To the good people of Honolulu and Waipahu — a tip of the the hat, a round of applause from the bleachers, and a sincere mahalo.

You have warmly embraced the 116 young professional baseball players who have come from around the U.S. and Japan to play in the winter league on our delightfully cool October and November nights, here in the Islands.

These young pro players, all twentysomethings, and in some cases even slightly younger, are developing their skills in front of Hawai'i families and fans, who are watching from the stands with popcorn in one hand and a cup of saimin in the other.

It could only happen in Hawai'i; a special place, a special setting.

The 4,306-seat Les Murakami Stadium in Manoa, with world-famous landmark Diamond Head standing majestically behind its right field fence, provides an intimate winter home for baseball in Honolulu.

And out in the country, Waipahu's venerable 2,100-seat Hans L'Orange field, now with its infield manicured to pool-table-flat perfection and, in the evenings, brightly resplendent under major-league-level outdoor lighting, provides a charming setting for a game with deep island roots and a history that dates back to the game's very origin.

With so many major league scouts present for the games, and the frequent presence in the stands of major league pitcher Roger "The Rocket" Clemens, and his wife watching their son, Koby, play third base for the North Shore Honu, many would say the winter league is indeed good.

Nippon Professional Baseball, Japan's professional league, has sent some of its young stars, too. Eighteen-year-old pitching sensation Takanobu Tsuijuichi, a left-hander who reportedly throws in the mid-90s range, recently pitched four strong innings for the Honolulu Sharks. Tsuijuichi was the first high-schooler in Japan taken in the 2005 draft. The Japan press has taken a great interest in his play.

More than 136 former Hawai'i Winter Baseball league players have gone on to play in the Bigs. Many of these future big leaguers take time, while they are in Hawai'i, to visit the gravesite of Alexander Joy Cartwright, Hono-lulu's former volunteer fire chief and banker, who came to the Islands in 1849, three years after laying out the rules for the game in a New York field. Cartwright is credited with giving the game the mystical 90 feet for the base paths (the mystically perfect distance in sports — where the finest catcher can only throw out the finest base runner about half the time), the dropped third strike rule, nine members to a team and many more rules of the great game. It was young plantation sugar workers from Japan who took the game back to their country.

The connection between Japan baseball and U.S. baseball is strong — and nowhere more evident than in the Islands during the winter league.

Indeed, watching a winter league game is almost a Twilight Zone experience, with a person in the stands finding oneself frozen in a memorable moment between Hawai'i's storied baseball past and what likely will be the game's great future — in two countries.

Pro baseball in the Islands, some local fans say, "just doesn't get any better than this." That's why, too, so many local companies are making arrangements for sponsorship packages that include hundreds of tickets for their employees. In Japan, many travel packages to the Islands, now include the winter league games. Politicians, who have helped secure field improvements to accommodate the professional-level game, know what it can do for the economy.

Thanks to poetic island radio broadcasts from the fields, streaming on the World Wide Web — and soon-to-be televised game coverage airing around the globe on contracted cable networks — the professional game of baseball played here in the Islands will allow everyone to catch the dream.

Indeed, goodness and baseball sort of go together.

David H. Rolf is director of communications for the Hawai'i Winter Baseball League. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.