EVEN IF OHTANI IS GUILTY, BASEBALL HAS ZERO INTEREST IN PUNISHING HIM
The commissioner’s Department of Investigations will look into allegations involving Ohtani and his ex-interpreter, but if it’s clear he paid an illegal bookmaker, MLB will run far away in deep horror
Baseball wanted Pete Rose, viewing him as a raging slayer. The steroids goons? Baseball wanted them after Congress summoned commissioner Bud Selig. The Houston Astros — baseball eyed them even though other franchises were accused of sign-stealing schemes. Every time the sport has a scandal, it’s easy to determine how aggressive the owners will be about contentious subjects.
Shohei Ohtani, baseball doesn’t want him at all. He is the only celestial being left in the game, worthy of $700 million, and the entire industry might as well fade away if he is reprimanded with a lengthy suspension. Mark it down: He is protected in wrongdoing involving his interpreter, a gambling addict, and be certain that Rob Manfred and the Los Angeles Dodgers will ignore what already is a flaming pot. No matter what is leaked and what the IRS and the feds report, Ohtani will continue playing his 10 seasons, secured like the imported property he is.
Which means: Baseball’s integrity as it at stake as much as Ohtani’s. If Manfred lets this story grow pale — when he might have reason to punish Ohtani for toying with a betting lightning rod — the sport won’t be worth watching anymore. The commissioner would rather scam than slam as he formally opened an investigation late Friday.
In reporting by ESPN’s Tisha Thompson, it’s clear that Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo, exposed Ohtani publicly for paying Ippei Mizuhara’s wagering debts of at least $4.5 million to alleged illegal bookmaker Mathew Bowyer. In an interview with Balelo last week, Thompson learned “Ohtani told Balelo he had covered Mizuhara’s debts in $500,000 increments.” According to a crisis-communications spokesman who had been hired for this job duty, he quoted Ohtani as saying, “Yeah, I sent several large payments. That's the maximum amount I could send.”
Again, he quoted Shohei Ohtani. So did Mizuhara, who said: “I explained my situation. And obviously he wasn't happy about it, but he said he would help me. … I just told him I need to send a wire to pay off the debt. He didn't ask if it was illegal, didn't question me about that.”
If that is the blaze we are looking for — did Ohtani use his wire transfers to pay a bookie multiple millions for Mizuhara? — it was answered by his own hired people. So when lawyers at Berk Brettler LLP later issued a sudden statement that Ohtani was “the victim of a massive theft,” it contradicts earlier comments from his spokesman that Ohtani “sent several large payments.” So who’s lying here? The spokesman or the law firm that tried to overturn what the spokesman said? Both work for Ohtani, as Manfred had better acknowledge.
If Ohtani sent payments to an illegal bookie in California, he could be in trouble with the law, let alone Major League Baseball. Is he just a naive twentysomething who couldn’t keep track of his close friend and his so-called international soccer bets? Did he simply not care as Mizuhara gambled away millions? And where did Ohtani stand in the relationship between his interpreter and the bookmaker? Did the bookie give Mizuhara certain debt breaks because he was close to Ohtani? Remember: The crisis spokesman said Ohtani noted he had sent large payments. Ohtani knew something bad was happening, then.
So if he isn’t telling the truth — when he claimed to know nothing about the situation as the Dodgers alerted a clubhouse in South Korea, when the spokesman said Ohtani “didn’t know what the f— was going on” at the time — Ohtani might want to concentrate on a glaring polar-opposite discrepancy. He will be asked about it, among other pertinent topics, if and when he speaks at a news conference. He can’t have two people who receive his paychecks taking two sides of his story.
Or we won’t believe him, either, the two-way marauder who is supposed to save baseball from the creeps.
Here we are in Hollywood, where people have lied forever in industry matters and life affairs. Why would Manfred have any interest in integrity and nailing Ohtani? Slaughtering him with a half-season suspension, or longer, will make the doubting masses avoid baseball permanently as the NFL is a TV powerhouse and the NBA rates second in the studio game. Keep in mind, ESPN might bail on its “Sunday Night Baseball” package next year to funnel funds elsewhere in its struggling transition period to streaming. Fox Sports is coming off the lowest-rated World Series ever, with an average of only 9.11 million viewers. The only hope was Ohtani, who would draw more than four million fans to Dodger Stadium this season as fans gathered to see how many home runs and pitching victories he’ll attain.
Baseball’s security team, which investigated a death threat against Ohtani before the first of two games in Seoul, will investigate the gambling and theft allegations involving Ohtani and Mizuhara. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei from the news media,” Manfred’s office said Friday. “Earlier today, our Department of Investigations began their formal process investigating the matter.” Baseball has used that department to investigate steroids use and Trevor Bauer, another Dodgers pitcher who was suspended 194 games.
But this is gambling, which once was taboo in baseball until Manfred listened to sportsbooks and advertising hookups. It’s the first wagering scandal since Rose was banned in 1989. There is no chance Shohei Ohtani suffers one bit of shame from the game. The home opener is Thursday.
Play ball.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.