The Japanese word is sabitteiru, and it translates roughly into English as "rusty."

Perhaps you remember that notable line drive-smoking first baseman of the Houston Astros, Montreal Expos and New York Mets, Sabitteiru Staub, known to French Canadiens as Le Grand Orange (for his red hair), and later, after years of impressive weight gain, as Le Gross Orange.

It happens that rusty is back in baseball. Not the redhead, the adjective, and it further happens that some Japanese players have used it to describe the way many of their American brethren play the game.

Sabitteiru. Like they're rusty. Ouch.

"I was on a radio show in New York recently," the author Robert Whiting was telling me at the offices of the Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania the other day. "And the host asked me what Japanese players think of the American players, and I said they would tell you the American players are strong, powerful and dynamic, but that they are unfinished players. They haven't mastered some of the skills, like hitting to all fields, advancing runners and making the correct defensive plays, and they don't work on them.

"The host got very upset. He said, 'Well, maybe [the Yankees'] Hideki Matsui could make that statement, but I don't think anyone else is in a position to say something like that.' "

You might not make a lot of friends advancing the notion that Japanese players, at least superstars like Matsui and Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki, are more complete in both skill and concentration than many American players, but that's mostly because the truth hurts. The larger truth is, you'd have a very hard time making the case that the typical major-leaguer hits to all fields, moves runners and unfailingly throws to the cutoff man. And baserunning, don't get me started. Sabitteiru doesn't begin to describe it. What's Japanese for brain corrosion?

Whiting, who was educated and now lives in Japan, was here to speak at Mt. Lebanon High School and a talk at PNC Park, part of the promotion for his new book, "The Meaning of Ichiro", which joins "You Gotta Have Wa" and "The Chrysanthemum and the Bat" among his baseball tomes, and brings into the light of shrieking clarity the near-maniacal degree to which many Japanese players have dedicated themselves to the game.

Most Americans would be stunned to know that baseball has been the main part of Japanese high school athletic culture since 1868, if not by the single-mindedness of that country's approach to the game.

Suzuki's father, for example, who worked his very young son morning and night on every aspect of the game and left strict instructions with his high school coach not to praise him no matter how well he played because "we have to make him spiritually strong," devised a drill called "life or death." What fun.

In "life or death", the father stood six feet from Ichiro and hurled pitches Ichiro was required to swat to the left or right sides of the diamond to avoid hitting the father. The father believed the risks of this obviously perilous exercise to be worth it, as it would teach Ichiro bat control.

In Japan, Matsui, who would leave bats bloody from the blisters and calluses he developed in practicing incessantly, had a pregame ritual that included, in addition to swinging until he was soaked in the batting cage at the tee, 20 foul pole-to-foul pole sprints, catching 30 balls hit to his right, 30 to his left, and 30 hit over his head. Whiting recounts the reaction of visiting San Diego Padres scout Gary Nickel: "Here is the best player in Japan in a pregame situation working his butt off," he said. "How often do you see that in our game?"

American players, Whiting said, preserve their energy for the game. Japanese players are so stoked to play, they practically need to exhaust themselves just to be able to function in a game situation. You have to wonder, I told Whiting, if there is any joy in "our game" for the Japanese.

"They would probably tell you that they're enjoying themselves, even though their coaches would tell you they're not supposed to be enjoying themselves," Whiting said. "But American players will say, 'Look at their faces. They're expressionless.' They think they're nuts. The Japanese have turned baseball into a martial art. Endless training, day and night. The saying is, I think, 'One thousand days to master, ten thousand days to perfect.' "

Ichiro, the American League's Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in 2001, will likely be in the middle of his fourth consecutive summer of hitting better than .300 when he makes his Pittsburgh debut June 18. That's when the Mariners and Pirates start a three-game series thanks to the dubious development of interleague play, an idea that might or might not endure. International play clearly is permanent. More than a quarter of the players on major-league rosters at the start of this season were born outside the United States and Canada, and that's been to the game's great betterment.