Five times, the left-handed-hitting Bass went to the plate. Four times he was walked. On his third time at the plate, he managed a single by slapping at a ball that was outside the strike zone.

The crowd at Tokyo's Korakuen Stadium, for whom the Giants normally are a passion, booed.

As protectionist disputes go, this one may have been small, but it caused a mild shimmy in Japan today, producing charges of unfairness.

''It was a disgraceful scene,'' the writer of a column called Outside Seat said this evening in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

''Are we asking too much to hope that Oh would have run to the pitchers and encouraged them to fight fairly?'' the columnist wrote.

Oh, who hit his 55 home runs in 1964, denied that he had instructed his pitchers to walk the American intentionally. But then, some Tokyo residents pointed out today, explicit instructions would have been superfluous. The Giant players would have figured out what to do on their own.