Tuesday, May 27, 2003 | 9:46 a.m.
MLB snapshot
No team enjoyed the Memorial Day holiday more than Los Angeles, which had reeled off 10 victories in a row to improve to 30-20. It took Monday off, then Colorado defeated San Francisco (30-20) to give the Dodgers a part of first place.
His ERA ballooned to 8.53 on Sunday when he allowed two runs, on three hits, in the seventh inning of a game against Baltimore that had already slipped away from the Texas Rangers.
A day earlier, Van Poppel, a 6-foot-5 right-hander, yielded five runs, on four hits and two walks, in hat officially went down as zero innings in an 18-pitch debacle against the Orioles. For that, Texas gave him a three-year pact worth $7.5 million before last season.
But we've been most interested in monitoring the latest hitting-streak battle. Nomar Garciaparra of Boston is at 26 games, and Kenny Lofton of Pittsburgh has hit in his past 24 games.
We'll take Garciaparra, who is younger (29 to 36, on Saturday, for Lofton) and has had hitting stretches of 30, 24, 20, 17, 16 (twice) and 15 games in his career.
The strike zone is unique, preparation tactics are obsessive and impatience has led to a nation full of nervous smokers.
Those are just some of the observations that Chris Latham, a Basic High graduate, has made in his two weeks of playing professional baseball for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan.
"It's constantly baseball, baseball, baseball ... there's no rest," Latham said. "That's why I think the Japanese people smoke a lot -- they're always on edge. Japanese players are always on edge, and I think that's why they all smoke."
Latham spoke via his cell phone from Fukuoka, on the second leg of a bullet-train road trip in which the Giants wound up in the southeast corner of the country. The team took a flight back to Tokyo for a weekend series.
Latham, 29, and Atlanta-based agent Mike Fischlin negotiated with Yomiuri in the offseason, but Giants management wasn't diligent in follow-up talks. Then Latham signed a $400,000, one-year contract with the Yankees.
That obviously impressed Yomiuri, which began a working agreement with America's most famous baseball franchise in November. Through that deal, New York acquired outfielder Hideki Matsui from the Giants.
Latham played sparingly for the Yankees.
On April 6, he ran for Raul Mondesi, scored, then got a hit and scored in a victory at Tampa Bay. Two other stints as a pinch runner produced no results, and he singled and scored after relieving Bernie Williams in center during a win in Minnesota on April 18.
That's his career in pinstripes. On April 21, the Yankees designated Latham for assignment. Eight days later, Yomiuri signed him to a one-year contract worth $708,000.
Latham returned to his wife, Sarah, and three children in Henderson, continued his workout regimen and oversaw some finishing touches to the new Summerlin home he bought for his family.
He left for Tokyo -- with his father, William Sledge -- on May 10, and the plane touched down at Narita International Airport on May 12.
"He was really excited about this opportunity," said Fischlin, of the Scott Boras Corp. "Hopefully, he'll do well there and have an opportunity to come back here and play in the Majors."
Before leaving the Bronx, Latham, through a translator, asked Matsui what awaited him with Yomiuri.
"He told me how different baseball is in Japan, what they do and how they go about stuff," Latham said. "He tried to give me a heads-up about what would go on. He said baseball is much different in Japan than it is in the U.S. He said, 'We work much, much longer every day.'
"Little things, like the strike zone, are real different. He was a big help, just letting me know what goes on over here. And, yeah, he was dead on. Yep."
In Japan, a chest-high pitch is a strike. At the knees, it's a ball. In the U.S., a pitch at the knees is a strike. At the chest, it's a ball. On the outside corner of the plate, in Japan, it's a ball. Two or three inches inside, off the plate, it's a strike.
"It's really amazing," Latham said. "And they panic over here real quick, unlike the States, where it's, 'We'll let this guy get adjusted.' "
He had been led to believe that he would get a week to acclimate himself to the drastic time-zone difference and peculiarities of the Japanese style of the game. Three days later, Latham was sent in to pinch-hit.
"I struck out," he said. "The (third strike) was low and in. I didn't swing, so it was a called third strike. I said, 'OK, well, here's the strike-zone change.' I'm telling you, it's so different."
Latham went 1-for-10, striking out five times, in his first appearances for the Giants, who were floating around .500 last week in the Central League. Matsui said there would be days like that for Latham.
The foundation of the Japanese corporate approach to the game are meetings. For 20 minutes, the opposing pitcher's tactics are analyzed, followed by a 15-minute general session between the Giants starting pitcher, the position players and the manager.
"Lots of meetings," Latham said. "It's definitely different baseball. Getting prepared for a game is a long, long, drawn-out process."
When the meetings finally end, the Giants run pole-to-pole (right-field foul to left-field foul, then back, and forth, and back ... ) sprints, followed by shorter sprints. Then they play catch, shag fungos in the outfield, run bases and hit off a tee.
Then, it's to the cages, where they hit off a lefty for five minutes and then a righty for five minutes. After games, it's common for players to shadow-swing in the stadium. On the road, they do that in the hotel.
In games, pitchers rarely challenge hitters with speed balls.
"They'll throw you one, then the rest of their stuff is all off-speed," Latham said. "At three balls and one strike, you'll see changeups and forkballs. At 2-0, you're getting forkballs and sliders.
"The worst thing a pitcher can do here, I hear from other Japanese guys, is give up a long home run on a fastball."
The worst think Latham could do in Japan is eat raw fish. No sushi fan, he prefers his food cooked, like the mouth-watering Kobe beef he has discovered. Early last week, he thought he was eating a sesame chicken dish when a few fellow Americans, like Gary Rath, laughed at him.
Rath, a Yomiuri teammate of Latham's, also played with him in the Los Angeles and Minnesota systems.
"It had something to do with the inside of a chicken," Latham said. "It was hard and chunky, and the American guys knew. It was like gristle. Terrible. Like muscle."
Latham laughed along with them, and he has been thrilled to see fellow countrymen, like Yokohama slugger Steve Cox, formerly of Tampa Bay, and, among others, George Arias and Scott McClain.
"You're like, 'Ehhhhh!' " Latham said. "You might have had a little, small confrontation with them in the states. But playing each other here, geez, it's like you want to hug them. 'Hey! How you doing? So good to see you!' "
Sledge, who owns a home refurbishing company in Las Vegas, quickly made friends with team officials and is pondering an offer to teach and coach in a Japanese youth organization.
Latham and Sledge live in a three-bedroom apartment about 20 minutes from the Yomiuri stadium in Tokyo. In the short time he has been in Japan, Latham has been awed by the cleanliness of the country and politeness of its citizens.
There is no graffiti on subway trains, and eating on them is frowned upon by all. Stacks of hand wipes are readily available during rush hours, and baseball dugouts are spotless -- no chaw puddles, no shelled sunflower seeds and no crumpled paper cups. Anywhere.
"They have so many clean habits," Latham said. "It's one of the cleanest places I've seen in my life. You could eat off the floor. It's nothing like the States. Water comes in small bottles, and you drink it and throw it away. I really respect it and wish our country were like it.
"Man, it's a beautiful country. People here make you feel really welcomed. And they don't boo you. It's awesome. Just that fact alone makes me want to go off for this team and do well. That's adding extra pressure on myself, but I just need my timing."
Latham has not been awed by his salary, which translates to 85 million yen.
"I definitely feel blessed," he said. "It's definitely money I haven't made in my life. Great money. I just want to be doing better than I am, to help this team. That's the only thing."
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