‘Summer of Ohtani’ turns into major mess for game’s biggest star
This week was supposed to mark a thrilling debut for Shohei Ohtani with the LA Dodgers. But a gambling scandal allegedly involving his interpreter has consumed the season’s start.
What a mess for Shohei Ohtani – but it’s unclear what kind, and how much. Was the baseball sensation from Japan the victim of a “massive theft”, as his legal representatives say? Is he an innocent friend who got sucked into the multimillion-dollar sports gambling debt of his longtime interpreter, as his interpreter initially claimed?
Is it possible both versions of the story are simultaneously true? Or is there a more accurate version out there, yet to percolate?
I don’t know. I do know this: Baseball hoped to kick off its 2024 season with a wave of adoration for its best player, now ensconced with one of the planet’s starriest franchises, the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers flew thousands of kilometres across the Pacific for an opening-day rendezvous in Seoul, against their Southern California rivals, the Padres, the sport eager to showcase the international phenomenon of Ohtani, its telegenic, 29-year-old two-way star.
The 2024 Dodgers season had already been pre-christened as The Summer of Ohtani. After a subdued run in Orange County with the underperforming Angels, Ohtani’s greatness – a combination hitter and pitcher unseen since Babe Ruth – would finally be platformed for a massive brand in a major market.
Even though Ohtani is recuperating from elbow surgery, and won’t pitch until next year, his free agency switch to the Dodgers received mostly ecstatic reviews, especially when it was revealed he’d asked to defer hundreds of millions of dollars in payments in order to give his team the financial flexibility to sign talent.
The deferral was offered as evidence of Ohtani’s team-first character. This was a player who approached the game and stardom differently – a quality evidenced again this winter when Ohtani quietly announced he’d gotten married, to a woman later revealed to be former basketball player Mamiko Tanaka.
He does it his way. He’s Ohtani.
The unfolding controversy is stunning and over the top: $US4.5m ($6.9m) in wire transfers from a bank account belonging to Ohtani, paid to a California bookmaker, according to ESPN and the Los Angeles Times. The information surfaced in an ongoing investigation of a bookmaker named Mathew Bowyer, whose lawyer told the Journal’s Lindsey Adler that Bowyer “never had any contact in any way with Mr Ohtani – he never met him, never spoke to him, never texted with him”.
With the assistance of an Ohtani spokesman, the ball player’s longtime interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, gave an interview to ESPN in which he declared the gambling debt to be entirely his own doing, and said Ohtani agreed to pay it off.
“I want everyone to know Shohei had zero involvement in betting,” Mizuhara told ESPN. “I want people to know I did not know this was illegal. I learned my lesson the hard way. I will never do sports betting again.”
The interpreter, who has been a constant at Ohtani’s side for his entire MLB career and going back to Ohtani’s playing days in Japan, was relieved of duties by the Dodgers.
Ohtani’s legal team then came forward to say the athlete had been stolen from. Mizuhara changed his account, telling ESPN Ohtani had been unaware of his debt, or knew his bank account had been accessed to pay it off.
Explanations that only prompt more questions is how a scandal builds. There’s obviously more to come. I’m eager to know about the frequency and nature of the alleged bets – Mizuhara told ESPN he’d never bet on baseball, a rule he said he knew clearly.
I’d like a clearer explanation as to how a person in the professional sports world allegedly didn’t know using a bookmaker would be illegal, especially in a state (California) that has yet to legalise sports gambling. I want to know why a bookmaker allegedly let a client like Mizuhara fall into a multimillion-dollar hole.
In a statement on Wednesday translated from Japanese into English by his new interpreter, Ohtani showed flashes of anger and regret – alleging full responsibility lay with Mizuhara. A few of Ohtani’s comments, translated: “I’m very saddened and shocked someone I’ve trusted has done this. I never bet on baseball or any other sports, (and) never have asked anybody to do it on my behalf. I never went through a bookmaker to bet on sports.
“Ippei told the media (and) my representatives that I ... paid off debt. Upon further questioning, it was revealed it was, in fact, Ippei who was in debt, and told my representatives I was paying off the debt. All of this has been a complete lie.”
There are obvious questions as to how Mizuhara could have allegedly accessed and transferred millions from Ohtani to an alleged bookmaker without attracting attention from Ohtani, one of his representatives or a financial institution.
Another obvious point, but what Ohtani is alleging Mizuhara of doing is a crime -- which means there will be a whole other layer of investigation. All of which means we’re just getting started.
As for baseball, it’s hard not to see the hazard it and other professional sports invite as they embrace the world of legal sports betting. That’s not the sort of betting that’s being alleged here, but the sports world’s eagerness to do business with the gambling industry has created at least the perception that the leagues are OK with the habit.
Almost every big sporting event is now awash in sports betting advertising and official gaming partnerships; logos are common on fields and courts, the commercials non-stop to the point of aggravation. Most sports media partners are fully on board – it’s difficult to find a sports media operation that’s not in business with a gaming company or launching one for itself.
This is legal business, of course, and state governments have been eager to sign on. But these leagues, that used to avoid association with betting outfits, have become party to the selling of gambling as harmless fun – the idea that sprinkling a few innocent dollars on an outcome merely increases the watching pleasure. In this new world even the nomenclature gets softened – “gaming” as opposed to what it really is, gambling.
Reality is harsher, of course, and the house always wins, which is how they build cathedrals in the Nevada desert and why they run those clever advertisements with 1800 numbers for compulsive bettors in need of help.
The Wall Street Journal
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