I am certain of two things about the Ippei Mizuhara-Shohei Ohtani affair.
First, that thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars were transferred from Ohtani’s bank account to an illegal bookmaker is a red flag big enough to cover the Dodger Stadium parking lot.
Second, that Rob Manfred would rather gnaw off all ten fingers than discipline the game’s biggest star.
Pretty much everything else is up for question and/or interpretation.
Ohtani himself has said nothing for public consumption about this mess. And there’s little reason to take anything Mizurhara, for years Ohtani’s interpreter and almost constant companion, says at face value at this point.
Was Mizurhara racking up that $4.5 million debt on his own — or was he placing the bets for Ohtani? Why did Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker who is the subject of a federal investigation, let him build up such a massive IOU? Did Ohtani approve some of the wire transfers, all of them, or none of them? How many, if any, of the wagers Mizurhara placed were on baseball?
These are all serious questions. They go to the heart of what is supposed to be baseball’s most critical rule about player and staff behavior.
Yet it took Manfred’s office two days to respond to the story. It wasn’t until late Friday afternoon that the commissioner’s office said its Department of Investigations would look into the matter.
Trying to ignore this matter does the game no favors.
Manfred’s disregard, if not outright contempt, for the history of the game is large enough that he may not understand how close the Black Sox scandal came to wrecking the enterprise he now helms. Indeed, the commissioner’s office owes its very existence to the pressing need a bit more than a century ago to free the professional game from the grip of the bookies.
Two men saved baseball in the 1920s after the stain of that scandal: Babe Ruth by being Babe Ruth, and Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who provided at least the illusion of grim, unshakable integrity.
But in this case, the baseball player who can capture the public imagination by doing what was thought impossible is the player under question, and Manfred is the commissioner who has established that everything can be brought, right down to cryptocurrency ads on the umpires’ uniforms.
There is too much room for suspicion here. And Manfred is not the man to dispel suspicion.
Production note
As you know (I hope), this is the last Monday dead tree edition of The Free Press.
Dropping Monday print has a lot of ramifications for us, among the least its effect on this feature. But the column matters to me, and since you made it this far it probably matters to you.
So here’s the plan:
I will continue to write it on Sunday. It will continue to be posted at mankatofreepress.com on Monday morning. And it is to be printed in Tuesday’s edition.
Is that a perfect outcome? Maybe not. But as Warren Zevon put it:
I appreciate the best
I’m settling for less
I’m looking for the next best thing
And by the way: Thanks for reading. I don’t say that enough.
Edward Thoma is at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com.