SAN PEDRO DE MACORIS, Dominican Republic -- Ten miles from the middle of town, down an unpaved road of rocks and craters, past the tumbledown cement factory and miles of sugar cane fields, past the traffic jams consisting of goats and bony horses and shirtless men on burros, past the tin shacks bulging with hungry children, the Baltimore Orioles are attempting to better their distant future.

Appearing suddenly in this sunlit Caribbean dead-end, where electricity and running water are as valuable as gold, is a shocking sight: two dozen Dominican teen-agers wearing old Orioles uniforms, playing baseball on a tidy field surrounded by concrete bleachers and fences shimmering in Orioles' colors, with Bird logos on the outfield wall and dugouts.

Welcome to the outermost tip of one of baseball's tendrils, an island of order in a sea of Third World chaos.

The players are young sons of poverty, some unable to read or write, their gaunt bodies testimony to a life of hunger. But they play baseball with startling grace and knowledge, and the Orioles have invested in them, signing them to contracts with small bonuses and giving them this improbable slice of Baltimore on which to hone their games.

The catcher is a 17-year-old who never spent a day in school but helped his father kill animals for market. The Orioles' Dominican scout, Carlos Bernhardt, found him on a nearby field of tall weeds and trash, using a glove made of cardboard and moving gracefully behind a tin can serving as home plate.

The second baseman was discovered in town, on a dirt field. The tall first baseman, who just turned 17 and can hit a ball 400 feet, was cutting sugar cane for a living. His cheeks and belly are still puffy with baby fat, but his enormous, calloused hands belong on a man twice his age.

They all stirred the imagination of Bernhardt, a thick-armed former minor league pitcher whose task is to dive into the wretched Dominican mass of cane fields and muddy streets, separate the prospects from the thousands of players and give them their first push as professionals.

"You've got to be a scout, a father and a teacher," Bernhardt said. "You've got to find the kids, then teach them not only to be baseball players, but human beings."

Bernhardt, 42, is the entirety of the Orioles' increasingly active Dominican operation. For decades the Orioles culled none of the Dominican talent flooding the majors, led by such stars as Juan Marichal and George Bell. But Bernhardt has funneled some 40 prospects into the organization since 1987, including "eight to 12" that Orioles assistant general manager Doug Melvin calls "legitimate."

Four are on the 40-man roster for 1992 spring training. Luis Mercedes, a fast outfielder, could become the first to make the club this year There also is Manny Alexander, an elegant shortstop who played at Class A Frederick and Class AA Hagerstown last year; Cesar Devares, a bullish catcher whom Bernhardt uncovered stirring buckets of cement on a dusty street; and Francisco de la Rosa, a burly pitcher.

Now comes the next generation, taking their baby steps inside the orange and black walls of the little park Bernhardt built two years ago, where every day now dozens of dusty children and unemployed laborers watch silently and intently from the bleachers, goats wander along the foul lines, an old man sells giant oranges for 50 cents, another sells wrinkled lottery tickets, cows graze behind the home plate screen, kids stand on the dugouts flying kites made of sticks and trash bags, and teenagers play the ubiquitous game of catch, hoping they'll be the ones in uniform in five years.

The best young pitcher in camp, William Percival, was one of those on the outside until Bernhardt found him. "I was on my way to see another kid," Bernhardt said, "and saw a game on a field with no mound, out in the country. I got out to watch, and here's a 16-year-old kid, weighing maybe 115 pounds, obviously a very poor kid, wearing tattered clothes and throwing a beat-up ball."

Bernhardt never made it to that other game. "He was throwing 85 miles an hour, with a good breaking ball, a forkball, all the pitches. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He had been cutting cane for a living, sometimes digging holes. You should see where he comes from. You won't believe it."

A hope for escape

"Turn left at the horse," Bernhardt said.

