[VeggieDog]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...er-fired-theft



The Los Angeles Dodgers interpreter for Shohei Ohtani was fired Wednesday afternoon after questions surrounding at least $4.5 million in wire transfers sent from Ohtani's bank account to a bookmaking operation set off a series of events.


Ippei Mizuhara, the longtime friend and interpreter for Ohtani, incurred the gambling debts to a Southern California bookmaking operation that is under federal investigation, multiple sources told ESPN. How he came to lose his job started with reporters asking questions about the wire transfers.

(More at the Link.)

[DrunkHorseplayer]

Is Ohtani Pete Rose II?

[JIBBBY]

Ooooohhhh youa steal my money. Now I must chop you in halfa with my samurai sword!

[mjsuax13]

I don’t buy this one bit. Ohtani and his lawyers knew he “stole” money yet he still worked for him today. Dodgers then fire him? Ohtani is the gambler here and his buddy took the fall. The MLB and Dodgers feverishly covering up for their golden child.

[TheGoldenGoose]

I think the bigger story here is why Ohtani has never bothered to learn English.

[Optional]

I don’t buy this one bit. Ohtani and his lawyers knew he “stole” money yet he still worked for him today. Dodgers then fire him? Ohtani is the gambler here and his buddy took the fall. The MLB and Dodgers feverishly covering up for their golden child.

sounds more plausible than the story

[JAKEPEAVY21]

I don’t buy this one bit. Ohtani and his lawyers knew he “stole” money yet he still worked for him today. Dodgers then fire him? Ohtani is the gambler here and his buddy took the fall. The MLB and Dodgers feverishly covering up for their golden child.

Was thinking the same thing yesterday.

[JIBBBY]

I think the bigger story here is why Ohtani has never bothered to learn English.

It's called being lazy.

[mjsuax13]

I think the bigger story here is why Ohtani has never bothered to learn English.

Very convenient. “I don’t know, talk to this guy!”

[franklee168]

First this news and then Yamamoto gets shelled. Great day for Giants fans. Duck the fodgers.

[JAKEPEAVY21]

First this news and then Yamamoto gets shelled. Great day for Giants fans. Duck the fodgers.

Hey frank, hope all is well bud...

$325 million, 45.00 ERA, 1 IP, 4 hits, 5 earned runs, 1 BB...

What is the pulse out there about the Snell signing? I have always thought he's highly overrated and very inconsistent. Take out the 2 insane Cy Young seasons and look at his numbers. He only gives 5-6 innings/start and pitch counts balloon early in games. He is a notoriously slow starter and with no spring training this year, it could be a bumpy season for him. I'm stunned he got 30+/season given the fact that he doesn't give you innings but I guess coming off an insane season helped.

We can root against the Doyers together anyhow

[ChuckyTheGoat]

Pat Croce's brother is appalled.

[mjsuax13]

sounds more plausible than the story

Yes- you don’t just call a lawyer the day of and all of a sudden they have a mountain of evidence for the media and are turning it over to authorities. You’d get them involved sooner if it were illicit. They are trying to orchestrate their way out of this and it’s gonna backfire. Ohtani 100% the gambler here and his buddy is gone and the fall guy. He must have checked his Wells Fargo account two days ago and noticed.

[JAKEPEAVY21]

Yes- you don’t just call a lawyer the day of and all of a sudden they have a mountain of evidence for the media and are turning it over to authorities. You’d get them involved sooner if it were illicit. They are trying to orchestrate their way out of this and it’s gonna backfire. Ohtani 100% the gambler here and his buddy is gone and the fall guy. He must have checked his Wells Fargo account two days ago and noticed.

What an idiot for leaving a paper trail either way.

[miaplus3]

So, theoretically Ohtani could bet millions of dollars on the NFL thru draft kings (if it were legal in his state of residence ) & face no consequences ?

[mjsuax13]

So, theoretically Ohtani could bet millions of dollars on the NFL thru draft kings (if it were legal in his state of residence ) & face no consequences ?

I think so.

[mjsuax13]

What an idiot for leaving a paper trail either way.

Agreed. Hard to know how smart he is. He doesn’t talk! What if he sounds like the excited southerner from Adam Sandler when he opens his mouth.

