From Rising Sun a Regimen Begins : Committed Japanese Youngsters Thrive on Workouts That Often Last Six Hours

Amid a steady drizzle, a crowd began to gather near the bullpen at Chaminade High. On the mound was 17-year-old right-hander Takahiro Yamazaki of Shizuoka Commercial High in Japan. On display was the Japanese approach to America’s national pastime.

The game between Chaminade and the visitors from Japan had just been canceled. But instead of heading for shelter, Yamazaki headed for the hill and started slinging in the rain.

“I throw many pitches,” Yamazaki said through an interpreter. “If it is raining, it makes it harder, but I still throw. I throw about 200 pitches a day.”

Two hundred pitches? Every day?

“It is almost common sense in Japan,” Yamazaki said. “Everybody does it.”

That’s ridiculous, you say? So do pitchers and professional trainers on this side of the Pacific. Regardless, the regimen is as routine as a high chopper to third in Japan, where practices are long and intense, and so is the high school baseball season. It might still be ichi , ni , san strikes, you’re out at the ol’ boru gemu , but matters run much deeper than that for those wearing baseball uniforms in Japan.

Teen-age members of Commercial, which won three of four games during a recent one-week visit to Southern California, typically practice six hours on school days, including two hours before classes. Sunday workouts not only are routine, they’re lengthier, stretching as long as 12 hours. During summer and winter vacations, players head to baseball camps, where training becomes even more of a religion.

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The morning after their arrival in Los Angeles, Commercial players and coaches were on the practice field at Santa Monica High shortly after dawn.

“These days during our visit, practices are much shorter, but the quality is good,” Commercial Coach Katsutoshi Shimizu said. “In Japan, we practice, sometimes, more than 10 hours a day. That’s not a lot. That’s not enough.”

The team’s ace, Yamazaki (5-feet-11, 175 pounds) has thrown daily since the age of 6--that is, every single day, during the season and off-season, pain, rain or shine. Just the thought of subjecting one’s arm to that kind of labor is enough to make a promising young pitcher cringe.

“That sounds really dangerous,” said Randy Wolf, a senior left-hander for El Camino Real High and last season’s Times’ All-Valley pitcher of the year. Wolf, who has signed to attend Pepperdine, said he enters the bullpen no more than twice between weekly starts and never throws more than 40 pitches in one practice stretch.

Never, Wolf said, does he throw the day after a start. And his off-season training regimen is considerably lighter than it is during the spring. Wolf, by the way, pitched a no-hitter and a perfect game in successive starts last season, then picked up a save in Dodger Stadium as El Camino Real won the City Section 4-A Division championship.

“Your arm can only take so many throws,” Wolf said. “If you throw too much, it will take a toll.”

Such has long been the widely held philosophy among baseball minds: Throw too much and too often--especially at an early age--and say goodby to longevity as a pitcher.

Charlie Strasser, assistant trainer for the Dodgers and a consultant to two professional baseball teams in Japan over the past six years, said throwing an abundance of pitches on a steady basis is a widely accepted training philosophy in the Far East. But it generally is ill-advised among U.S. pitchers.

“I don’t know if I would use (the word) outrageous, but 200 pitches does sound like way too much,” Strasser said. “We would advise against it.”

Chan Ho Park, the 20-year-old right-hander from South Korea who is challenging for a spot on the Dodgers’ opening-day roster, was raised on a similar throw-often philosophy, Strasser said. Coaches have spent spring training adjusting the young pitcher’s approach.

“He did a lot of work when he first came over,” Strasser said. “He thought he wasn’t working hard enough.”

The Spartan-like training philosophy of the Japanese is difficult to understand for scholars of America’s national pastime. Many American ballplayers who have played professionally in Japan have clashed with team management over policies such as pregame workouts that last up to four hours.

“Americans don’t practice long enough,” Commercial catcher Shingo Oki said. “They don’t spend as much time with baseball.”