Left at the horse and there it is: a shack, a collection of pieces of corrugated tin, 10 feet by 20, separated into two rooms by a blanket draped over a string. In the back are three beds in which eight people sleep. A small pig and three sad cats roam in and out. The father is gone. William, the baby, grew up sleeping on the dirt floor of the front room.

"He would throw down a stack of clothes to make it as soft as he could," Bernhardt said, standing on the spot and looking down. "This was his bed, his home."

There is neither electricity nor running water. An outhouse is beyond the back door, and there is a tall kitchen hutch made of sticks. On many days there is no food. When there is enough money for a bag of rice or beans, William's mother starts a fire with sticks between stones on the ground.

On the hot, still day Bernhardt drove up with a reporter and photographer, one of William's sisters was washing her hair in a rusted bucket beneath the trees. The mother retreated into the back room. "She's embarrassed," Bernhardt said. "She's so poor, and doesn't want you to take pictures of her with what she's wearing."

Soon she emerged wearing a colorful print dress, a frail woman of 55 who could pass for 75, her skin wrinkled on wrinkles, her bare feet calloused, all but a few teeth gone. She laid a taut hand on her rocking chair, offering her seat. Bernhardt laughed and swept her up in an embrace.

"Vieja," he said. "What is there for you to eat today?"

"Nada," she replied without sadness. "Maybe one of my sons will come home from the cement factory with something. Maybe not."

Her older sons work at the factory and in the fields, and tend the family's small fruit crop behind the house. Their long days don't make a difference. William is their hope for escape.

"Ninety percent of the Dominican players who make the major leagues, they come from circumstances like this," Bernhardt said. "A lot of my kids, when I get them, I have to teach them how to use a knife and fork. Some I must teach how to write their names. They come from nothing. You see it. Nothing."

Baseball becomes the one candle in their dark lives because it is in the streets and rustles their basic survival instincts. William was playing catch at 5, pitching at 12. There was always a game. He is already so tough on hitters that he has a nickname: Everyone calls him "Judeo," after a large, intimidating, black Dominican bird.

How did he learn to pitch so well so young?

"Just playing," he says simply.

"You have superstars making millions now who sold newspapers in the street until they were 17, or maybe washed cars for a few pesos," Bernhardt said. "They come from huge families with nothing, and they recognized baseball was their chance to make life better for everyone."

The Orioles' Luis Mercedes tells such a story. His father walked the streets selling bananas. His mother made clothes in a factory. They had eight children before divorcing. Mercedes grew up playing basketball but took up baseball when he saw youths his age helping their families.

"With even a $2,000 bonus you can get a better house," Mercedes said. "It doesn't sound good to say you play for money, and I love the game, but we come from such poor backgrounds that of course the money is important. We were very, very poor. But then I start with Carlos, and now I have my own house, and I'm going to buy one for my mother."

Baseball, day and night

William Percival has the same idea. He didn't even have a table to write on when he signed with the Orioles in his house. "If I don't do well, my mother and brothers won't do well either," he says. "If I do, maybe we can get a better house, start eating better."

All of the players' stories are similar, equal parts desperation and hope, emotions that beat the heart of the game here. Getting discovered by a Carlos Bernhardt can forever change a life.

Most of the players he signs come with him for the winter, living in a house he rents near the park. Fifteen are there now, each with a bed, eating three daily meals of rice, beans, fruit and, sometimes, meat. They spend their days playing baseball and their nights watching Dominican winter ball on television.

The possibility of such a life brings dozens of prospects to the park every week. They materialize across the street in plumes of dust as a city bus pulls away, holding their shoes and gloves and wearing maybe a beaten-up Blue Jays cap, a Rochester Red Wings shirt and gray pants with holes at the knees. For most, it's a low-percentage shot.

Even more appear at the nearby camps of the Dodgers, Blue Jays and half-dozen teams at which the players live and eat year-round in modern dorms and watch cable television. A Japanese team, the Hiroshima Carp, has built a million-dollar complex surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire, so plush that players line up daily outside the gates.

