It’s often said one can learn a lot about societies by observing how it treats its most vulnerable members. Are they exploited, shunned, persecuted, or neglected? Or are they welcomed and allowed opportunities to contribute to society?

Similarly, we can learn a little about societies and organizations based on whether they can accept unconventional ideas and ways of thinking. This is a serious problem in Japan, as I discovered the hard way, and for baseball in general.

Take baseball for example.

Baseball with its strict rules and limits on behavior within games tends to attract those with an authoritarian leaning. It is no surprise that baseball people often assert that there is a “right way” to play the game, and that abusing players who fail to observe those orthodoxies is not only justifiable but encouraged as “educational.”

Because baseball cultures develop orthodoxies and doctrines, even the most objectively counterproductive tactics that stem from doctrine are sacred cows that can never be criticized, while objectively efficient tactics originating from outside the establishment are controversial when they work and severely criticized when they fail.

Until a decade ago or so, virtually every criticism of Japanese baseball by those who grew up in American baseball could be paraphrased as “this is isn’t the way we do it back home, therefore it’s wrong.”