HOW DIDN’T OHTANI KNOW HE WAS SCAMMED BY AN INTERPRETER FOR MILLIONS?
Baseball’s greatest story has turned ugly, with his personal translator accused of stealing “massive” amounts from Ohtani to pay an illegal bookmaker — and he will face major questions about his life
So here we have the messiah of sports, coddled here constantly, welcomed to America by a swindler of his millions. The only matter worse than Shohei Ohtani being defrauded by his interpreter is if Ohtani engaged in the matter himself, using millions to bet on sports. That is not the case, say his lawyers, who ratted out the translator known to the baseball masses — Ippei Mizuhara — in a “massive theft” so he could pay an Orange County bookmaker named Mathew Bowyer.
Is Ohtani simply naive? Or must we wonder about Major League Baseball’s rules, which suggests action “as the commissioner deems appropriate in light of the facts and circumstances of the conduct” — such as, how couldn’t Ohtani have known something terribly wrong was happening in his life?
This is not what the sport needs, locked in its own labor mess as franchises sell for lower money. The major leagues and the Los Angeles Dodgers are trying to use Ohtani to help the game, not send it crashing into illegal bookmaking. At some point during his time with the Angels the last six years, didn’t it occur to Ohtani that his funds were being robbed by Mizuhara?
Is this why he deferred $680 million of his $700 million contract?
According to a West Hollywood law firm, Berk Brettler, Ohtani “has been the victim of a massive theft and we are turning the matter over to authorities,” the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. We’ve seen Mizuhara often, to the point ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith mocked him. But here is where we welcome Ohtani to America, land of the crooked, as Mizuhara grew up in suburban Diamond Bar and attended UC-Riverside. They hooked up together in Japan, and when Ohtani signed with the Angels in 2018, they became fast friends. One always was in the company of the other, on the field and beyond, even when they made grocery store appearances. When Ohtani was married, Mizuhara’s wife befriended his bride.
Earlier Wednesday, Mizuhara worked for Ohtani after his regular-season debut in South Korea with the Dodgers, who took a 5-2 victory over the San Diego Padres. A few hours later, the Dodgers fired him, then went to bed in Asia. Thursday will be an extraordinarily difficult day for a franchise that gave Ohtani the largest contract in team sports history. Bowyer’s lawyer, Diane Bass, told The Times, “Mathew Bowyer never met, spoke with, or texted, or had contact in any way with Shohei Ohtani.”
So suddenly, Ohtani will have to re-adapt his life without his phony buddy. He will face wicked noise about why he knew nothing about gambling and why he didn’t pay closer attention to his bank accounts. It seems hard to believe he could be so focused on baseball that his portfolio was wide open — but then, he arrived in southern California at 23. He was too busy catapulting Babe Ruth and ruling the sport as the all-time twin killer. Next time, he will watch his megamillions, all the way to $700 million.
Now, he is expected to rally the Dodgers to a championship — with the world watching even closer — without Ippei. The U.S. attorney’s office is involved. MLB security will be involved. We’ve known Ohtani as using his two prongs for years.
He has a third, digging into the rotten soil of sports.
###
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.