Baseball: An inevitable gambling scandal
What a “nightmare start” to Shohei Ohtani’s first season as a Los Angeles Dodger, said Lindsey Adler in The Wall Street Journal. Major League Baseball’s biggest star, who signed a $700 million freeagent contract this winter, was ensnared in a gambling scandal this week, when the Japanese-born Ohtani’s interpreter and personal aide was fired by the Dodgers after he admitted making a $4.5 million payment to an illegal California bookie. The interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, initially claimed Ohtani approved the wire transfers from his account, but Ohtani said this week Mizuhara lied and “has been stealing money” from him. Ohtani, who’s become the face of the sport by pitching and hitting at All-Star level—a combination not seen since Babe Ruth—hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing. But both the IRS and MLB launched an investigation, and the “fiasco” cast a shadow over what should have been “a triumphant week” for Ohtani.
This scandal “raises the stakes on sports betting,” said Gearoid Reidy in Bloomberg. After a 2018 Supreme Court decision “opened the door” to legalizing sports gambling, MLB rapidly formed partnerships with gambling companies. Americans spent $120 billion on legal sports betting last year—up 28 percent from 2022—and fans can instantly and continuously bet on nearly every aspect of a game via smartphone, including the performance of individual players. That provides incentive for “match fixing”—players throwing games or, say, striking out or making an error on purpose, in return for a big bribe from gamblers. Like other pro sports leagues, baseball used to vehemently oppose legal gambling out of fear of corruption; it’s why MLB banned “baseball legend Pete Rose for life” in 1989 after he bet on baseball with bookies.
“It’s only a matter of time” before a major gambling scandal hits the sport, said Keith O’Brien in The Atlantic. The firewall that once existed between athletes and gambling has come down. If “the world’s most important baseball player” could be connected to $4.5 million in gambling debts, what else is going on we don’t know about? “Sports is now gambling, and gambling is sports,” said Bryan Walsh in Vox. Betting “financializes” games, “transforming what should be human drama into over-unders.” If fans “have even reasonable suspicions” that players are getting paid off by gamblers, it’s “enough to erode the integrity of the game.”