Ragin’ Gaijin : Formerly Anonymous and Fading, Jack Howell Breathes Life Into His Career With a Successful Season in Japan

“ Man blooms as a flower of the earth.

Baseball is a drama . . . it is life.

Take the Tiger alive . . . catch the Whales,

Swallow the Dragon . . . pull in the Carp,

Knock down the Giant star.

Fly away Yakult Swallows. “

--From the Yakult Swallows fight song, “Fly Away Yakult Swallows”

The flower of Jack Howell’s baseball career had wilted, drooping downward with his average.

The drama was about whether he could last long enough in the major leagues to qualify for a full pension.

Then the Yakult Swallows called, and now Howell has won a home run title and a batting title and helped put his team in the Japan Series.

Howell, 31, is still practically anonymous even in his hometown of Tucson. But he has become one of the most famous men in the crowded city of Tokyo, where the Swallows play in downtown’s Jingu Stadium.

“It’s amazing,” he said from a room in Tokyo’s New Otani hotel. “Fans are everywhere. Of course there are so many people . Baseball is everything over here. Since March or April, I don’t think I’ve ever gone anywhere where people didn’t ask to shake my hand. People whisper and talk. It’s amazing.

“I’d been in the big leagues six years, but I’d go home, and unless people personally knew me, they didn’t have a clue who I was. In Southern California, occasionally someone would recognize me in a restaurant, but they had to be a real good Angel fan. I come over to a foreign country, and everybody knows me.”

The way last season ended, Howell would have as soon not been recognized. The Angels once thought he could play good defense, hit 20 home runs and bat .250 every year. In July, 1991, in the middle of his second poor season in a row, they traded the left-handed-hitting third baseman to the San Diego Padres, and he finished with a .207 average.

Against left-handed pitchers, he had become so helpless that the Padres let him start against only one. His career average against left-handers dropped to .175, the lowest among active players with at least 500 at-bats.

A year later, he has finished the 130-game Japanese season with 38 home runs, a .331 average and 87 runs batted in. He also became the first American since 1965 to hit for the cycle in a Japanese professional game.

And beginning Saturday, the Swallows--champions of the Central League--face the Pacific League’s Seibu Lions in the Japanese equivalent of the World Series.

The Japanese leagues, which allow two foreigners-- gaijin --per team, have long been a temporary haven for washed-up major leaguers and for those who might be, for minor leaguers or other marginal players from the United States who can’t quite make it at home but want to make a buck before it’s too late.

Sometimes, a career is revived or boosted in Japan. A young Cecil Fielder had never hit more than 14 homers in a major league season, but he hit 38 for the Hanshin Tigers in 1990, batting .302. Picked up by Detroit the next year, he led the majors with 51 homers and 132 RBIs.

Others--Bob Horner is an example--get off to a great start, then stumble and flee, brought down by the pressures of adulation and the cultural differences.

Anyone who does succeed must accept that Japanese statistics are viewed with skepticism. People attribute home run totals to the dimensions of the parks, which tend to be smaller, and question the quality of the pitching.

Howell--who says he will probably play in Japan one more season because the team wants to exercise its option for a second year--hasn’t spent much time trying to figure out how his season might translate.

“I don’t think there’s a big huge difference, but it’s really hard to tell,” he said. “Talent-wise, a lot of people speculate that the competition is not as good. I suppose that might be true.”

The differences most Americans struggle with are the cultural ones. The dramatically different approaches to work and play in the two countries are reflected in the game. In Japan, there is a Zen-like emphasis on practice over performance, on teamwork and mutual respect over stardom. In Japan, a baseball game is allowed to end in a tie, considered admirable because neither team has lost honor.

Many American players have complained about the tradition of extensive practicing--it’s something akin to spring training continuing through the season.

“There is a lot of practice,” said Howell, who has a personal interpreter available to him 24 hours a day.

But in contrast to the perception that American players are forced to practice alongside their teammates and resented for being “lazy,” Howell said he has been left to his own routines.

“I know a lot of the Americans have complained,” he said. “For whatever reason, I feel the teams in Tokyo are lot better to the Americans. If you have major league experience, they kind of let you do your own program. The ones who complain are the minor leaguers. The teams try to treat them like the Japanese players, they expect them to run and do everything with them. I do stretching and running with them. But if we have an off-day--they practice on those days--if I need a day off, I can take it.”

Between the lines, Howell said, he finds the Japanese game more of a team game than at home.

“They play for one run more,” he said. “There’s a lot more bunting. Even in the early innings, they’ll always bunt the guy over. The first guys in the lineup might try to get on by bunting, then the three, four, five guys will try to drive them in, then everybody else bunts.”

