I am with Greg on this one: let's enjoy Ohtani's great play and leave the comparisons to the HOF debate after he retires. I do have a few takes on what I'd read here.
Ruth might've kept pitching if there had been a DH at the time. From what I've read, he really enjoyed it. Playing a field position and pitching was too much. I doubt Ohtani would last more than a few seasons if he had to play two ways without the DH, unless his intensity was ratcheted way down, but that is definitely not his style (and we love his play for it). Even as a DH and pitcher, he is wearing down this year.
The old-time ballplayers had to cope with horrible conditions that today's players cannot dream of. No HVAC on the trains or the hotels, no planes, no handlers or team staff to handle luggage (Tom Seaver once reminded a young pitcher not to lug his suitcase with his pitching arm), no sports medicine to speak of, crazy training methods (no water in heat, no weights), etc. And don't forget double-headers, terrible pay, rudimentary facilities, and rotten coaching.
As far as the impact of apartheid in MLB, that is a difficult question, but it did not represent a 50% dilution of talent as has been suggested. America's Black population in 1920 was about 10% of the total population, so I doubt that populace would make MLBers at 5x the rate of other populations. The other apples to oranges issue with race is that MLB was 16 teams located in the Northeast and Midwest versus thirty teams now. The number of player slots has gone up by 87.5%. Nor do I think that Ruth or Cobb would have been relegated to the minors with an integrated game. What we would have seen most likely is what we see now: a multi-racial, multi-ethnic panorama of great players.
Pitching is the other great debate. Yes, there are a lot more pitching changes and relievers, and we see lots of heat, but I do not believe that we have evolved as a species in the last 100 years to account for the arm speed. We don't have good measures of earlier pitchers due to the tech. I watched that Nolan Ryan documentary and his 100.9 was more like 108 based on models correcting the tech. Again, I don't think the standouts of the past would have had any problems adapting to the conditions of the present, but I am not sure the 100 pitches max starters and relievers today would adapt to a more robust regime.
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