Park Takes a Bow During His Debut : Baseball: Unorthodox South Korean rookie pitches three scoreless innings against the Mets. He drinks tea with Lasorda nightly.

He bows to the umpire before he bats and has Mike Piazza considering a Korean language course. But the fascination growing about right-handed pitcher Chan Ho Park has more to do with his performance on the mound than it does his nightly tea session with Manager Tom Lasorda.

In his first start against another major league team Monday, Park stymied the New York Mets with three scoreless innings, giving up one hit and walking one. He faced 11 batters, retired six in order and threw 13 consecutive strikes.

Using a 94-m.p.h. fastball, a hard slider and an unorthodox series of deliveries that confused the batters and sometimes even Piazza, Park retired seven batters on ground balls.

“What I wished was to strike them out, but these guys are major league hitters and the fastballs I threw they were able to get a bat on,” Park, 20, said through an interpreter.

Park began the game with a hesitation move at the start of his windup, pausing so long that the first batter, Fernando Vina, stepped out of the box in bewilderment.

“I did that to throw the batter’s timing off,” said Park, who pitched only three innings in the Dodgers’ 7-1 loss. “I’m used to doing things like that.”

Three times, batters called time and stepped out after Park had begun that particular motion. The final time, Lasorda argued unsuccessfully with umpire Larry Vanover that the batter had called time out too late.

“When Tommy came out, I walked up to the mound to talk to Chan Ho, in case he was confused about what was going on,” Piazza said. “And the Mets were yelling things at me, like John Franco yelled, ‘Mike, what the hell are you going to say to him?’ I was laughing. My Korean is a little rusty. But Chan Ho knows a lot more English than you would think. And I just told him it was a good pitch, don’t worry, and throw it again. He understood.”

When Park stepped into the batters’ box, he bowed to Vanover, a Korean custom and sign of respect.

“Initially, I thought maybe the umpire thought I was a crazy guy,” said Park, who walked. Later, Vanover asked Park’s interpreter what the bowing was about.

“I was laughing when Chan Ho did that,” Piazza said. “But I don’t think Larry was laughing. He wasn’t in a very good mood.”

In a short time, Park has endeared himself to Dodger players and employees, notably Lasorda. Nearly every night after dinner, Lasorda goes to Park’s room at Dodgertown and they have tea.

“On his wall in his room is a poster with a runner crossing the finish line and it says, ‘Because God sees me as a winner, I am,’ ” Lasorda said. “So Chan Ho says to me, ‘Because Tommy sees me as a winner, I am.’ You have to love this guy.”