Ohtani’s baseball magic was just a sad illusion
No matter what the truth ends up being in the explosive story of sports gambling and baseball’s greatest player, I’m disproportionately sad about it. If you’re reading this you already know the interpreter/close friend/kind of brother of one of the greatest names in sports past or present, Shohei Ohtani, reportedly suffers from a gambling addiction and participates in illegal betting.
Ohtani either paid off interpreter Ippei Mizuhara’s debts from his own account or, as later alleged in a legal statement, that money is stolen in a massive ($4.5 million U.S.) theft from baseball’s most profitable star.
Let’s put aside all speculation at this stage. The truth is not currently known and I’m not writing as a journalist but in the unusual (for me) position as a fan.
I don’t invest in celebrities as a rule because their behaviour impacts their art to me. When I know a guy is a jerk to women, to give a ridiculously common example, I can’t listen to their music or want to watch their shows. Some don’t care. I won’t judge that, but I do.
I get that celebrity life is a cauldron few can survive with morals and humanity intact and we feed into that as consumers. If we act like their art or celebrity places them above normal humanity and its codes and ethics, we shouldn’t be surprised when they behave with all the entitlement and hubris that implies.
But Ohtani seemed different. For years he gave no indication he had any life outside of baseball. Infamously private, infamously dedicated, he reportedly sleeps 10 hours a day, 12 on game days, and spends the rest of it on baseball.
He presented as a baseball vessel, with baseball — and only baseball — giving him his form and substance.
His one constant companion until the recent surprise reveal of a dog, then a wife, was Mizuhara.
In return, baseball got an impossible player who spent recent years blasting through multitudes of baseball records and all expectations. The player most commonly compared to him is Babe Ruth, but he has stratospherically blown past even that legendary name. For three seasons, two MVP and one that by many arguments should have been, I’d check post-game stats and see what new record he demolished or set.
The result of his dedication to baseball was magic for fans. To watch Ohtani is to rediscover wonder. And in a world with darkness, hate and anger raging in even the least likely places, and indescribable personal and societal pain and grief, there is Ohtani. An entity that sleeps, practices and performs on-field miracles is one of the very few places for unadulterated, unmixed joy, without the usual darkness of human nature pressing in. That Ohtani is a place without betrayal.
But betrayal appears to be a central pillar of the unfolding story. If allegations of massive theft are true, that’s a devastating betrayal of one of sport’s most dazzling, dizzying figures. If not true, it’s a massive betrayal of a friend and kind of brother in the grip of one of the cruelest addictions.
I haven’t a clue what’s happening in this story and neither do you, but the sadness I feel is partly my own making. A person can never be a vessel for one thing; human nature good and bad will intervene.
Our most frequent and lasting stories throughout millennia involve a protagonist reaching uncanny heights and falling mercilessly to earth, through hubris, pride, envy, greed or some other fallibility in themselves or those around them.
Once, just once, I was rooting for greatness that does not wind up a cautionary tale.