A Lonely <i> Gaijin</i>

As early as today, Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes could break a Japanese record of 55 home runs in a season that has stood since 1964. . If he gets half a chance.

Frequently when foreign players in Japan get close to a major milestone, pitchers try to keep the title in Japanese hands by refusing to throw within a yard of their bats.

In 1965, former Dodger third baseman Daryl Spencer became so frustrated at not getting a decent pitch while playing for the Hankyu Braves that he stood at the plate with his bat upside down. The string of walks at the end of that season ultimately allowed Spencer’s Japanese rival, catcher Katsuya Nomura of the Nankai Hawks, to hit 42 home runs and take the title that year.

“For about a month there, I almost quit,” says Spencer, who lives in Wichita, Kan. “It was so frustrating, like punching a hole in a balloon. I almost gave up.”

In September 1985, Randy Bass of the Hanshin Tigers was in the same spot where Rhodes finds himself. With 54 home runs--the same number Rhodes has now--Bass had a shot at the gold ring. But in the final three-game series against the Yomiuri Giants, the former major leaguer was walked repeatedly, ensuring that the Giants’ legendary Sadaharu Oh kept his record.

The Giants had more than a passing interest in all this. Oh was managing the team at the time. “Oh’s a great guy and a great baseball player,” Bass said. “But the Japanese just have to face the fact that records are meant to be broken.”

Many Japanese sluggers receive the same treatment at the hands of opposing pitchers, although non-Japanese arguably face bigger hurdles.

“I think being a foreigner adds to it,” says Ken Marantz, sports columnist with the Daily Yomiuri newspaper. “Having the record held by Japanese is a point of pride.”

Another American, former Arizona Diamondback Alex Cabrera, is also in the race, having hit 44 home runs this season for the Seibu Lions. The closest Japanese player is Rhodes’ Kintetsu Buffalo teammate Norihiro Nakamura, with 44. Analysts give Rhodes the best shot at breaking Oh’s record. For one thing, Kintetsu is in a tight pennant race with Seibu and the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, making it less likely that rivals will put Rhodes on base with another strong hitter following him in the lineup. At 140 games, this season is also five games longer than last year’s, meaning he has more opportunities. There are 12 games left in the Buffaloes’ season.

More fundamentally, some observers say, Japanese baseball has changed--at least at the margins. It allows more foreigners to play, and may no longer feel the need to rely on such shenanigans to safeguard national or team pride.

In addition, members of the media have suggested it’s time for a change.

“Although Oh has done much to promote baseball, it has been 37 years since he set his single-season home run record,” the Asahi newspaper said earlier this month. “It may be time for the sport to embrace a new hero, no matter if he is Japanese or a foreigner.”

Superstar Ichiro Suzuki’s spectacular season with the Seattle Mariners also has made the Japanese feel less threatened, some say.

The subject of all this attention was born in Cincinnati on Aug. 21, 1968, part of a family of six children. Sports was one of the few ways out of a rough neighborhood, he says, and he took to baseball. He earned the nickname “Tuffy” at age 6 when a local Boy’s Club manager called him that after he was hit in the head by a ball and didn’t cry.

“It’s stuck ever since,” he says.

Rhodes joined the minor leagues soon after graduating from high school in 1986 and had a rather unspectacular career bouncing between the minors and majors from 1990-95. For the first three of those years, he was an outfielder with the Houston Astros.

His 15 minutes of U.S. fame came when he was traded to the Chicago Cubs in 1994. On opening day, he hit three home runs. Everyone expected great things, but he flamed out, never secured a starting position and was traded the next year to the Red Sox.

Those three home runs proved an anomaly: He hit only 13 during his entire major league career, in 590 at-bats. Frustrated at not being able to play more and lured by the money and the promise of a starting position, Rhodes joined the Japanese Pacific League’s Buffaloes in 1996.

Many American players who come to Japan have faced huge problems adapting to the very different game of Japanese baseball, in which extreme caution, form and overriding emphasis on the group over the individual can be at least as important as results. Many quit before their first season ends, disenchanted and frustrated. Rhodes faced his share of adjustment problems.

“In Japan, they approach baseball like it’s a chess match,” he said in a 1999 interview. “They try to outsmart each other and make the game tougher than it is. Four-hour games are fast games. They’ll switch pitchers for three different batters. It’s amazing.”

But his performance picked up soon after he came to Japan. He started lifting weights diligently, focused on improving his game and by the end of the first year had a .293 batting average. And by 1999, he hit his stride, with a league-leading 40 home runs, plus 101 runs batted in and a .301 average.

