The league has launched its own gambling probe into the superstar and his former interpreter.
You know a topic is touchy when people won’t give it a name.
In a story Friday about Major League Baseball’s investigation into a gambling scandal involving the most famous ballplayer on earth, ESPN didn’t mention what’s being investigated until the fifth paragraph. The opening sentence referred to it as “the matter surrounding Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara.’’
The amount of tiptoeing is proportional to the number of landmines.
MLB has a problem related to its golden goose. How deep the problem is will depend on the federal investigation into Mizuhara’s reported $4.5 million in gambling debts (sports gambling is illegal in California) and baseball’s investigation into how much Ohtani knew about his interpreter’s betting. That, of course, brings into question how much MLB really wants to know, considering Ohtani is the best thing that’s happened to the game in decades.
The first hurdle in believing that Ohtani isn’t involved in illegal gambling is the size of Mizuhara’s debt to bookmakers. How was Mizuhara, who said he has made between $300,000 and $500,000 a year as Ohtani’s interpreter, allowed to get so far in arrears? It’s possible he led bookies to believe that he was backed by Ohtani. It’s also possible he was placing bets for Ohtani, although both men have denied that.
What is known is that $4.5 million was transferred from Ohtani’s bank account to an illegal bookmaking operation.
