The Los Angeles Dodger’s this week fired the translator for baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani, accusing Ippei Mizuhara of stealing $4.5 million to pay off gambling debts.
Numerous articles have come out raising questions about whether the 2023 American League Most Valuable Player will be swept into the scandal after signing a $700 million 10-year contract.
“Could Shohei Ohtani face punishment for interpreter gambling scandal,” the headline read on CBS Sports.
“Shohei Ohtani is a wakeup call that sports gambling problem is getting worse,” screamed a headline for a column by Scott Osler in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“There are so many potential crimes here, state and federal, and the big dangers with violating the anti-gambling laws is that they’re all written to go after organized crime, which means all the organized crime statutes can kick in, like RICO and money laundering,” Nelson Rose of the California Council on Problem Gambling said to CBS Sports.
USA Today’s For the Win asked Why did Mizuhara’s story change so suddenly? Originally, he said that Ohtani was willing to provide the funds for his gambling debt. The next day his story changed and said the two-way player knew nothing about his gambling problem.
The article also showed a photo of Ohtani and Mizuhara together acting as nothing was wrong just hours before the Dodger’s announced the translator’s dismissal.
Columnist Scott Osler wrote that no matter what happens, this is not a good look for Ohtani.
“Best case? Well, let’s call it the least-horrible case: Ohtani will be cleared of wrongdoing and declared an innocent victim of a desperate and misguided friend, but his legacy will be tainted,” Osler wrote.
How Ohtani and even baseball recovers from any of this perhaps remains the biggest question.
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