{"id":370631,"date":"2025-12-25T08:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T08:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/370631\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T08:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T08:57:07","slug":"girls-inspired-by-shohei-ohtani-leading-japans-next-wave-of-two-way-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/370631\/","title":{"rendered":"Girls inspired by Shohei Ohtani leading Japan\u2019s next wave of two-way players"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Japan, the path for boys toward baseball stardom is clear. They grow up dreaming of Koshien and being selected in the NPB draft, and for the most gifted, a leap to MLB. It\u2019s a career trajectory that can lead to fame and fortune.<\/p>\n<p>For girls, however, the story is very different. The sport offers limited opportunities for women and few make a living playing professional ball.<\/p>\n<p>Yet that hasn\u2019t stopped a new wave of girls and young women from trying to play the game the way Shohei Ohtani does \u2014 on the mound and at the plate. Their push into two-way roles shows how the sport is evolving, though structural barriers persist and the kind of opportunities enjoyed by their male counterparts remain far off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Japan, the path for boys toward baseball stardom is clear. They grow up dreaming of Koshien and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[200596,64,63,200595,200598,591,200592,5149,85,200593,200597,200594],"class_list":["post-370631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-aika-morimoto","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ayuri-shimano","tag-koshien","tag-mlb","tag-npb","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-sports","tag-womens-baseball-federation-of-japan","tag-womens-pro-baseball-league","tag-yomiuri-giants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}