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MLB season start 2024: What will become of the betting scandal surrounding $700 million man Shohei Ohtani?
The MLB struggles to produce superstars whose appeal extends beyond the baseball fan base. A LeBron James or Stephen Curry is not only known to NBA fans; the situation is similar with Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes. Mike Trout, the best baseball player of the 2010s, could probably stroll along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles largely unmolested. He even plays for the Angels. This is due to the nature of sport, and certainly also due to poor marketing.
With Shohei Ohtani, Major League Baseball and Commissioner Rob Manfred have recently received the long-awaited global superstar: The 29-year-old is not only one of the best hitters and pitchers at the same time – as if Mahomes was also working for the Kansas City Chiefs Not only did he record 20 sacks – but he marketed it better than anyone else: after just six years in the USA, Ohtani has already surpassed Yankees legend Derek Jeter as the best-selling jersey in history. In Japan he is nicknamed “kanpeki no hito” – “perfect person”.
That was worth a ten-year, incredible $700 million contract to the Los Angeles Dodgers this offseason. Ohtani, a model professional, initially only receives two million dollars per year at his own request in order to give the team financial flexibility. He collects the rest of the sum after his career ends.
As a baseball player, you can hardly get much more popular than Ohtani: the press conference at Dodgers Stadium with his official introduction had 70 million viewers worldwide. In his hometown, he donated 60,000 baseball gloves during the offseason: three for every elementary school in the entire country.
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But this ideal world recently began to crack: Suddenly Ohtani’s halo is overshadowed by a betting scandal. Ippei Mizuhara, a long-time translator and friend, was in the circle of a shady bookmaker with a whopping $4.5 million (sports betting is banned in California) – and the money used to pay off this debt came from Ohtani’s account.
ESPN got wind of the matter and investigated, but then it became opaque. At first Mizuhara said that Ohtani had helped him out of trouble, but then the official version changed: He stole from the superstar without his knowledge.
Ohtani confirmed this version in a public statement, expressing dismay that he had been lied to and stolen from by his confidant. He insisted that he had never bet himself. The Japanese, who almost never speaks without an interpreter, did not allow any questions afterwards, and yet a few are still unanswered: What authority did Mizuhara have over his accounts? Why did he get such a high loan from the bookmaker? Why didn’t Ohtani’s bank intervene? And which authority is now taking care of the case?
The league itself has also started an investigation, but they would like nothing more than for the case to be neatly blown away with the wind: Mizuhara stole the money from the gullible Ohtani, that’s it. But at least it can’t be ruled out that things will get a little more complicated…
2024-03-28 10:01:49
#billion #dollars #Los #Angeles #Dodgers #Evil #Empire
