If you didn’t catch its initial airing Sunday night on New England Sports Network, make it a point to scan the TV listings because NESN’s latest Front Row special, Diamonds in the Far East – Baseball in Japan, is a home run.

The hour-long special on professional baseball and the overall popularity of the game in the Land of the Rising Sun is the creation of lead producer and Maine native Bob Sylvester and Jim Van Dillen.

“Yeah, we’re excited about it,” said NESN publicist Gary Roy. “They’re saying it may be one of our best Front Row specials ever.”

It wouldn’t seem likely there would be many New England connections to Japanese baseball, but NESN found several, starting with the story of how Civil War veteran and New England professor Horace Wilson was credited with introducing the game to the island nation. Wilson taught the game to his Japanese students in 1872, sparking Japan’s 130-year baseball love affair.

From Wilson to players with New England connections like Tuffy Rhodes and Lou Merloni, Diamonds in the Far East chronicles the history, popularity, and unique style of baseball in Japan.

Interviews with players like Boston Red Sox farmhands Morgan Burkhart, Rhodes, Carlos Castillo, Willie Banks, and Merloni illustrate the cultural differences between American baseball and its Japanese counterpart.

Merloni, a native of Framingham, Mass., who played for the Yokohama Baystars in 2000, talked about how every game is played like a World Series game, with cleanup hitters expected to bunt and suicide squeezes signaled for batters in two-strike situations.

Former Sox players like Rhodes, who’s now a cultural icon and larger-than-life sports hero in Japan after averaging 30 home runs and almost 100 RBIs per season the last seven years in the Japanese majors, and current ones like reliever Willie Banks were particularly awed by crowd decorum on the Pacific Rim.

“They’re like soccer fans,” Burkhart remarked. “It’s incredible. Baseball is their life.”

The stands feature loud crowds, raucous behavior, and everything from bands, travelling booster clubs, mascots and Dallas Cowboy-style cheerleaders, to balloons, noisemakers, flags, and organized cheers. Think of the wave, but about 100-times greater on the intensity scale and less infrequent.

“We had 47,000 fans come for a spring training game,” Rhodes tells an interviewer.

Even with all the intensity, fans always keep it positive. Derogatory cheers and taunting are frowned on by a society that values hard work, selflessness, and modesty.

The show also examines the cultural hurdles players must overcome to flourish in Japan. Language and the sometimes confounding strategies of the game, which are frequently at odds with how Major League Baseball is played, are the two most prominent barriers.

The Japanese pro game’s future is also examined as Japan league executives talk about the possibility of MLB expansion into Japan. Another issue is an ongoing clash between a younger generation of players and owners and the old guard of Far East baseball concerning rising salaries and a perceived shift in attention being paid from on-field performance to off-field compensation.

NESN will air the special again at 8 p.m. Thursday and on Friday and Monday nights immediately after its Red Sox game telecasts.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600, or ANeff@bangordailynews.net