Soviets Adopt Baseball, Aim at Future Olympics

MOSCOW — The Soviet Union has entered a baseball team to compete in the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle, the Ted Turner-sponsored event that made its Sovietdebut in Moscow last year.

The Soviet Union’s adoption of the American pastime is no joke according to Yuri Potnov, the head of the Games Department of the Soviet State Sports Committee, the supreme ruling body of sports in the country.

Potnov, a pleasant clear-eyed bureaucrat who bears a close remsemblance to Robert Redford in “The Natural,” points to Soviet performances in such imported Western sports as ice hockey and basketball, as what can happen when the Soviet sports machine takes a game seriously.

“One day we envision playing the United States team like we do in ice hockey and basketball. Yes, there will be a real World Series one day,” Potnov said.

When such a statement is made in an office of the State Sports Committee under the watchful eye of a portrait of Lenin, it goes beyond a promise. It is a commitment.

Potnov said the introduction of baseball as a trial sport in both the 1984 Los Angeles and 1988 Seoul Olympic Games convinced the Kremlin the time has come to include baseball as an official Soviet sport.

“We were spurred on by two considerations, by two points.” said Potnov. “Baseball was introduced into the Olympic program and it will be a part of the Goodwill Games in 1990. These are the two main reasons we got involved now.”

The sport has its own budget with the state sports structure, although Potnov says he cannot disclose the exact amount of money to be invested in the Soviet baseball program. This year, major Soviet cities including Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev will have teams in a Soviet national baseball league. State work brigades are busy building fields all over the country.

The Soviet Union may not be on its own for long as a baseball playing nation in the East bloc. Potnov said both Poland and Czechoslovakia are seriously considering setting up national baseball programs as well.

The Comrades of Summer are starting literally from scratch and virtually all the Soviet knowledge of baseball has been culled from video tapes and American books on the games.

Translators are currently working on a Russian version of the baseball rule book and other instructional booklets. Basic rules are to be published in mass circulation sports magazines like Sportivnye Igry (Team Sports) and Fizkultura I Sport (Physical Culture and Sport).

Potnov said baseball has a certain appeal to the masses although its unofficial debut in Moscow last October drew less than 200 fans. Most of them left after a few innings in utter bewilderment.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before and can’t understand a thing,” said one curious fan.

But Potnov believes that attitude runs contrary to the essence of the game.

“From one point of view, its simplicity for spectators is appealing. Every spectator in his heart watches a game and participates and he thinks he can do it better himself,” Potnov said adding one of the aspects of televised American baseball he likes best are the “advertisements.”

With the move towards more openness, debate and criticism in Soviet society, players may even be permitted to argue with the umpires.

Equipment remains a serious problem but Cuba, a country run by a former pitcher named Castro, has agreed to help. A deal for the manufacture of gloves and bats under license in the Soviet Union is expected to be signed later this year.

The Lenin Komsomol car factory squad near Moscow has been using ice hockey gloves to practice indoors until they receive a shipment of gloves. Catchers wear goalie masks and hockey chest protectors. Lathe operators have donated their time to manufacture bats.

On-the-field instruction has come from third-world baseball playing students from communist countries like Cuba and Nicaragua studying at Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba Friendship University where an umpiring school has just been opened.

“There are certain problems, certain difficulties with the rules, and the tactics are still a problem. But so much has been written so we can learn,” Potnov said.

Both Cuba and Nicaragua are sending teams and coaches to the Soviet Union in August and September to whip the Big Red Machine into shape and Potnov hopes eventually to work out a deal with the Americans to unlock the secrets of baseball for the Soviet Union.

The World Amateur Baseball Federation has also been actively helping the Soviets establish an administrative body to oversee the sport and coordinate the teams’ future international competition.

Potnov, like any other front-office type, is coy about his club’s chances.

“It is still too early to say how our team is going to look. We will see after our national championships this year,” he said.

If Potnov, who said he watched the 1986 World Series on video, could have his way, he said he would pattern the Soviet squad after the Mets--good speed and good pitching.

But he is realistic that the Soviet Union, serious as it is about baseball, is still a long way off from competing even on a world amateur level.