I was looking through the Tomo Ohka Signs With White Sox post on MLBTR yesterday, and as I often do with Ohka, I was half-wondering why he’s never managed to become the pitcher he seemed capable of becoming five or six years ago.

Does anyone remember the fight between Ohka and Kim Sun-woo? It happened in 2000 (Tim Dirkes makes reference to it in an article as well) when both players were in the Red Sox organization. I remember it, but it was prior to me moving to Korea, so the weight of a fight between a Korean player and a Japanese player wasn’t as apparent to me as it is now.

As I recall it was a pretty bad fight, bad enough to be mentioned on Sportscenter and on radio reports. Stranglely, I hunted around for info and came up with almost nothing, though I did find a great quote said by the late great Rod Beck. I guess he was asked by a reporter if he thought the history between Japan and Korea played a role in the fight between Kim and Ohka. Beck said:

“I’m German, my wife’s Jewish. Get over it.”

While poking around I did manage to find this article from the Feb. 22, 2000 New York Times, called Far East Prospects Emerging. While names like Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu were familiar to everyone, Asian players were still pretty rare. However, as you can see from this article, people were starting to catch on. (Funny enough, the article reads kind of like one of those old Newsreals from the 30s or 40s.

And prospects from Asia include the Dodgers’ brightest star, outfielder Chin Feng Chen, at Class AAA Albuquerque; the Yankees’ Chien-Ming Wang in the Class A New York-Penn League; and Koichi Taniguchi and Kaz Miyakawa, two Japanese-born members of the Newark Bears in the independent Atlantic League.

The Red Sox have led the push into the Far East and this season promoted pitcher Tomo Ohka from Class AAA Pawtucket, where they also have pitcher Sun Woo Kim. The Seattle Mariners recently gave a bonus of more than $1.3 million to the 18-year-old Korean prospect Shin Soo Choo, who was the most valuable player of the world junior championships.

Interesting to think about what happened to all of these guys. Wang is clearly the best of the bunch. Chin, like Kim Sun-woo, is back in his home country, Taniguchi and Miyakawa became nothing, and the door is quickly closing on Choo.

About Wang:

At 20 years old, the transition to a new country and a new culture has gone smoothly for Wang, who spent the previous two years living away from his family at a physical education school in Taiwan.

Mock, who shares an apartment with Wang, said the pitcher prefers Chinese food to hamburgers and hot dogs. They spend most of their free time together or with teammates. ”He’s a cool guy,” Parrish said. ”We try to joke around with him as best we can.”

The article on Ohka’s signing says he’ll add depth to the White Sox Triple A club. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s his last season in the U.S.