[JAKEPEAVY21]

Agreed. Hard to know how smart he is. He doesn’t talk! What if he sounds like the excited southerner from Adam Sandler when he opens his mouth.

Sending direct from his bank account straight to the bookie was moronic...he should've paid the bookie with a briefcase full of cash or something like that.

[19th Hole]

I agree with Optional's comment.

This is a crazy story for me simply because of the $$$ amounts.

[mjsuax13]

Sending direct from his bank account straight to the bookie was moronic...he should've paid the bookie with a briefcase full of cash or something like that.

I just wish I was his bookie.

[VeggieDog]

I wonder what his SBR name is. Losing $4mil means he's gotta be one of us.

[mjsuax13]

I wonder what his SBR name is. Losing $4mil means he's gotta be one of us.

Maybe THOMORINO since he has limited vocabulary?!

[getaloadoffatso]

I wonder what his SBR name is. Losing $4mil means he's gotta be one of us.

OldBill could lose 4.5 million in 10 minutes, and most of his posts do not look like the English language

He's involved somehow

[sweethook]

they all bet , put pete in the hall he is the goat

[JIBBBY]

I wonder what his SBR name is. Losing $4mil means he's gotta be one of us.

....

[franklee168]

Hey frank, hope all is well bud...

$325 million, 45.00 ERA, 1 IP, 4 hits, 5 earned runs, 1 BB...

What is the pulse out there about the Snell signing? I have always thought he's highly overrated and very inconsistent. Take out the 2 insane Cy Young seasons and look at his numbers. He only gives 5-6 innings/start and pitch counts balloon early in games. He is a notoriously slow starter and with no spring training this year, it could be a bumpy season for him. I'm stunned he got 30+/season given the fact that he doesn't give you innings but I guess coming off an insane season helped.

We can root against the Doyers together anyhow

Hey Bro,

After the last few seasons of disasterous rumors, Farhan has earned a free year of critiscism. It seems like the fan whisper for getting Snell has been going on for months. Pitching beats hitting as a rule of thumb. Feelings are that the Giants have 4 quality starters which should take them places. Chapman, Soler and Lee will make the lineup interesting.

As usual we are going with anyone but the fodgers!

[DwightShrute]

did he gamble on Baseball?

“Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhari from the news media,” MLB said. “Earlier today, our Department of Investigations (DOI) began their formal process investigating the matter.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...-investigation

[stevenash]

From Today's Athletic:
Sorry about the two-part cut paste job, but you need a subscription to read their content.



You’d be hard-pressed to find a worse news cycle for Major League Baseball than the one currently involving Shohei Ohtani, the new Los Angeles Dodgers star and global face of the sport engulfed in a scandal involving Ippei Mizuhara, his closest companion since arriving in MLB in 2018 and his longtime interpreter.
The story features conflicting and changing accounts of what happened. Both Mizuhara and a spokesperson for Ohtani told ESPN enterprise reporter Tisha Thompson in an interview on March 19 that Ohtani wired millions to a bookmaking operation to cover Mizuhara’s gambling debt. But as ESPN prepared to publish its story the following day, the spokesman disavowed Mizuhara’s account, Ohtani’s lawyers said he was the victim of “a massive theft,” and the Dodgers fired Mizuhara, who walked back his initial comments to ESPN.
On Friday, MLB announced it had begun a formal investigation into accusations involving a reported sum of at least $4.5 million sent from Ohtani’s accounts to pay off debts to a bookmaker who is under federal investigation. On Monday, Ohtani gave a statement at Dodger Stadium, though reporters were not in the room to ask questions. Through new interpreter Will Ireton, Ohtani forcefully denied making illegal bets on sports or paying money to the bookmaker.
As MLB looks into the Ohtani matter, the situation highlights the ongoing entanglement between sports, media and gambling. Many professional leagues and media outlets, including The Athletic, have relationships with gambling companies. On the day before the Ohtani news broke, the NBA said it would infuse betting into live games on NBA League Pass, allowing viewers to track betting odds on games as they watch on the app and then click through to wager through the NBA’s betting partners. MLB and FanDuel struck a partnership last year that allows fans to watch games and place bets through FanDuel’s app. ESPN has its own sportsbook, ESPN Bet, linked from the main navigation bar on ESPN.com.
“The lines are really blurred in today’s society,” said ESPN and YES Network MLB analyst David Cone before Ohtani spoke on Monday. “We have partnerships with gambling now. I remember playing in Mexico in the winter league where you’d see people betting in the stands every pitch. That’s going to be a major-league park pretty soon where you can go to a window and make bets on every pitch. The lines are very blurred right now on just the nature of the partnership between Major League Baseball and betting.”
Ohtani, of course, is not just another baseball player. He is the sport’s modern-day Babe Ruth. He sells tickets for opposing teams and his own, as well as subscriptions for the MLB.TV streaming service, and is central to baseball’s national media rights holders recouping audience. The Dodgers are scheduled to appear on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” this week (against the St. Louis Cardinals) and April 14 (against the San Diego Padres), as well as for a potential mega-viewership game on June 9 against the New York Yankees. TBS’ second national telecast of the season involves the Dodgers (against the San Francisco Giants on April 2), and they’ll feature them again on May 28. Ohtani and Co. will appear on FS1 twice in April, then in prime time on Fox on May 25 against the Cincinnati Reds, then again against the Yankees on June 8.
“He moves the needle for us,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told Sports Business Journal before the Ohtani story broke.

