1.   American baseball has long been a part of Japanese culture.

2.   American baseball players and their fans wore gauze masks.

3.   Any self-respecting American baseball player would have stood with hands on hips and admired his handiwork after a few of those forehand winners.

4.   Besides, he said, he has no right to claim tiredness here in American baseball.

5.   A former teammate of Hideo Nomo is not surprised to see the Japanese pitcher make a successful leap to American baseball as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

6.   Bush even likened Koizumi to a star of American baseball, Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners.

7.   Bus and traffic problems caused the American baseball team to arrive only eight minutes before the scheduled start of its opening game against Nicaragua.

8.   Bush even likened Koizumi to the American baseball star, Ichiro Suzuki.

9.   But it would be an investment almost certain to create new fans of American baseball.

10.   Castro suggested a U.S.-Cuban agreement on providing players and alluded to training centers American baseball had set up in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.