullpen nets, is the country’s only indoor baseball facility -- and a necessity where the boys of summer also practice through the winter.

The players move to warmer climes of southern Fujian Province for something of a mango league between December and February, but financial constraints mean they must spend the chilly late fall and early spring at Lucheng.

They heft aluminum bats, but the inventory of favored American-made Eastons is now down to one. They can’t afford U.S.-made balls, using cheap Chinese models for batting practice and saving better quality but more expensive Japanese balls for pitching.

A few U.S. major league and college players have visited China to hold clinics, and the team’s catchers do wear U.S.-made protective gear. Yet last year’s contact with American baseball went little beyond Cao’s trip the All-Star Game in Atlanta.

“We know the level of baseball in America is higher,” Cao said. “But it’s most convenient for us to have contact with Japan. Our exchanges with the Americans are very limited.”

American soldiers and missionaries helped introduce baseball to China in the early 20th century. Shanghai once fielded an amateur team called the Pandas, and Japanese baseball stars were invited to the country in the early 1930s.

When the Japanese returned uninvited a few years later, their invading soldiers also took time out between offensives to indulge in the sport -- impressing Chinese Communist military leaders who saw training applications in running, sliding and throwing.

The most famed Chinese baseball yarn is that the Communist army hero Marshal He Long, who became national sports commissioner after 1949, encouraged the sport because it helped his troops learn to hurl grenades at the strike zones of their foes.

Even today, the Lucheng practice gym features a poster exhorting players to “Learn from Lei Feng,” a young soldier who became a propaganda hero during the Cultural Revolution for selflessness and whose legend, although widely discredited, has been revived.

“Lei Feng didn’t play baseball, but we will learn from his spirit of serving the people,” noted a team coach, smiling wryly.

The players have to have heart. They receive wages, bonuses, food and clothing subsidies that are princely by Chinese standards but still average out to only $150 per month. And one of their biggest obstacles is simply getting to play in real games.

China has two national competitions a year, but the team cannot afford to travel enough to play real opposition. Players regularly return for training to the half-dozen local teams from which they are selected -- in effect voluntarily going down to the minors.

“Our biggest problem is pitching,” Cao said. “We have no speed.”

He is now looking toward promising prospects like 22-year-old sidearm ace Wu Wei of Beijing and 21-year-old Li Jiachang of Tianjin, a hulking fastballer who at 6-foot-3 towers over opposing batters.

The team is trying to recruit younger players, rather than its current crop of minor-league stars, teachers and even factory workers. Coaches are also studying players in Japan and Taiwan because of similarities in physical makeup and diet, which in Asia means less protein and more carbohydrates.

But Cao’s greatest dream is that harbored by every manager and coach who ever searched for baseball talent.

“I am scouting the country,” he said. “We need to find a natural.”