[stevenash]

Where and how ESPN and other outlets cover the Ohtani story from here is important. Neither Fox Sports nor Warner Bros. Discovery/TBS have the 24/7 news infrastructure of ESPN, nor do they have ESPN’s sports journalism ambitions. Multiple ESPN reporters and editors from its investigative/enterprise team are currently working on the Ohtani story. ESPN broke into its regularly scheduled “Pardon the Interruption” Monday to cover the Ohtani conference live.
“We will cover the story aggressively,” said an ESPN spokesperson. “ESPN is well-positioned to cover this story with a deep roster of investigative journalists and MLB reporters.”
You can expect its digital site to feature more stories, as will the company’s shoulder programming, such as “SportsCenter.” But what about game coverage? For ESPN’s broadcast of the Dodgers and Padres in the Seoul Series, the broadcast team of Karl Ravech, Daniel Kim and Eduardo Pérez discussed the story on three occasions. Kim has served as an interpreter for baseball players and gave a particularly compelling account of how deeply an interpreter is involved in a player’s life. Coverage on game broadcasts can be more influential since they draw more eyeballs than online stories.
Phil Orlins, ESPN’s vice president of production for Major League Baseball, said that the Seoul broadcast team took great pains to be as accurate as possible with its language. He said ESPN game broadcasters will have no restrictions discussing the Ohtani story, but they are unlikely to have long discussions in-game unless the reporting is advanced.
“Our perspective is that we are absolutely going to cover it and not ignore the story,” Orlins said. “We did that three times in the game we did in Seoul. But unless there is a real measure to advance it, our philosophy generally is not to override the documentation of the game with that type of story. He’s still playing. It’s still a baseball game. If there’s new information about the story, we will absolutely document it. But unless there’s something actually breaking that has to do specifically to the game and our coverage, I wouldn’t try to force five minutes of it into the game coverage. I think our audiences have expectations that we’re not going to ignore stories, but I also don’t think we want to overwhelm the game coverage.”

[JIBBBY]

Ohtani is a Degen gambler for sure. One of us!

No way the interpreter could book millions in bets with his low salary. Ohtani was certainly on board. I'm sure Ohtani is paying the interpreter big time to take the FULL blame for this now behind closed doors.

Logic suggests this.

[DwightShrute]

Nah nah nah… but homie doesn’t gamble. pic.twitter.com/B2BM3E3S2G

— Brian FMP (@FadeMyPlay) March 26, 2024

[JIBBBY]

Pete Rose would be proud!

[Statman]

Just out of curiosity, who is the book or books that took all this action and has anything been said from their side?

[JIBBBY]

Just out of curiosity, who is the book or books that took all this action and has anything been said from their side?

Some dude with ties in Vegas is what I'm reading.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports...-ties-3023957/

[Statman]

Oh boy....after reading this link, this is far from over. Seems like other details will emerge on this.