Dodgers are getting ready to make history in China

BEIJING -- From the window of the Dodgers’ chartered flight, Matt Kemp saw the mountains of Alaska draped in snow and clouds. From the same vantage point, he later saw Siberia. And the Friday morning workouts at Wukesong Baseball Stadium behind him, Kemp and the remainder of the Dodgers’ 30-man split squad were on their way to see the Great Wall of China.

“This is fun, man,” Kemp said. “I’m getting to see things I learned about in school.”

Along the way, Kemp will be part of what will at least be a footnote in baseball history, exhibition games Saturday and Sunday that will be the first major-league contests to be played in China.

The world’s most populated country has little interest in baseball, but the games will be covered by more than 400 members of the media. Many of those reporters were on hand for the workouts today, coming to this stadium that sits in the middle of a construction zone that will be transformed into the site of the Olympic baseball competition.

“I don’t think I’ve seen this much media at a baseball game other than maybe New York,” Kemp said.

Kemp bestowed the honor of playing center field in the first game to Andruw Jones, the only other projected starter to land in China on Thursday night.

Manager Joe Torre told Kemp and Jones that they would each play in center one game and be the designated hitter in the other, and that it was up to them to figure out who would play where on what day.

Kemp and Jones played a game of rock-paper-scissors in front of their wooden lockers in the cramped and dark Dodgers’ clubhouse, and Kemp won.

While Kemp was looking forward to seeing what he had never seen, others clung to what was familiar. Left-hander Greg Miller and infielder Kevin Howard, two of the many non-roster players on this trip, laughed how their first meal in China on Thursday night was at McDonald’s.

“I came all this way to go to McDonald’s,” Miller said.

Chan Ho Park will be doing more than trying to make memories today when he takes the mound as the Dodgers’ starter. He’ll be trying to make the team.

Park was a non-roster invitee to camp, but by pitching three scoreless innings Monday against the Baltimore Orioles, put himself in the thick of the battle to be the fifth starter. Torre said that Park would throw 65 to 70 pitches today.

Park will do so in front of his wife and mother, who met him at the team hotel Thursday night. Park’s wife came from Japan and his mother from Korea.

“It’s a battle for me to stay here,” he said. “I have to stay focused.”

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dylan.hernandez@latimes.com