"Every day there are 20 lined up outside, hoping to get in and prove they belong," Bernhardt said. "If they get inside they get to live like kings."

Bernhardt pays a neighbor to check his rented house at night, but it isn't really necessary.

"We think all the time about getting to the States to play," said Jose Serra, a second baseman who went to the Florida Instructional League last fall.

"Why should I have trouble with them when they are getting to eat three meals a day for the first time in their lives?" Bernhardt said.

His program runs from November to February, when the players scatter. The less-polished remain in the Dominican Republic for a developmental league. The best come to Florida for the Orioles' minor-league spring training camp, and some move on to the rookie leagues or an extended spring program.

This year Bernhardt will send a dozen to Florida, all hoping to begin the long push that has carried Luis Mercedes so near the top.

"When Luis and Manny [Alexander] and the others went to the States, they sent me pictures of them swimming in the pool and throwing their money in the air," Bernhardt said. They all send money to their families. Alexander, 20, already has bought a new house for his mother, a small one in San Pedro.

"Manny used to live in a place like William Percival," Bernhardt said. "Maybe one day William can do the same for his family. I am going to recommend he go to the States for spring training. He has already gained 8 pounds since he came to the house, and he is getting out older kids who have played in the States.

"It won't be easy in the States for a kid that young, but he's quiet and listens, a good kid. He's just such a good pitcher, and only 135 pounds. I can only imagine how good he could be with three years of the right food and training."

Being 'everyone's friend'

First Bernhardt drove as far as the paved roads went, then as far as the dirt roads went. When the dirt roads stopped, he rented an old bicycle and rode it five miles along a path to the farming village, dodging goats and cows. At one point he crossed a river on a boat, holding his bicycle. When he finally got there, he found a pitcher throwing 85 miles an hour.

Such is the life of a scout in the Dominican Republic. "You have to be like a politician: smile, say hello to everyone, shake hands, be everyone's friend," Bernhardt said.

The trick is getting one that none of the other scouts knows about. This country has been swarming with scouts for 30 years, since U.S. teams were allowed in after the assassination of dictator Gen. Rafael Trujillo in 1961.

The Dodgers and Blue Jays established superiority years ago, but now a dozen teams have winter programs, and every team has at least one scout.

One reason is economic: Teams sign Dominicans for as little as $500 and rarely more than $2,000. As many as 20 players can be signed for the price of one U.S. prospect.

But the main reason teams are here is that players are here.

The Orioles were one of the last teams to make a big jump into the Dominican market. The team had two scouts here in the early '80s but no training program, and none of the players it signed flourished. There were few Latin players in the organization when Edward Bennett Williams fired general manager Hank Peters in 1987.

"And you're left behind if you don't go to the Latin markets," said Milton Jamail, a University of Texas professor of Latin American studies, who has written a book about Caribbean baseball.

'He really delivers for us'

The Orioles hired Bernhardt as their third Dominican scout in 1985, then fired the other two in 1987. In 1989 they sent him the money to buy and fix up the field. Now they have signed him to a new two-year contract, including a raise. "We think he is outstanding," Doug Melvin said. "We ask a lot of him, but he really delivers for us."

You could say he deserves the raise. The country is so saturated with scouts that it's difficult uncovering a player as talented and obscure as William Percival. Bernhardt haunts the streets, alleys and fields, investigates tips and holds tryout camps that draw 300 prospects when advertised on local radio.

He relies on his "bird dogs," his personal network of coaches in a country in which schools, neighborhoods, towns, businesses and sugar mills organize teams.

"Every time I go to the States I bring back extra balls and gloves and hats," Bernhardt said, "and I give them to these guys. When they see some kid playing well, they give me a call.

"It's a lot of travel. My wife sometimes says I'm not getting to see my kids grow up, but you have to work hard in this country not to be poor."

