Soviets in a Big Hurry to Catch On to Baseball : They’re Trying to Pick Up Some Yankee Know-How

Once a week, in a house in Moscow, Soviet baseball players get together to watch on tape how Americans play the game.

It’s a major league baseball game of the week on videotape--what game doesn’t really matter. It’s an educational tool, used for the study of baseball, the latest Soviet sports pursuit.

“This coach has his team over to watch the game, and, because it’s in English, he translates it to them,” said Rod Dedeaux, former USC baseball coach who recently returned from a trip to Moscow.

“It’s amazing how much they know about American baseball. Some of them have even adopted major league players as their heroes. One player asked me to autograph a Sports Illustrated cover photo of Mark McGwire. And another, wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates cap, told me his favorite is Dave Parker.”

Dedeaux, along with Dodger President Peter O’Malley and Robert Smith of Greenville, Ill., president of both the international and U.S. baseball federations, traveled to the Soviet Union last month for the dedication of Moscow’s first baseball stadium--a $3.2-million project donated by a Japanese educator, Shigeyoshi Matsumae.

This was the latest of many efforts to promote international baseball in countries just beginning to learn the sport.

Originally, the sharing of expertise was to have been a trade. United States representatives were to help the Soviets learn baseball, and the Soviets were to have helped the Americans develop a sport called bandy, a game similar to ice hockey but played outdoors on a frozen soccer field.

But bandy went by the wayside, and instead, the United States (as are Cuba, Japan and other countries that have adopted baseball) is teaching the game in the Soviet Union, a country eager to become competitive by the 1992 Olympics, when it will be a medal sport.

According to Smith, Cuba’s Fidel Castro told him: “We will help the Soviets to beat you, but never teach them enough to beat us.”

The Soviet government began taking baseball seriously about two years ago. The sport was played very little, and only in the southern part of the country, in, appropriately, the republic of Georgia. The game was played--still is, for that matter--mostly on soccer fields with makeshift equipment.

But the chairman of the program committee for the Olympics is a Soviet, Vitaly Smirnov. That committee decides which sports will be Olympic medal events. Baseball, as a demonstration sport in the 1984 games, drew an average daily attendance of 48,000 during an 8-day tournament, and appeared on its way to Olympic medal status, something Smith said that Smirnov foresaw.

“The Soviets aren’t about to be left out of baseball competition once it becomes a medal sport,” Smith said.

In 1986, the Soviet government adopted baseball, softball and lapka, a Soviet game, as official sports, with baseball the first priority. The search began to build a national team.

The Soviets initially learned the sport from Nicaraguan and Cuban students attending Soviet universities. Then, last spring, two Soviet baseball coaches spent three weeks in the United States, learning, from what they termed “the mother country of baseball,” by touring spring training camps and studying American national, college and Little League baseball programs.

But the stage for cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States was set three years ago in Indianapolis.

In 1985, after the Soviets had boycotted the 1984 Summer Games, the United States Olympic Committee signed an agreement with the Soviet Olympic Committee to work together for the good of sports by putting aside politics.

“When the agreement was being signed, myself and Don Porter (who heads both the international and U.S. softball federations) mentioned to Soviet Olympic officials that we would like to help teach them baseball and softball, and we would like to learn more about bandy,” Smith said. “Bandy is big in their country, but (in the U.S.) it is played sparingly around the Minnesota area.”

Smith and Porter, of Oklahoma City, went to Moscow in 1985, and found that the only game there resembling baseball was lapka, but only because it is played with a ball and a stick-like bat. By the time Smith and Porter made a third trip to Moscow, in 1987, baseball had become a serious business.

“In that trip, the Soviets put on an indoor intramural exhibition game for us,” Smith said.

“There were maybe five players on the Soviet team that might make a small-college team. The players were better defensively than they were at hitting and pitching. But they don’t have that second nature of backing up a play, or cutting off a throw.

“After the game, they held a press conference, and Soviet reporters asked me how quickly they could be competitive. The Soviets are thinking four to six years, but I think it will take them longer, maybe a decade or so. They should work with junior athletes and let them grow up in the game. They know that, too, but they are anxious.”

Currently there are about 30 baseball teams in the Soviet Union. A few are sponsored by businesses, but most are student club teams.

The players range in age from 18 to 28 and there are few junior players or youth programs. Soviet sports officials said that they are concentrating on putting together a national team, and, rather than developing raw talent, are trying to entice athletes from other sports.

“There is no other sport from which will be an ideal baseball player,” Alex Kalivud, assistant in the USSR Baseball-Softball Federation, told Smith last October.

“We are using athletes from the sport games . . . especially javelin throwers who might become pitchers, and surprisingly, lots of tennis players. It seems that this feeling of the ball which tennis develops helps them to be good fielders and good throwers and especially good hitters.”

Soviet officials said they plan to start more baseball programs for children, and will hold two tournaments this year for players 18 and under. From those tournaments, they plan to take the best players and train them. But for now, their focus is teaching the older athlete, and, though they admit its a longshot, shoot for a medal in the 1992 Olympics.

“Remember, a few years ago we had no hockey,” Ramaz Goglidze, president of the USSR Baseball-Softball Federation, told the Regina Leader-Post in Canada earlier this year.

The Soviet Union spent just seven years developing ice hockey, with Czechoslovakia as its primary teacher, then made its international debut at the 1954 World Championships with a 7-2 win over Canada, which had been the reigning power for 32 years. The Soviets subsequently beat Canada for the gold medal in the 1956 Olympics and have dominated international hockey since.

In 1947, the Soviets formed a national basketball team and five years later, in the 1952 Olympics at Helsinki, Finland, won the silver medal, finishing second to the U.S. The Soviets then won three more silver medals and a bronze, then, in a controversial finish, beat the U.S. for the gold in 1972 at Munich.

There still are few baseball parks in the Soviet Union but some soccer fields have been converted and more will be.

The equipment situation is also improving. The International Baseball Assn. and the Amateur Softball Assn. of the U.S. have supplied the Soviets with $20,000 worth of new equipment in the last year. As part of an IBA agreement with Rawlings Sportings Goods, it receives $80,000 worth of baseball equipment each year to donate to countries developing baseball.

Smith said that the Soviets told him they were hoping to forge a partnership agreement with an established sporting goods company to open a factory in their country. The Soviet government would hold a 51% share.

Though the Soviets also get equipment from Cuba, Smith said that Soviet officials have not been pleased with the quality or the length of time they have to wait for it. He added that the Soviets are hoping to to work out some sort of import or partnership situation with a U.S. or Japanese company.

Smith also said Soviet officials are hoping to get a major sporting goods company to sponsor its national baseball team--an area it has criticized the United States for in the past.

“The development of baseball has been a contributing factor to breaking down barriers between our business way of life and theirs,” Smith said. “It began to happen in sports prior to the (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev administration, but is really taking off since he came into power.”

The Soviets may play the U.S. national team as early as 1990, at the Goodwill Games in Seattle. The Johns Hopkins University baseball team plans a trip to Moscow later this month, and there are tentative plans to send some type of American senior team to Moscow in 1989 for an exhibition.

“At this point, we want to help them develop baseball,” Smith said. “We don’t want to send a team there to wipe them out. There will be a day when we play for real.”