Shimizu, the high school coach, said the Japanese “think differently” about baseball. “Over here, if the Americans lose, it’s OK,” he said. “You don’t have to win all the time. In Japan, you have to win no matter what.”

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So far, perpetual practice has made near-perfect for the Japanese in Southern California.

Since 1988, the first year the International Youth Baseball Federation began sponsoring their visits, high school teams from Japan have made sushi of foes, posting a 25-1-1 record. The list of the vanquished includes Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Dos Pueblos, Oxnard and Chaminade, as well as teams from Mexico.

In 1992, Shizuoka City High won all six of its games by a combined score of 53-15. Last season, Commercial was 4-0, outscoring the opposition, 36-6, including Chaminade, which fell, 7-2.

Commercial’s honorable on-field assault features a steady stream of bunts, relentless stealing and “scoring runs without getting a hit,” Shimizu said.

“They played the little game very well and their execution on defense was masterful,” Chaminade Coach Dave Desmond said. “We walked away thinking, ‘Those guys are fanatical in their training.’ ”

In California, state high school rules prohibit pitchers from throwing more than 10 innings per week. Sunday practices are prohibited. And even teams that reach championship competition play only about 30 games during a season that lasts no longer than 3 1/2 months.

In Japan, there are no rules limiting the amount of practice. High school teams play between 70 and 90 games during a season that begins in March and culminates in August with a national championship tournament in ancient Koshien Stadium near Osaka.

The single-elimination tournament, which begins with 49 teams culled from nearly 4,000 schools, has become a national obsession since its inception in 1915. Games draw more than 60,000 fans and are televised nationally.

The tournament “is unquestionably the country’s single biggest sporting event . . . like America’s Super Bowl and World Series all rolled into one,” wrote author Robert Whiting in his 1989 book, “You Gotta Have Wa ,” a study of baseball in Japan.

Players speak of the national tournament with reverence, and playing in Koshien Stadium is considered an honor to be cherished for life. Last season, Commercial came within one game of qualifying for the tournament.

“Winning and going to the national tournament is our only goal,” said Oki, one of five returning players from last season. “Once you have lost, that’s it. You don’t play any more.”

In Japan, throwing continuously is believed to strengthen the arm, not hurt it, Shimizu said. Arm injuries among his pitchers, the coach said, have been rare. Shimizu said pitchers are coached to throw with proper mechanics at an early age and are closely monitored.

“I hurt my arm once,” Yamazaki said. “That was a long time ago. I’m not going to be in any pain.”

Strasser of the Dodgers said that is unlikely.

“Everybody believes that, but we’re all human,” Strasser said. “God didn’t put any of us on Earth to throw baseballs. It’s abnormal.”

Over the past several years, Strasser has participated in research conducted by the respected Kerlan-Jobe Clinic in Inglewood. “Our belief is that the more innings thrown at an earlier age, the quicker or earlier the onset of possible arm injuries,” Strasser said. “We’re looking to see if there is a correlation between the amount of innings and the onset of injury. We think we’ll see a correlation.”

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Studies aside, the baseball world is filled with stories of pitchers with blown-out arms--in the United States and Japan. Ohta, Misawa’s hero of the 1969 tournament, was washed up at 27. Indeed, many top pitchers in Japan burn out their arms young, according to Whiting, who worked for six years as a columnist for the Tokyo Daily Sports.

But that doesn’t seem to bother Japanese players, who are urged to ignore pain. One reason might be the emphasis placed on the national tournament, which originated two decades before the first professional team was formed in Japan.

At times, practice can seem overwhelming even to the Japanese players. But the potential reward is considered great.

Oki, the Commercial catcher, raised three swollen fingers on his throwing hand during an interview, explaining through an interpreter that pitchers are not the only ones encouraged to “play through the pain” in Japan.

“We practice, sometimes, till 9 or 10 at night,” Oki said. “Before, I wanted to quit over 100 times. But when I hit a home run in the national tournament, I will forget all about that.”