Shohei Ohtani’s gambling debt scandal doesn’t add up

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This week, reporters from various California outlets began ringing up Shohei Ohtani about his involvement in the federal investigation of a bookmaker. Why had he sent the bookie US$4.5-million in wire transfers?

On Tuesday, a spokesman for baseball’s biggest star presented his friend and interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, for interrogation by ESPN.

Mizuhara told the network that the debts were his. He’d started betting in 2021, not realizing that sports wagering is illegal in California.

He got in over his head. So he went to his boss and pal and asked for a hand.

“Obviously, [Ohtani] wasn’t happy about it and said he would help me out to make sure I never do this again,” Mizuhara told ESPN. “He decided to pay it off for me.”

According to Mizuhara, Ohtani paid the money himself because he no longer trusted his friend with it. These installments were labelled as loans. They sent them together while sitting at Ohtani’s computer.

That’s some friend. Also, that’s some story.

ESPN went back to Ohtani’s reps and asked about the fact that their client was present when this deception – if that’s what it was – took place.

By Wednesday, the story had changed. Mizuhara now said Ohtani did not know about the gambling debts and hadn’t paid them off.

Mizuhara was with Ohtani in the Dodgers dugout on Wednesday morning. By afternoon, he’d been fired. A law firm acting for Ohtani released a new statement, saying their client was the victim of a theft.

On an ascending scale of fishiness, there’s a visit to the fishmonger, then there’s the Grand Banks and then there’s whatever’s going on here.

There is also Ohtani’s recent behaviour. During his first six years in Major League Baseball, he was a cipher who revealed nothing about his private life.

Three weeks ago, Ohtani announced he’d married a “normal Japanese woman.” A week ago, she appeared at his side and turned out to be a striking former pro basketball player. In the past few days, she’s been photographed everywhere he is.

Maybe he’s just excited, but Ohtani’s sudden flip from baseball’s Howard Hughes into the tallest Kardashian seems curiously timed.

There are a lot of threads to pull on this story, but baseball wants you to remember just one thing – no one here is saying that anyone bet on MLB games.

According to ESPN, Mizuhara was emphatic on that. No baseball. He bet soccer, mostly. This was before he flipped his story 180 degrees so that everything he’d said the day before was no longer true.

I’ll leave it to you to decide how likely you think it is that a desperate man, an admitted gambling addict, now a self-professed liar, who owes more than 10 years’ of salary, who is in a privileged position to glean insider tidbits, would use that information to his advantage.

Then there is the likelihood of Ohtani’s part in the story. Either one – take your pick.

So the biggest star in baseball decides to pay off his friend’s illicit debts, but does so under his own name, when he could just take a few more steps, transfer the funds to his friend and then watch him send the cash off, avoiding direct involvement?

I get that Hanlon’s razor (never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity) is in constant operation, especially as it applies to the entertainment business. But this whole thing is so thin you could poke holes in it with a baguette.

Something’s being covered up, but what?

The best case for baseball is that the Mizuhara’s first story was true and that his second story will fly. That he ran up the debts. That he didn’t bet on baseball. That Ohtani bailed him out. That after realizing he may have inadvertently committed some sort of financial crime, Ohtani cut his friend loose. That the friend took the bullet and has agreed to eat the consequences.

Everyone will understand that story. Many won’t believe it, but they’ll get it. As long as Ohtani hits 60 home runs and the Dodgers reach the World Series, it’s a footnote in his career. In fact, it gives him a sort of shabby glamour.

But there is another possibility, one that baseball does not want to think about.

What if the name on the wire transfers is there for a more straightforward reason? What if these are Ohtani’s debts?

If it were left to the commissioner’s office to investigate, results can be shaped in whatever way is best for the game. But this is a U.S. federal government investigation. It is in the business of winning big cases while making maximum noise.

If a top star is making illegal bets on soccer, it’s not a problem. Embarrassing, but easily surmountable. After a few thumbsucking features, the public will lose interest.

But if he’s betting on baseball, this is Pete Rose 2.0. It’s the front page of The New York Times and ‘Hey, I’ve got 60 Minutes on the line 2.′

This is the sort of high-profile, moral reckoning with legalized gambling that everyone’s been hoping for for the past couple of years. It will envelop not only baseball, but other sports as well.

It was only a matter of time before a really big fish got scooped in gambling’s net. Baseball is the lucky winner because who else? The league has a long, romantic connection with organized crime.

Ohtani’s involvement primes all the big hitters in U.S. media for a career-making investigation. That it has started out with such bumbling will only draw more hounds to the hunt.

So maybe it’s nothing. Maybe a glorified butler blew the equivalent of a couple of lifetime’s worth of earnings and his best friend foolishly tried to help. Maybe it will be okay.

But good luck convincing people of that before it gets completely out of baseball’s control.