BASEBALL AT THE BREAK : Park Discovers School’s Still In for the Summer : Minor leagues: Dodger pitcher was last year’s phenom. Now, he is learning the intricacies of the game while playing in the shadow of Hideo Nomo at Albuquerque.

The top half of the Dodgers’ Asian equation has received 99.9% of the attention this season, while its younger, lesser known member toils in the heat of New Mexico.

“To play for Dodgers is my dream, I working very hard to learn,” Chan Ho Park said in passable English the other night, after an impressive outing for the Albuquerque Dukes.

For those who have been wondering, in these days of Nomomania, whatever became of Chan Ho Park, he’s gone to pitching school.

And he’s doing fine with his undergraduate course load in the Pacific Coast League, under baseball professors Rick Dempsey, his manager, and Burt Hooton, his pitching coach.

Seems odd to recall now that Chan Ho Park actually beat Hideo Nomo to Los Angeles. The Dodgers, with a $1.2-million bonus check, signed him as a 20-year-old 18 months ago--he recently turned 22. What they got was a South Korean with great tools but who had essentially only high school experience.

He should be compared to Nomo--who got $2 million up front when the Dodgers signed him in February--only in a geographical context, as Park himself recently pointed out.

In other words, they both come from Far Eastern nations and both are right-handed. Period.

In Nomo, the Dodgers acquired an established, 26-year-old big league pitcher from Japan. In Park, they obtained a 6-foot, 185-pound Korean kid with big league pitches, but not the faintest idea what to do with them.

In a brief stint with the Dodgers last year and later at double-A San Antonio and now triple-A Albuquerque, Park is still getting over the shock of one facet of American baseball: home runs.

At first, he says, he was shocked at the strength of American hitters. In Korean baseball, he said, hitters are more polite. They hit singles.

“I’m more confident now, but at first American hitters seemed so powerful to me,” he said.

“I know I can beat these American hitters, but have to learn harder. . . . In Korea, hitters have mostly same style. Here, every hitter is different.”

Park--in Korean, surnames come first, as in Park Chan Ho. But he wants to be known here as Chan Ho Park--had one of his better outings in Albuquerque on a 90-degree evening last Friday.

He beat Phoenix, 12-3, cruising through six innings, baffling hitters with his high leg kick and well-placed fastballs, hard curves and changeups. He walked five.

In 14 starts, Park is 4-4 with an earned-run average of 4.33. He has 69 strikeouts in 70 2/3 innings. But he also has given up 51 walks and is tipping off his changeup.

So, a mixed return after a season and a half.

“All things considered, we’re happy with what the kid has done,” Dempsey said.

“He’s inconsistent and he had a long stretch this season where he was walking too many hitters, but he’s bounced back. Remember, you’re talking about a young guy from another country who’s learning another language, another culture, a different kind of baseball, different food, the travel . . . “

Hooton believes that had Park been born in the United States, he might be a major leaguer now.

“With his tools [he has a 95-m.p.h. fastball]? Yeah, he’d probably be in the majors now,” he said. “He’d be further along than the other young pitchers in the organization.”

This was right after the Friday outing, when Park, seemingly headed for a shutout, suddenly lost command in the seventh inning. Tiring in the heat, he gave up a single, a walk and a double. He also stumbled off the mound after one pitch.

When he was pulled, Albuquerque was leading, 11-1.

Hooton shrugged.

“I told him after we took him out if he thinks this is hot, wait’ll he pitches a day game in St. Louis in late August or September,” Hooton said.

“This is just part of the learning process--learning how to pitch well when he’s tired, learning how to raise his concentration level on every pitch, knowing what he’s trying to do with every pitch and not overthrowing when he’s tired.”

Hooton has had several long talks with Park, which can be an adventure in itself. The Dodgers supplied an interpreter last year but this season Park asked to be left on his own, figuring he would pick up English faster by himself.

