Dodgers’ Asian Armistice : After Keeping Japan’s Hideo Nomo at Arm’s Length, Korea’s Chan Ho Park Decides to Extend His Hand

Chan Ho Park remembers walking into the Dodger clubhouse this spring, scanning the room for his locker and wincing the moment he saw it.

There was his locker, with his nameplate hanging prominently: No. 61. Chan Ho Park.

Immediately to his left was another nameplate: No. 16. H. Nomo.

It might have been a cute publicity move for the Dodgers, putting a South Korean pitcher alongside Japanese pitcher Hideo Nomo, but the relationship was hardly blissful at the outset.

“I stayed away from him for the first three or four days,” Park said. “I didn’t want to talk to him. He was my competition.

“I know he’s famous, and I’m happy he’s in the major leagues, but I’d be much happier if he was on a different team.”

It’s nothing personal toward Nomo, and Park refuses to be trapped into the longtime animosity between the two countries, but he understands the significance of Nomo’s presence.

“It’s just that I want to make the team so bad,” Park said through his uncle, Steve Kim, “and I know he is my competition. But after a few days, I got over it. I decided to help him. I even invited him over one night for dinner.

“I know what he’s going through, because I went through the very same thing last year. It’s very difficult, and right now, he’s going through a tough time.

“If he wants, I will help him.”

It’s ludicrous to assume that Nomo and Park would become best of friends simply because of their Asian heritage. Their cultures, language and beliefs are vastly different.

And their people have a long history of disliking one another.

South Koreans remember the Japanese occupation between 1910 and 1945. Some Japanese consider South Koreans inferior.

“The older generation in Japan, I think, still has trouble dealing with it,” said Yoric Kittaka of the Kyodo News Service in Tokyo. “My father, when we lose to Korea in anything, he can’t stand it.”

Said Kim, Park’s uncle: “There’s still that past that doesn’t go away. I’m not saying it’s to this extreme, but it’s like Iran and Iraq. They’re (located) next to one another, but as you know, they are not friends.”

This is why one of the most peculiar developments of this zany spring is the Japanese media’s relationship with Nomo and Park.

Instead of rooting for Hideo Nomo to become a star pitcher for the Dodgers, the Japanese reporters would just as soon see him open the season in triple-A Albuquerque.

The pitcher they want in the rotation is Park.

“The Japanese media like him very much; we cheer for him,” said Yoji Takeshita of the Tokyo Chunichi Sports newspaper. “We would like to go to dinner with him, but we don’t know if it’s possible.

“But Nomo, I don’t know about him. I don’t like the way he talks, like he’s making a fool out of us. It’s very offending.

“He doesn’t say, ‘You’re stupid,’ but it’s like he’s saying, ‘You’re stupid.’

“I wish he could be like Park Chan Ho.”

Said Kittaka: “They call me a Nomo sympathizer, but I can understand. He just doesn’t want attention. I guess it would be like, maybe covering Steve Carlton?”

But not even Carlton, the reclusive Hall of Fame pitcher, ever risked his career and legendary reputation to realize a dream.

*

Hideo Nomo, 26, did not need this aggravation and upheaval in his life.

He had everything a man could want in Japan. He was rich and famous, considered one of the greatest pitchers in Japanese history.

Nomo led Japan’s Pacific League in victories and strikeouts in four of his five seasons but was never satisfied. He played for a bad team, the Kintetsu Buffaloes. He didn’t like his manager, Keishi Suzuki.

Besides, the nagging curiosity haunted him as he wondered how good a pitcher he really was, so he decided it was time to find out.

His parents thought he was crazy. His wife, Kikuko, couldn’t understand. Even his best friends wondered if Nomo really knew what he was doing.

“My parents were against the idea from the start,” Nomo said through his interpreter, Mike Okumura. “They told me, ‘You’ve got everything in Japan: Wealth, status. . . . Why are you going to throw it all away.”

Nomo’s response?

“It’s my life.”

Nomo, whose only visit to the United States had been a layover at the Miami airport, signed on Feb. 13 with the Dodgers for a record $2-million bonus. The Dodgers had a gala news conference at a Japanese hotel in downtown Los Angeles to celebrate Nomo’s arrival.

