Excuses for the golden boy's bad behavior typically prevail anytime they act out of hand. Even when indirectly involved in a shady situation, people tend to lean on their side, trying to avoid being in any conflict of interest. Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani's decision to reportedly pay off longtime interpreter Ippei Mizuhara's whopping $4.5 million gambling debt looks and smells bad for the storied organization.
Baseball fans already have enough reason to hate the Dodgers -- they added big-ticket free agents in Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto this offseason, and also traded for star pitcher Tyler Glasnow. If those blockbuster moves weren't enough to boost the price of Dodgers Dogs in Los Angeles, veteran sluggers Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman were already cornerstone pieces on their roster. There's plenty of incentive to make these Dodgers public enemy No. 1, as they distorted MLB's competitive balance by going on a spending spree.
The suspicious backroom behavior that saw Mizuhara reportedly get hooked on sports gambling raised plenty of eyebrows about what actually transpired. But, regardless of what actually happened, the Dodgers are still in the wrong. Speculation has ensued about whether Mizuhara initially taking the blame for this story was a coverup for Ohtani's bad money habits, and if it is, shame on everyone involved for pushing and promoting this false narrative.
Ohtani, a now international icon who's earned the fitting nickname 'Sho-time,' is a transcendent athlete who's far more crucial to the Dodgers' success this season than Mizuhara. He’s the one hitting the ball, drawing excessive media attention, and generating the buzz that made him worth a record $700 million this past offseason. Just like any company that finds a way to eliminate a low-level employee who's in a conflict of interest with management or a superior, the interpreter was easier to blame than the player. No fault there.
If Mizuhara has a legit gambling addiction, why were the Dodgers and Ohtani ignorantly promoting it all along? Ohtani clearly knew what the deal was if he decided to pay off any debt, and the Dodgers front office must've had some clue about what was going on. Either way, everyone involved got caught with egg on their faces. Any finality in this investigation of "massive theft" doesn't need to be reached for people to draw their own conclusions on who's right and wrong. Especially not for those with a definitive sense of what contrasts the two, in this case.
Nobody else in MLB history has 608 career strikeouts, a 3.01 ERA, and also a .274 batting average with 171 homers across their first six big league seasons. Ohtani's superhuman hitting and pitching abilities can't even be compared to legend Babe Ruth's, since he played in a completely different era that lacked strength in competition and skill. Ohtani has also accomplished his feats in a casual, polite manner, and pays respect to his teammates and competition in the process. But, after this scandal, the public's perception has to change.
While one could argue everyone has bad habits, this is much, much different. Ohtani knowingly sacrificed his morality and put his MLB career on the line to reportedly help an old friend who clearly couldn't afford to pay off his massive debts. While it's admirable Ohtani reportedly stayed loyal to someone who's of a lower socioeconomic status, boundaries have to be set at some point.
With all that’s on the line, both personally and for the team, this should have been reported much earlier. That’s another reason this whole thing looks shady: believing that everyone turned a blind eye rather than manufacturing a fictional excuse – with full knowledge of a bigger issue at hand – is next to impossible.
Even before this Ohtani gambling fiasco came down, the Dodgers reeked of SoCal entitlement and high school jock energy. Recent developments make an already disliked operation look that much more sketchy. Downplaying the story and trying to control outside noise don't go hand in hand, considering how fast conclusions are reached these days.
It'll be a tall task for the Dodgers to prevent this story from interrupting their World Series hopes, as news broke hours after their season-opening victory against the Padres in South Korea earlier this week. There's also a possibility things could get even uglier, with subsequent consequences being handed down during the season.
This, of course, is is a layered discussion that can happen at a later date, but there's no denying possible ramifications from the findings are huge. For the foreseeable future, the penny-sized target on the backs of the vaunted MLB villain will become a bullseye, and it's because the Dodgers were exposed for enabling self-indulgent behaviors.