Yoshiaki Kanemura, a television commentator and former Kintetsu pitcher, says Rhodes is a smart, flexible, well-rounded player with a good memory and the ability to field, hit and steal bases.

“When he’s in a groove, he’s really good,” Kanemura said. Off the field, Rhodes has also worked hard to fit in, in a country where gaijin , or foreign, players are often seen as arrogant, overpaid suketto , or hired guns.

“I’ve come over here with the attitude I’m not going to be some stuck-up American,” he says.

He studied Japanese for several years and is fluent. He often jokes with Japanese journalists, has played six seasons here and is quick to say how much he loves the country, enjoys the culture and wants to end his career here, rather than use Japan as a bridge back to the majors.

But as Rhodes’ stock has risen, he has started to run up against the more limited Japanese compensation system.

Baseball salaries aren’t public in Japan, but it is estimated he makes the equivalent of $1.5 million a year on a team that doesn’t have very deep pockets.

“We’ll see what happens,” Rhodes says.

The average pay for players in Japan is $295,000, with the highest paycheck being $4.2 million for slugger Hideki Matsui of the Giants. By comparison, major league players average about $2 million a year with Texas’ Alex Rodriguez averaging $25.2 million a year.

“We’re in Japan, not Hollywood,” says Marty Kuehnert, president of International Sports Management and Consultants. “They’ll give him a raise, but not that much--you can’t expect a $2-million movie to pay a $20-million salary.”

Rhodes’ self-deprecating humor and easy laugh--players kid him that his hair makes him look like Japanese pop star Papaya Suzuki--make him popular with fans, teammates and coaches.

“He’s more than half Japanese,” Kintetsu Manager Masataka Nashida says. “He doesn’t act like your usual gaijin. He’s really part of the group.”

One characteristic that does set Rhodes apart is his Western displays of feeling in a nation where sports stars are expected to be modest and understated and to say little more than “I’ll try my best.”

During a slump in June, television cameras caught him smashing his bat and yelling a blizzard of expletives after striking out.

“I’m not Japanese,” Rhodes says. “I tried my best to hide my emotions, but it just doesn’t work for me. I try and try, and the next thing I know I’m tearing up papers, throwing a bat.”

The slump is over, however, and he has a shot at a triple crown for leading the league in home runs, batting average and RBIs. Even better, perennial loser Kintetsu has a decent shot at earning its first pennant since 1989.

The move to Japan has not come without sacrifice. Rhodes lives apart from his family most of the year. His wife and their young son, Karl Jr., live in Houston, where she works as a flight attendant.

His apartment in Osaka, where Kintetsu plays, looks every bit the consummate bachelor pad, with little more than a few plates, a microwave, a TV and a stereo. But since Japanese men routinely sacrifice family life for their careers, this too is well-received.

Even if Rhodes manages to wrestle the record from Oh, some say there’s little guarantee he’ll earn the superstar recognition such an accomplishment deserves. Japanese sports history is littered with fallen gaijin stars whose accomplishments have been discounted, says Kuehnert.

“Tuffy is a really good hitter and a fine guy,” he says. “But a lot of other guys played their hearts out and were quickly forgotten.”

Behind the Japanese practice of not pitching to hitters in the running for titles, baseball experts say, is a strong cultural desire to protect the inner circle, teammates or fellow nationals against outsiders. While Westerners view this as detrimental to fair play, many Japanese have traditionally seen it as something to be proud of, because it shows loyalty to those close to you.

Oh has a Taiwanese father and faced Japanese resistance early in his career. By the time Bass was threatening his record, however, he was part of the establishment, and Japanese rallied around him. He led the league in home runs for 13 consecutive seasons from 1962 to 1974 and was voted most valuable player nine times.

With Rhodes as close as any foreigner has come to one of Japanese baseball’s top honors, the season’s outcome is now up to him and the willingness of opposing pitchers to face him directly.

Rhodes says he dreams of securing the home run record this season and leading his team to a championship.

“It would be great, just incredible,” he says. “I don’t know what I would do--go crazy. Maybe I’d run around the bases and take my clothes off.”

*

Hisako Ueno of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

‘Tuff’ Stuff

Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes played six major league seasons-with Houston (1990-93), the Chicago Cubs (1993-95) and Boston (1995)-and is in his sixth season in Japanese baseball’s Pacific League with the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes. His statistics in those leagues:

*

*Statistics through Sept. 10. Rhodes hit a home run Sept. 12 to pull within one of Sadaharu Oh’s Japanese baseball season record of 55 set in 1964.