It was the first time he and Park had met.

“I heard of him in high school; everybody in Korea has heard of Nomo,” Park said. “He’s very famous.”

When Nomo arrived in Dodgertown, nearly 30 Japanese reporters were waiting. This, Nomo says, is where the trouble started.

Nomo, wanting to protect his privacy, immediately imposed guidelines on the Japanese media. Interview sessions would be granted only once every four days, and only in a group. This, the Japanese reporters say, is where their trouble started.

After only a few days, Nomo accused certain Japanese reporters of fabricating stories. He continued to say his shoulder was fine; the media wrote that it hurt. He continued to say that he was in fine physical shape; the media said he was fat. He continued to say that life was great in America; the media was not so sure.

“He keeps saying how he’s going to do everything like the major league players,” Takeshita said, “but he doesn’t do interviews in the clubhouse. If he likes American ways, he should do what Americans do. So that’s a contradiction.”

Nomo, who calls home to Japan every evening and catches an ESPN sportscast before he goes to bed, shakes his head when listening to the Japanese media’s complaints. He excuses himself, reaches into his locker and pulls down the latest copy of Japan’s “Baseball Magazine.”

The cover story is ghost-written by Masanori Murakami, the only Japanese player who made the major leagues, with a huge headline: “Masanori Murakami Preaches to Hideo Nomo.” Murakami, according to Okumura, is quoted as saying, ‘He’s going to be far, far away from making the major leagues as long as he depends on his agent and has an interpreter all of the time.” The story also quotes Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda as saying, “I’m embarrassed. (Nomo’s) a problem. His attitude is a problem.”

Lasorda never would say such a thing, of course, and needless to say, it will be Murakami’s last interview with Nomo.

“They write about too many private things,” Nomo said. “They’re like that paper I see at the checkout counter. You know, the one they call the National Enquirer.

“So I’m checking on what those guys are writing about me. If it happens again, I don’t ever want them to write about me. I’m not saying everybody is that way, but they don’t understand me, and I don’t understand them.”

Nomo’s difficulties with his homeland’s reporters are something Park never encountered. Occasionally at the outset last year, they were a nuisance. But Park eventually tolerated even the 2 a.m. calls from reporters not realizing the time difference.

“I enjoyed all of the interviews,” said Park, who has learned enough English to part with his interpreter this year. “I like it. When I went back home this winter, I did all of the TV and radio shows.

“I think things will be fine one day for Nomo too. The language will be the biggest handicap. I remember once last year, when my interpreter left (in San Antonio), I had to order room service.

“I said to her on the phone, ‘What do you have?’

“The waitress said: ‘What do you want.’

“ ‘Salad.’

“ ‘OK, what kind of dressing?’

“ ‘I want salad sauce.’

“ ‘Sauce, what kind of sauce?’

“ ‘Hmm, I don’t know the name, hmm, that white-color sauce.’

“ ‘OK.’ ”

Park wanted ranch dressing. Instead, he had a salad full of mayonnaise.

*

Nomo was signing autographs two weeks ago when he was asked to sign a baseball card. Nomo shook his head and handed it back. The kid, perplexed, thrust it again toward Nomo. Nomo shook his head, no.

Okumura, sensing a problem, rushed over. He grabbed the card, looked at it and laughed. It was a picture of Park.

“People get us confused all the time,” Park said. “I’m walking from the game and people yell, ‘Mr. Nomo, Mr. Nomo.’ ”

Each is 6 feet 2, right-handed, with powerful legs. They even have the same two numerals on their back, only in reverse.

“I guess from a distance,” Kim said, teasing Park, “you guys do look alike.”

Park wrinkled his nose, and shot him a friendly look of disgust. Enough’s enough. They’re having enough trouble convincing folks they’re people with totally different personalities without anyone else encouraging the stereotype.

“It’s been a very interesting experience,” Kim said. “The Korean community is watching very closely and would give anything to have Chan Ho make it.

“The Korean community has gone through tough times the last couple of years with the rioting, earthquake and the recession. They’re looking for Chan Ho to be their solace, to give them hope.

“You know, it sure would be something if they became best of friends, and both pitched for the Dodgers, now wouldn’t it?

“Who knows, maybe it would even bring our countries together.”