Are Asians the New Blacks in Baseball?

Masanori Murakami is no Jackie Robinson, but he is a pioneer. In 1964, -- 17 years after Robinson slit baseball's sanctioned color barrier and two years after the Los Angeles Dodger was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame -- Murakami joined the San Francisco Giants as a relief pitcher and thus became the first Japanese player ever in the major leagues.

But Murakami was no star. He was a six-foot, 180-pound left-hander with a solid curve and good control. He played two seasons for the Giants, striking out 100 batters in 54 games with a 3.43 ERA. But following the 1965 season, the Japanese government pressured him to return his native nation and play for the Nankei Hawks. He pitched for another 14 seasons.

It was nearly 30 years before the next Asian player reached the majors. In 1994, pitcher Chan Ho Park of South Korea signed with the Dodgers. The following season, Hideo Nomo, a star pitcher in Japan, also joined the Dodgers.

The flood was on.

As the 2007 baseball season begins, no change in the game is so stark, no trend so significant than the Asian invasion of the major leagues. Almost every team has at least one Asian player, and the most talented among them are no longer just pitchers. Through the years, players from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have begun to excel at nearly every position.

Seattle Mariners' outfielder Ichiro is a perennial all-star and one of the game's most exciting hitters and base-stealers. And on the opposite coast, the New York Yankees best pitcher may be Chien-Ming Wang of Taiwan, and Japanese outfielder Hideki Matsui may be the most respected and revered Yankee not named Jeter.

The most anticipated new face in the majors is no Mantle-clone from Oklahoma, but a stylish, confident, gyro-ball throwing right-hander named Daisuke Matsuzaka. As even the most neophyte baseball fan knows by now, the Boston Red Sox shelled out $103.1 million to sign Japan's star pitcher, who was impressive during spring training and is scheduled to make his first major-league start on Thursday in Kansas City.

Last summer, Japan, led by Matsuzaka and several countrymen from the majors, won the inaugural World Baseball Classic, beating star-laden teams from United States, Cuba and Latin American nations like Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Last season, 40 percent of the All-Stars were born outside the U.S. [Note: the first Japanese-born player to play for a World Series champion was Okinawa native Dave Roberts, the son of an African-American military father and a Japanese mother. Currently a member of the San Francisco Giants, he made a critical steal in the 9th inning Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees to help the Boston Red Sox overcome an three-game deficit to reach the World Series and win their first championship since 1918.]

Clearly, the Great American Pastime is not very American anymore.

That's a good thing in our world becomes more global. Just about every sport has embraced talented athletes from other nations and our games are better for it.

But we've seen this baseball script before, haven't we? We saw what happened when the major leagues enticed the best Negro League players. Blacks celebrated the demise of the game's color barrier as much as they later cheered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and end of the government-sanctioned segregation. Jackie Robinson was a hero, as were Larry Doby, Frank Robinson and the black men who followed them and changed the face of baseball.

But anyone old enough to recall the Negro Leagues might want to shoot a missile to the other side of the world and alert Japanese baseball officials to what's in store. Almost before Robinson could steal home, the Negro Leagues were gone. Done. Poof.

Now, with Asian players attracted by the opportunity to play with the world's best players and earn millions more than they can back home, Japanese baseball is staring squarely at its own demise. "It's going to become the Negro Leagues,'' former big-league manager Bobby Valentine told ESPN.com over the winter. "If the incentive is there to keep leaving Japan, baseball is going to become a one-hemisphere sport."

Just as MLB couldn't be fully blamed for the death of the Negro Leagues, the sport isn't really at fault here, either. Japanese baseball is a mess, and it's light years ahead of the state of the game in Korea and Taiwan. There's no minor-league system, which leaves many talented high-school players with nothing to do but retire. Player salaries are controlled but just about everything else isn't. Most nights there are too many games on television, and almost every team loses money. So whos to say Japanese baseball wasn't heading the way of the 20-game winner anyway.

That said, MLB does sniff a market opportunity. Coaches and former players are spanning the globe as baseball evangelists, teaching the game wherever they are welcomed -- even in places where the game is barely played.

Like China, which is a 1.3 billion-consumer market opportunity -- and growing. By 2033, China's population is expected to be 1.5 billion. And the robust Chinese economy is predicted to become the world's third-largest this year, passing Germany. Right now, baseball in China is in its infancy. The Chinese Baseball League plays only 30 games, attracts few fans, and only one Chinese player - former Marina Wang Chao -- has ever signed with a major-league team.

One MLB official, VP for operations Ed Burns, painted an appropriate image for ESPN.com. "A good analogy for baseball in China is that it's the equivalent of rugby in the United States," he said. 'It's not a sport that's unheard of, but it's also not a sport you would attend unless you're related to one of the players."

And yet over the winter, MLB officials said they were going to open an office in China. The 2008 Bejing Olympics will feature baseball for the first time; the International Olympic Committee voted to drop baseball and softball starting with the 2012 London Olympics. Former major leaguer Jim Lefebvre will manage the Chinese national team. If baseball is attracts crowds in Bejing, it could be the seed for growth.

MLB is reportedly considering the creation of a global major league comprising Japanese teams. "There would be an Asian division," Valentine told ESPN.com. "They won't play against U.S. teams, just like the NL West doesn't play against the AL East."

Baseball officials in Taiwan and Korea have reached out to MLB for counsel on how to upgrade its baseball operations. Japanese baseball folks would be smart to do the same. Negro League owners never got the chance.