“Everybody” has not included the gaijin from Tucson.

For Howell, the true struggle has been personal. Around Christmas, he and his wife, Kelly, learned that they were not only expecting their third child, they were expecting their third and fourth.

Jack left for Japan in early spring, but Kelly’s doctor would not allow her to fly. The twin girls, Haley and Hunter, were born June 30. Two weeks later, Kelly took them to Tokyo to meet their father.

“It’s been a real long year,” he said. “I’ve seen my wife about eight weeks in the last eight months. Overall, it’s been a good year. But I have two baby girls I’ve seen about three weeks, and they’re 3 months old.”

When Kelly, the babies and the couple’s two boys, Joshua and Dallas, arrived in Tokyo, Kelly found caring for two youngsters and two newborns with little help to be a bit much. Jack’s parents came to her aid, but then the problem became space.

The young family of six was sharing quarters with grandparents in a two-bedroom Tokyo apartment--and not a large one.

“It’s tiny, compared to if you rent a two- or three-bedroom apartment in the States,” Jack said. “When we had the babies with us, we just put a crib in Kelly’s and my room, then when we had my mom here, she stayed in the guest room, and the kids were on a futon in the living room.”

Kelly, who has worked as a stand-up comic in California and Arizona and has learned that in-law jokes are not considered funny in Japan, has learned to be tactful about the apartment.

“As Americans, we’re complainers,” she said. “I came into the apartment the first time and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ But by the standards here, we’re among the elite in Japan. Even the other players, they’re in cracker boxes.”

Nevertheless, among the 1993 contract demands of the Japanese leagues’ home run champion is a four-bedroom apartment.

Howell fashioned his season from the remnants of 1991, and accomplished what he did in spite of a hamstring tear that cost him six weeks during the first half. But because his injury came during the rainy season, when many games were postponed, he ended up playing in 113 of 130 games. During October, after completing the regular schedule, Japanese teams devote weeks to making up games from the rainy season.

“I just had a real good second half and finished up strong,” said Howell, who battled to the last day for the batting title, edging out another American, Tom O’Malley of the Hanshin Tigers.

Though he grants that it was nice to win, Howell said he was not so much concerned with his statistics.

“One of the reasons I decided to come to Japan was to work on some things, try to accomplish some things I thought I was lacking in,” he said. “That’s what’s been most gratifying. It’s hard to give up all the things in the States when you have six or seven years in the big leagues. It was hard to do, but I felt it would be good to come here, get away for a year and get back on track.”

One of his focal points was that .175 career mark against left-handers. In 1991, he had three hits in 29 at-bats against lefties. “It had been a long time since I’d played every day against left-handers, even though in the minor leagues I played all the time,” he said. “Gene Mauch is the best manager I’ve ever had, but it so happened that he platoons players. Then, when I was able to get a chance to play against left-handers, I never did well. I thought if I could play every day against left-handers, I could prove to people in the States I could hit them. I hit them before, there’s no reason why I couldn’t hit them again.

“The other thing, I think, was because over the middle part of my career, the Angels had changing coaching staffs. I had a lot of different hitting instructors, and every year they wanted me to do something new. My problem was to get back on track. Here, I was back on my own, and I worked on things on my own. I went to spring training and everything came together. I went back to the things I did early in my career.

“That part has been more gratifying than numbers and winning. You make a career change with a thing in mind, a reason why you’re doing it. But sometimes you make a career change and things fall apart worse.”

Instead, they have fallen together better, although there is no guaranteeing whether that will translate into success outside of Japan. For now, a return to the United States appears to be at least a year away. The Swallows have opted to exercise their option on Howell’s contract, and Howell is inclined to agree to it, though not absolutely committed.

“If I was ready to go back to the States and had a decent offer, obviously I could just go back--of course I’d never play in Japan again, but I could go back,” he said. “That, obviously, is the ultimate goal. But I feel if you sign something, you’re obligated. They paid me good money (in the neighborhood of $1 million a year)--and they’ve treated me very well. They want to help me out to make next year better, and obviously we’ll talk about more money.

“Hopefully, if not this year, then next, we’ll get back to the States and try to finish up there.”

Until then, he can continue to enjoy Tokyo--”There’s a lot to do, and there’s a 7-Eleven, a Tony Roma’s, a Hard Rock Cafe,” he said--as well as the particular traditions of the cities he visits.

Each team typically has sponsors, and a player who hits a home run is showered with the sponsors’ products.

“They give out gifts,” Howell said. “Sometimes it’s cigarettes, sometimes it’s rice, sometimes soda, sometimes money, sometimes shirts. One place it’s golf balls. That’s been good. I’ve saved up a lot of balls.”