WITH NO SHAME, BASEBALL TRIES TO CLEAR OHTANI — DON’T LET IT HAPPEN

The former interpreter will plead guilty to theft, but we have no answers about how Mizuhara changed Ohtani’s bank account settings, which keeps the gambling case wide open even as the sport ends it

     The men who run baseball are swindlers. Didn’t we know a fleece job was coming? Once Shohei Ohtani blamed his former interpreter for stealing more than $4.5 million from his bank account — as the two-way player said he wasn’t a three-way gambler — what would stop the owners and a labor-lawyer commissioner from creating a hokey plan in a damn hurry?

     Meet the reverse version of Pete Rose and the Black Sox. Everything baseball did to ban one bettor for life and accuse eight Chicago players of fixing a World Series — the antithesis happened Wednesday night. It’s urgently important to the sport’s always-wavering integrity, not to mention a faint future, for those in charge to determine if Ohtani gambled on sports events with Ippei Mizuhara. Or, if Ohtani knew the translator was using his money to pay off wagering debts to a southern California bookmaker, a lawbreaking offense in a state where sports gambling is illegal.

     Nah. Baseball doesn’t want to know. Baseball wants us to believe it knows when it doesn’t know anything, with the story breaking only three weeks ago in South Korea. When a franchise in Los Angeles pays $700 million to a player, the next step should be investigating Ohtani the way Rose and the Black Sox eventually went down. Instead, contacts met with the New York Times — involving three unnamed sources, of course — to explain what happened. Gee, how did Mizuhara gain access to Ohtani’s protected statements and send wire transfers including his name? And why did no one of an official nature ever alert the player during at least nine $500,000 payments?

     Well, according to the sources, MIzuhara went down and dirty on his loyal partner of seven years and changed the settings on Ohtani’s account. That way, reports the Times, Ohtani wouldn’t receive official word about any oddballish transactions. On a planet where we don’t trust the pet dog, I had no idea we could loot millions from accounts with a password and an account number. That’s all you need to rob Ohtani? How do we know, at some point, whether he presented Mizuhara with the information?

     Please. The same sources say they have evidence that Mizuhara stole the money without Ohtani ever knowing. How? Explain. Makes me want to withdraw my funds and hide it all under the bed. Already, word is arriving that Mizuhara will plead guilty as a thief to federal crimes, after full-blown investigations by the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. attorney’s office in California. This way, commissioner Rob Manfred can dump the Ohtani case in his waste can. And the Dodgers can carry on with a “clean human being” who wants to make more billions with his apparel and Bobbleheads, such as a highlighted night in May.

     Remember what Ohtani said while claiming Mizuhara stole funds from him? Remember his words in the press conference?

     “I never bet on baseball or any other sports or never have asked somebody to do that on my behalf,” he said through his new interpreter, Will Ireton. “And I have never went through a bookmaker to bet on sports. Up until a couple days ago, I didn’t know this was happening.”

     “I'm very sad and shocked that someone who I've trusted has done this,” he said. “Ippei has been stealing money from my account and has told lies.”

     To me, after a flurry of changing stories that once claimed Ohtani was willingly paying off debts, I refuse to pause in mid-April and think baseball is safe from ruin. The lords wanted this mess to expire quickly so Ohtani can relax and rule the game. Should I also make a point that Jill Biden was in an Oscar de la Renta gown at the White House, on the very same night? Where President Biden was offering cherry blossoms and Paul Simon as a musical guest to a specific dinner guest?

     Fumio Kishida, Prime Minister of Japan.

     Biden wants China. The Japanese will help. So, give Ohtani a break. “To our alliance, to our friendship,” Biden said.

     “The Pacific Ocean does not separate Japan and the United States. Rather, it unites us,”  Kishida said.

     I also could say Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff under Barack Obama, is the U.S. ambassador to Japan. And that Emanuel served as mayor of Chicago, home of the White Sox, Obama’s favorite team. And that Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the team, tends to make timely calls to reporters. This is the same Reinsdorf who destroyed a paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, for using an unnamed source this week to claim he doesn’t like the current manager, Pedro Grifol.

     So Ohtani Time has returned, but only because baseball wrongly says so. The $700 million player has been shielded by American power. People who are smart about sports know they can’t be duped. Rather, they looked at the TV and saw how Ohtani could be burned Wednesday. In Minneapolis, he tried to score and tie the game in the seventh inning. The Dodgers’ third-base coach, Dino Ebel, saw the ball hop off the wall on a Freddie Freeman double.

     “That’s as clean as it gets,” Ebel said.

     “With two outs, you’ve got to make them make the play,” manager Dave Roberts said of the Twins.

     But after Ohtani was called safe at home, umpires reviewed the play. He was out, thanks to Carlos Correa, who preserved a 3-2 finale. “They made a perfect throw,” Ebel said.

     What did Shohei have to say? He didn’t talk. Nor will he ever talk again about Ippei Mizuhara, who has been cleared by three unnamed sources who never will be named. I am not alone on this viewpoint. “The most unbelievable thing to me? The guy has never had to take questions on this. Not once,” said Michael Kay, voice of the New York Yankees. “What other athlete, in any professional sport, would be allowed to remain mum — not say a word other than a prepared statement and never take a question? This guy doesn’t have to answer a question. And he’s in the middle of what could be one of the biggest scandals in history.”

     Some of us care about the truth. Baseball never does, never will.

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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.