Bernhardt knows all about that. He grew up in a family of 10 boys, their father cutting cane. Bernhardt made it through high school and a year of college, thinking he wanted to be a doctor like his grandfather. But there wasn't enough money.

"My parents separated when I was 16," he said, "and things became very hard. You can't go buying college books when you need the money to eat. So I went and played baseball."

He signed with the Seattle Pilots and reached Triple A before blowing out his arm, spent six years working in Union City, N.J., came home, got married and had three children. When the Orioles called in 1985, he was working in a cement factory and picking up extra money as a translator at the La Romana resort.

"I had to take a cut in pay to get back into baseball," Bernhardt said, "but my wife took one look at my face and said, 'You must do this.' "

A hard part for him is that he understands the importance of education -- "I thank God every day for what I got" -- yet every player he signs quits school.

He is often asked whether they would be better off in school.

"A tough question," he said. "My kids go to school. But many poor people here don't. They end up as laborers anyway unless they go to college, and their families are too big and poor to send them to college. So baseball is their chance."

He is no altruist, mind you -- he is driven by his own ambitions, wants to be the Orioles' director of Latin scouting -- but his point is this: How can your heart not flutter when you see a youth get up off a dirt floor to pitch?

"When we are talking about them," Bernhardt said, "in many ways we are also talking about me."

The usual morning scene at the ballpark: goats, kids, kites, old men. And on this day, a game. Bernhardt's Orioles build a lead on the Astros' Dominican team, and William Percival protects it.

A sudden, brief shower sends the fans under the bleachers. When a pitcher in a Rochester Red Wings shirt begins a tryout down in the bullpen, one of Bernhardt's assistants goes down to measure his velocity on a radar gun. A crowd gathers to watch the number appear on the gun. "Ochento y cinco," they murmur to each other, impressed. Eighty-five. The gun reads 79.

There are a half-dozen such teams in San Pedro, and they play a schedule and keep standings. The Orioles win more than they lose (yes, it happens somewhere). On other days, Bernhardt and his two assistants teach fundamentals.

"We win games, send kids to the States," Bernhardt said. "We're doing it the hard way. Other teams have been here longer. But I'm not complaining. You build a house from the ground up, right?"

He scrapes and scratches. He cuts a deal with the bus company. Gets a lady across the street to wash the uniforms. Brings cold water from home in a jug. Cuts a deal with the local winter ball team to get his players in for free.

He begs old gloves off Orioles major-leaguers when he comes to Florida for spring training. (Frank Robinson sent him a box of gloves to help him get started.) Before he built the park, he used other teams' parks after their practices.

When the Orioles beat the Astros for their fourth win in a row, William Percival changes into tennis shoes and announces he is going home for the afternoon. "I am going to tell my mother I win again," he says.

Bernhardt says he will make good on a promise made in November: "I told them if they ever win four in a row I will buy a goat and get it killed and they will eat meat for dinner on Sunday.

"The goats walking around here are for sale. They better watch out."

The winter game

* Tomorrow morning in The Sun: So much about baseball in the Dominican Republic is familiar. The game itself -- roughly Class AAA level -- isn't that different.

But in other ways the game bears no resemblance to the American version. The stadiums are old and battered, the fields polluted by rocks, trash and bad bounces. And players carry guns in the clubhouses.

* Tuesday: To Eduardo and Manuel Antun, owners of the Dominican League team Estrellas Orientales, no amount of gold would be better than a winter ball championship.

* Wednesday: Twelve players from San Pedro de Macoris, a city of 120,000 (roughly the size of Carroll County) played at least one game in the major leagues in 1990. If the Baltimore area produced talent at the same rate, it would have 200 natives wearing major league uniforms.

* Thursday: Rare is the resident of San Isidro, Puerto Rico, who doesn't know all about Leo Gomez, the local boy who made it to the big leagues as the Baltimore Orioles third baseman last season.