As the 2006 Major League Baseball season gets underway, AsianWeek Magazine has a feature that briefly profiles the current list of major league players from Asia playing in the U.S. this season:

Japanese: Kenji Johjima (CA, Seattle Mariners), Ichiro Suzuki (OH, Seattle Mariners), Hideki Matsui (OF, New York Yankees), Tadahito Iguchi (2B, Chicago White Sox), Kazuo Matsui (2B, New York Mets), Akinori Otsuka (RP, Texas Rangers), So Taguchi (OF, St. Louis Cardinals), Toma Ohka (SP, Milwaukee Brewers)

Taiwanese: Chien-Ming Wang (SP, New York Yankees)

Korean: Chan Ho Park (SP, San Diego Padres), Hee-Sop Choi (1B, Boston Red Sox), Jae Seo (SP, Los Angeles Dodgers), Byung-Hyun Kim (RP, Colorado Rockies), Sunny Kim (RP, Colorado Rockies)

Chinese: Bruce Chen (SP, Baltimore Orioles)

On the one hand, it’s nice to see that Asian players in Major League Baseball are not an oddity or rare sight any longer, and that they have been integrated into the sport for the most part. On the other hand, I lament that there are still virtually no Asian American ballplayers in the major leagues right now, except for Vietnamese Amerasian Danny Graves (RP, Cleveland Indians).

Hopefully that situation will change soon but in the meantime, it will be nice to root for these Asian players (except when they’re on my opponent’s team in my fantasy baseball league, of course).