AMERICA’S GAME: Jas. D. Easton Inc. in...

AMERICA’S GAME: Jas. D. Easton Inc. in Van Nuys, a big aluminum baseball bat maker, is making some headway in Japan. After struggling with trade restrictions to sell its own brand, Easton now supplies Japan’s Mizuno Corp. with bats stamped “Made in the USA” in Japanese. . . . “That helps sell the product,” says Easton’s Ken Waltrip.

MOVABLE COWHIDE: Like those of Wilson, Rawlings, Hillerich & Bradsby and other American baseball glove firms, most Easton gloves are made overseas. . . . The reason, as Pat Buchanan knows: cheaper labor. The leather in Easton’s gloves is from America but is shipped to the Philippines, Indonesia and South Korea for assembly, then shipped back for sale.

BATTER UP: Forty thousand customers a year take their cuts in the batting cages at Castle Batting Park in Sherman Oaks. Store manager John Wawee (above) says the big change has been the customers . . . Twenty percent now are women or girls, up from 5% a dozen years ago. Regulars include girl high school ballplayers. “This is their ticket to a college scholarship. Many are damn good,” he says.

IMMORTALITY: The ’94 baseball strike allowed other sport cards sales to spurt. “Basketball cards are our hottest seller,” says John Fangio, manager at Sportscards Outlet in Agoura Hills. Many younger collectors “don’t know heroes of a different generation,” he says. One exception: Mickey Mantle. Since the Yankee great’s death last year, “his card has shot up in value.” A ’67 Mantle card now costs $600, up $100 from before the Mick died.

NEW FANS: At Pages, Books for Children & Young Adults in Tarzana, “year-round we sell more books about baseball than any other sport,” says Darlene Daniel. . . . Decades-old baseball fiction by Matt Christopher and Alfred Slote “hold kids’ attention year after year.” And juvenile biographies of Babe Ruth, who died in 1948, and Sandy Koufax, who last pitched in 1966, remain steady sellers.