Los Angeles Dodgers Peter O'Malley began reaching out in 1980 by starting clinics in China and South Korea, building baseball fields in two Chinese cities, and in 1998 becoming the first major league team to open an office in Asia. The Dodgers were the second team to start a Japanese player in recent history, pitcher Hideo Nomo, the first team to start a South Korean player, pitcher Chan Ho Park, and the first Taiwanese player, Chin-Feng Chen. In addition, they were the first team to send out three Asian pitchers, from different Asian countries, in one game: Park, Hong-Chih Kuo of Taiwan, and
Hideo Shiraki Hideo Shiraki Hideo Shiraki (; born 1 January 1933 in Tokyo; died 31 August 1972) was a Japanese jazz drummer and bandleader, best known for his work in the 1950s and 1960s. Famed earlier on for hard bop, he later explored world music and became a pioneer of fusing traditional music forms with jazz structuring. Shiraki emerged in the new Japanese jazz scene of the 1950s that grew out of the influence of the US occupying forces. He studied percussion at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and, during this period, played with Masashi Nagao's Blue Coats. In the late