Van Burkleo Enjoys Japan from Distance

Ty Van Burkleo had it made in Japan, or so the story goes.

At 24, he was player of the year with the Seibu Lions, hitting 38 home runs and driving in 90 runs for the 1988 Japan Champions.

At 25, he was making $500,000 a year.

At 28, he chucked it all for a minor-league contract with the Angels, a cheap apartment in snow-bound Edmonton and an annual salary of $36,000.

At first inspection, Van Burkleo would appear to have a bright future as an Angel front-office executive if the first base thing doesn’t pan out.

But that’s only the thumbnail sketch of Van Burkleo’s professional baseball career. Dig deeper and you’ll see the fuller picture--one of Van Burkleo slamming his entire hand in a car door.

A Hyundai door.

Van Burkleo played five seasons in Japan, and has little good to say about any of them.

The first, when Van Burkleo quit the Angels’ Double-A farm club in Midland at midseason, signed with Seibu and batted .279 with 20 RBIs in 34 games?

Van Burkleo says he felt like “a black sheep or a sore thumb. You’re different, and they let you know it. They don’t speak your language, it’s hard to fit it, they basically treat you as a (temporary) helper and not really a part of the team. There’s not a lot a loyalty toward American players in Japan.”

But those 38 home runs Van Burkleo delivered the next season--they buy a good measure of loyalty, no?

No, not according to the Book of Ty.

“I’d go 0 for 2 and they’d pinch-hit for me,” Van Burkleo says. “I’d hit two home runs and they’d take me out of the game. I had 19 home runs by the all-star break and I wasn’t even on the all-star ballot.

“You start to figure out what it’s like to be an American playing Japanese baseball.”

In short, it is to be tolerated as a necessary evil, and that’s in the best of times.

“Larry Parrish led the league in home runs and RBIs one year and got released,” Van Burkleo says. “He had 42 home runs, 104 RBIs and they say, ‘He didn’t fit into our lineup.’

“There’s a double standard, no question about it. A native player, an average player, is going to have a job next year, no matter what. But if an American puts up average numbers, he’s going to be gone.”

And if he puts up 38 homers and 90 RBIs?

If your name is Ty Van Burkleo, and not Cecil Fielder, repercussions can be worse.

“What hurt me a lot,” Van Burkleo says, “was coming to Japan straight out of Double-A, as opposed to having big-league experience. I’d do well and the reaction would be, ‘What does he think this is, Double-A pitching? He’s not even a Triple-A player.’ They couldn’t accept that maybe I was a young player with major-league potential working my way through the system . . . “It was kind of obvious to me that they didn’t want me to hit more home runs than their top home run guys. Six different times, I hit two home runs in a game and didn’t finish the game. “They didn’t want me to be ‘The Man.’ ”

Call it Creative Stat Manipulation Through Sand-Bagging. And just how does a Japanese manager go about benching a young American slugger with two home runs in two at-bats?

Very easily, as it turns out.

“ ‘Good job,’ ” says Van Burkleo, patting a writer on the back as he mimicks his Seibu manager.

“ ‘You can go.’ ”

The Seibu manager was also fiercely nationalistic, being a former player for the Tokyo Giants “during the Sadaharu Oh days, when they won seven or eight straight championships and did it without American players. He believed that every team in the league should be all-Japanese.”

The Seibu manager’s name?

“Mori,” Van Burkleo says with a scowl.

The whole name?

“(Jerk) Mori.”

For his MVP season, Van Burkleo was rewarded with a $500,000 contract (“The front office liked me,” he says) and a demotion to the minor leagues in mid-1989 (“But the front office didn’t make the field decisions.”)

Van Burkleo lost his job to former Yankee and Pirate first baseman Orestes Destrade, now being hailed as Fielder II in the Florida Marlins’ inaugural training camp. The Lions also had a pitcher from Taiwan on the roster and league rules allowed for only two “foreigners” per team.

Van Burkleo could read the handwriting on the wall, even if it resembled the jottings on a menu at a sushi bar.

He requested a trade. The Lions said they’d get back to him on it. Soon, it was 1990, Van Burkleo was 26, approaching his athletic prime--and he was stranded, all but forgotten, in the Japanese minors.

“I dug my own grave,” he says.

Finally, he was sold to Hiroshima before the 1991 season. Van Burkleo appeared in only 29 games for the Hiroshima Carp. He batted .203. He finished with five RBIs.

“It only got worse,” he says. “When I went there, they were pumping me up--’He’s going to win us the championship and hit 40 home runs.’ I batted fourth on opening night, I went 0 for 2 and they pinch-hit for me.

“I didn’t start again until June 13. In between, I made three pinch-hit appearances. So, on June 13, I was 0 for 5.

“At that point, I was ready to come back. I was like, ‘Just get me out of here.’ ”

This was the winter of 1991. Wally Joyner had just ditched the Angels for Kansas City. Lee Stevens was the less-than-rock solid replacement. Van Burkleo saw some potential for career advancement, so he called the Angels and was welcomed back, if not with open arms, with a Triple-A contract.

“It seemed like good timing,” Van Burkleo notes. A year later, Stevens is gone, but so is Jim Abbott, traded for a 25-year-old first baseman named J.T. Snow.

“They filled that hole,” Van Burkleo says with a smile.

And now, Van Burkleo, 29-year-old Angel rookie, is trying to create an opening for himself. Destination: backup first baseman, fifth outfielder, left-handed pinch-hitter.

He was hitting .290 before Thursday’s 0 for 4 against Oakland dropped him to .257. “Right now,” Manager Buck Rodgers says, “he’s got about 50-50 chance of making the team. Last week, it was 60-40. He needs to pick it up a little bit.”

If not, it’s back to the minors. And if it happens, well, Van Burkleo has dealt with worse. Having been to Hiroshima, he isn’t likely to carp about Vancouver.