In Little Tokyo, They All Know the Meaning of Nomo : Baseball: Japanese Americans as well as tourists follow the Dodger pitcher with a mixture of curiosity and familial support.

By IAN JAMES

Sept. 28, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Across from the elevators on the first floor of Little Tokyo Towers, a notice goes up on a bulletin board every few days to announce the time and channel of an event that requires little explanation: “NOMO.”

The rookie pitcher from Japan has stirred attention and steadfast support among the more than 250 senior citizens of Japanese descent who live there.

They, along with thousands of Japanese tourists and other Japanese Americans, have flocked to television sets and Dodger Stadium to keep an eye on the legend known as Hideo Nomo. Their legend, their hero.

While Nomo may fuel national pride among visitors from Japan, he awakens a different sort of interest among many Japanese Americans, who say they monitor his performance with curiosity and nervous support.

And in Little Tokyo, where many who still have close ties to Japan live and congregate, Nomo has become a regular topic of conversation.

Among the senior citizens living in the Towers, 93-year-old Hiroshi Namadzue says he has been doing a lot of explaining ever since the former Japanese pro-league player stepped to the mound amid a flurry of media coverage. Namadzue has been teaching the rules of the game to a group of more than 20 elderly women--in the lounge and in the lunchroom--who knew little about the sport until Nomo came along.

“Now they are learning baseball,” said Namadzue, who some in Little Tokyo greet simply as sensei , a term of respect. The retired salesman who came to the United States at 19 says he points out to his neighbors the easily remembered numerical scheme of the so-called game of nines, with nine innings, nine players and 90 feet between the bases.

Beyond the groomed gardens at the foot of the Towers, Nomo has made his mark on Little Tokyo’s storefront windows, where Dodger T-shirts emblazoned with No. 16 hang by the score, along with such items as $200 signed baseballs and even an English song on audiocassette called “The Ballad of Hideo Nomo.”

Store owners say T-shirt sales have flagged slightly because long-sleeved shirts are favored in Japan with the beginning of autumn.

But two tourists emerging from a store with bags in hand on a recent afternoon said that relatives and friends back home would still appreciate T-shirts and hats as omiyage , or souvenir gifts that travelers customarily give upon their return.

“It would be nice if they had sweat shirts, but it can’t be helped,” said 25-year-old Masanori Suzuki, who had three T-shirts and two hats adorned with Nomo’s picture.

A block away, through a dainty tree-lined shopping area that feels like a transplanted bit of Japan, lies a lounge in the New Otani hotel where Japanese business people gather regularly to watch Nomo play.

Nomo’s success represents David beating Goliath at his own game for many Japanese, said UCLA senior research associate Yuji Ichioka. But the feeling is slightly different for those who have come to adopt the United States--and Los Angeles--as home.

“I like baseball,” Namadzue said. “And since he’s a Japanese player, I’m half worrying for him and half delighted for him.”

Others echoed Namadzue’s sentiment, saying they worry about Nomo in an almost familial way, seeking possible explanations for the recent dip in his performance.

“I’m just wondering, as others are, why is it that he’s dropping? His shoulder? His fingernail?” said Emi Yamaki, a second-generation Japanese American, or Nisei, who works across from the Towers in the Japanese Community Pioneer Center. “Dear Lord, please let him pitch well.”

On another floor in the same building, Yuko Yamauchi, a 24-year-old Nisei from Torrance, said she and her college-age sister have been concerned since Nomo arrived that he might become discouraged and return to Japan, feeling isolated by the language barrier. At one point, the sisters talked of holding up a sign at a game written in Japanese that would urge their star to gambatte , an expression that means roughly “do your best” or “stand firm.”

Yamauchi said the Nomo sensation has brought her family closer together, giving them a rallying point they all agree on.

The real novelty that Nomo brings to the game, Yamauchi said, is simply his Asian background. In American professional sports, where Asian and Asian American players are conspicuously absent, Yamauchi said Nomo’s presence “gives validity to the idea that Asians can play.”

But for Japanese from the other side of the Pacific, who regularly watch baseball teams filled with Asian players, Nomo’s success instead has given a boost to the collective national pride, Ichioka said. By proving he could play in the big leagues, Nomo gave Japanese the encouraging sense that their professional leagues, which were formed in the 1930s, are approaching the level of major league baseball in the United States.

The wave of Japanese visitors to Chavez Ravine has led Dodger Stadium to offer special services on Nomo game days, including walking vendors--”Sushi here!”--for $5.25, and a Japanese information table, where an interpreter and an usher offer ballpark directions. Tourists come by the busload, some of them on four-day “Nomo packages” that offer at least one Dodger game in which they are guaranteed to see the 27-year-old sensation.

Back in Little Tokyo, a string of tourist novelty shops now hang signs over the walkway to persuade passersby that “official” Nomo goods can be found inside.

In one of the stores, company President Akira Fujimoto said that about 20,000 T-shirts have been sold in his firm’s six local stores this season. Nomo’s fame, he said, has brought the Japanese back to an area that has been blighted during the last several years with incidents that discouraged travel.

“This is good for Los Angeles because so many bad things have happened here since 1991,” said Fujimoto, ticking off the fear of terrorism during the Gulf War, the riots, the earthquake, fires and the carjacking murders of a Japanese American student and his friend, a Japanese exchange student, in San Pedro last year.

But for Namadzue, a former track and field athlete who as a boy played pickup stickball on the streets of Tokyo, Nomo’s uncommon breakthrough represents, more simply, a triumph for Japanese athletes.

When it comes to keeping tabs on Nomo, Namadzue checks the score by radio if the game isn’t televised. When Nomo first arrived and his name circulated in Little Tokyo Towers, some women who overheard the talk were confused by the rookie’s rare last name. They asked in Japanese: “What is Nomo?”

That question doesn’t come up much anymore, Namadzue said.

“Now when they watch baseball,” he said, “they understand.”