Asian pitchers face-off
Baltimore pitcher Koji Uehara made his major league debut against Chien-Ming Wang and the Yankees in each team’s second game of the season. Though it was certainly not the first time two Asian pitchers (Uehara is Japanese and Wang hails from Taiwan) have opposed each other in the United States (in fact Wang surely faced Daisuke Matsuzaka at some point over the last two years), has it ever happened on Opening Day? As far as I can tell, the answer is no. This should not come as a huge surprise, seeing as there never seem to be very many Asian starting pitchers in MLB at any one time. Hiroki Kuroda of the Dodgers was L.A.’s opening day starter on Monday but the Padres threw ace Jake Peavy. Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu, despite changing teams a number of times, somehow managed to pitch in different leagues for the duration of Irabu’s big-league tenure. Kazuhiro Sazaki was a closer. Byung-Hyun Kim (South Korea) was awful as a starter and would not have been given the honor of starting on Opening Day. If Japan’s Yu Darvish is allowed to sign with the Yankees in the near future, it is entirely possible that he would take on Matsuzaka and the Red Sox on Opening Day in one of the next few years.
