The most remarkable aspect of Shohei Ohtani's season isn't just that he's doing it -- the top slugger in the game, one of the best pitchers -- but that he was allowed to attempt it in the first place. Baseball historian Bill James made a point about this recently, writing, "Over time, any closed structure tends to exclude ideas, exclude innovations, exclude minority approaches to a problem. ... It is usually players from outside the system who break through the shibboleths, and demonstrate that these things CAN be done."
True. Except ... two-way players aren't a thing in Japan, either.