Park has reached the point where he can almost complete a sentence, but seems invariably to get hung up on one word. Even with an occasional interpreter, something often seems to be missing.

For example, in his triple-A debut this season, against Colorado Springs, he was hammered. He gave up four walks, three hits and was yanked after throwing 78 pitches in three innings.

Asked what happened, his answer came out this way: “My skin is dry.”

Park had his best game at Phoenix earlier in the season, when he took a one-hitter into the eighth inning.

“Then we blew the game for him with a bunch of infield errors,” Dempsey said.

Hooton said that young pitchers tend to be too satisfied with themselves when they do well and too unhappy when they don’t.

“I talk to him about pitching hard on every pitch, to give his team a chance to win,” Hooton said. “A lot of young pitchers go through this. They pitch a great game and think they have it all figured out, that the next one will be easier.

“It doesn’t work like that. You pitch a great game, and you get in here the next day and get to work studying the next lineup you’ll see. I tell Chan Ho his last start, good or bad, is ancient history.

“He needs a lot of work in his game preparation. And we’ve also talked about developing a determination to finish a game.”

Dempsey is finding a cultural factor in Park’s pitching education.

“The baseball he played in Korea is totally different,” he said.

“He told us over there they taught him when he was behind in the count to let up on his fastball, and hope that the hitter only gets a single. So he’s having to learn another game here.

“We want him to go out there and dominate people at the outset with that fastball, and get his breaking ball over for a strike when he’s behind in the count. He’s not quite there yet with the curve, but he will be.

“Right now, we’re just happy he’s not walking as many hitters as he was before.”

Charlie Blaney, director of minor league operations for the Dodgers, said Park is on track.

“We’re pleased,” he said. “When he came to us, all he needed was experience. All he’d done is pitch two or three games in a tournament, then play no baseball for six weeks, until the next tournament.

“He’d never even been in a real season. He’s a young, intelligent guy with great stuff and a coach, Burt Hooton, who’s great at teaching young guys what it takes to pitch in the big leagues.”

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In the farming town of Kong Ju, about a two-hour drive south of Seoul, Park Jae Kun awaits regular reports from his faraway son, playing a game he doesn’t understand in a place, New Mexico, he had never heard of.

“Chan Ho’s father owns a small electrical repair shop and farms chestnuts and ginseng on the side,” said Steve Kim, a distant relative of Park. He’s a 37-year-old Los Angeles architect, and Park’s agent.

“Chan Ho has two brothers and a sister, but no one in his family had ever participated in organized sports. Then when Chan Ho was a track star in junior high, a coach suggested he try baseball.”

Park lives alone in an apartment complex five minutes from the Dukes’ park, and apparently doesn’t lack a social life.

He’s been adopted by about 50 Korean students from the nearby University of New Mexico. After he pitches in home games, he’s often the guest of honor at a Korean-style barbecue, not that he misses Korean food.

“I love American food,” he said, through Albuquerque interpreter Karen Shin. “Steak, pasta and chickenburgers.”

While there are at least five Chinese restaurants in Albuquerque that serve Korean dishes, there isn’t a single Korean-owned restaurant. And if there’s a dynamite Korean restaurant anywhere in the PCL, Park hasn’t found it.

“I haven’t really looked,” he said.

He lives almost monklike, reading Korean books and listening to English lessons on tape. No television.

“He told me he didn’t want a TV, that he felt he’d watch it too much,” Kim said. “He didn’t want anything interfering with his game preparation or learning English.

“He gets lonely, particularly when he’s not pitching well. We talk almost every day. After he’s pitched well, he’s really upbeat.

His timetable is one year. . . . One more year and he wants to be with the Dodgers.”

And please, in the meantime--no Nomo comparisons.

“I don’t want [to be] compared to Nomo,” Park said recently, through interpreter Shin.

“Nomo was my hero in high school. I have to do a lot better to be like him. He’s older and more experienced. He’s perfect. I can’t be perfect yet, but I’m working hard.”