NEWSLETTER
Today, in a statement read before the assembled media in Los Angeles, superstar Shohei Ohtani spoke about the bizarre and scandalous series of events that put him and his long-time friend and interpreter Ippei Mizuhara in the spotlight last week.
Mizuhara was fired last week by the Dodgers after media reports swirled about massive wire transfers to an allegedly illegal sportsbook that was under federal investigation. Those wire transfers had come out of Ohtani’s account, and (eventually) representatives for Ohtani claimed that he did not knowingly participate in the transfer of those funds. Instead, they claim, he has been the victim of a massive theft.
The short version of the allegations is more or less where the Ohtani camp’s position had landed by the end of last week: it was all Ippei Mizuara, he lied about everything, he hid information, and he was stealing. It took a few days to get there – in part, the Ohtani camp claimed, because Mizuhara was still doing the interpreting for Ohtani – but that seems to be the full-throated allegation from Ohtani now.
Here are the key points from his statement, after which he did not take questions:
Ultimately, the story Ohtani is describing is a very sad one, and was probably extremely difficult to process in realtime last week, all while trying to gear up for the opening of the season with a new team.
I leave open the possibility that Ohtani is not telling the whole story there, but I tend to think that’s pretty unlikely given the scrutiny this is going to get. If there were any chance at all that Ohtani himself could be linked to betting or a willing transfer of funds, I just don’t think he would go to quite these lengths. Maybe I’m naive, but lying to this degree would ratchet up the exposure to such an extreme additional degree that any reasonable person with as much to lose as Ohtani simply wouldn’t do it.
Based on all we’ve seen and heard so far, I tend to believe Ohtani’s version of events is, at a minimum, extremely close to the whole story. (I’d still be curious to understand the mechanics of how the transfers took place, given the way banks heavily secure wire transfers, especially ones of that size. But I suppose I could can imagine fraudulent scenarios involving mistranslations that lead to it happening? I’d also want to know why the bookie was extending $4.5 million+ in credit, essentially, to an interpreter on a $300-ish thousand a year salary. But, again, I can imagine fraudulent scenarios.)
I would also point out that it was always possible that Ohtani was the victim in a moral sense, EVEN IF he had participated willingly in the wire transfers to help his friend. Had that been the case, Ohtani may have had some legal liability, but he would have been seen as getting screwed by a friend who was leaning much too heavily on Ohtani to bail him out. I would’ve felt bad about the potential legal liability, in fact.
But that isn’t the story now, and in fact it seems to be that Ohtani is saying Mizuhara was just flatly stealing, lying, and made the entire “he helped me out” thing up out of nowhere. Oh, and then he had the stones to say it in front of the entire Dodgers organization, WITH Ohtani in attendance. That’s pretty freaking bold, especially knowing that there were other Japanese-speakers present who could tell Ohtani what was up, and also knowing that Ohtani DOES know a lot of English.
Major League Baseball is nevertheless investigating, as they absolutely had to do when it involved illegal sports gambling entering the orbit of one of their players. But if their investigation validates Ohtani’s account – and I’ll spare you the suspense, it will – then there isn’t much more to this than Ohtani being the victim of significant theft, fraud, and back-stabbing. If that’s the entire story, then it really, really sucks for Ohtani as a human. He was clearly very close to Ippei Mizuhara. Trusted him. Relied upon him. Cared about him. So for this to happen has to be crushing. I can’t even imagine how he feels, not entirely.
