The Riverside Press-Enterprise
There is closure, but Ohtani never acted distracted
It’s overly simplistic to talk about “distractions” in discussing sports, and wins and losses, and individual performance. Yet we do it all the time.
So, under the circumstances of the last three weeks, when the stresses already inherent in Shohei Ohtani’s debut with the Dodgers, with a big contract and high expectations, were overlaid with a sports betting scandal involving his interpreter ... oh, my, did us amateur psychologists have a field day.
There’s a reason we’re amateur psychologists.
Thursday provided some closure, when federal investigators
unveiled the case against Ippei Mizuhara, revealing that the man Ohtani trusted so intimately allegedly stole him blind, to the tune of $16 million, to handle his own gambling losses with an illegal bookmaker. Not only was Ohtani not involved in gambling, but the unsealed indictment revealed that between 2021 and ’23 Mizuhara controlled the bank account into which Ohtani’s Angels salary was directly deposited, and Ohtani’s agent and financial people had no access and apparently no knowledge of what was happening.
How many of us could handle such revelations? Basically, Ohtani was revealed in the indictment as merely being way too trusting, and the early reports that he was a victim of “massive fraud,” shortly after the story broke when the team was in South Korea to open the season, were backed up when the feds revealed the details.
Wouldn’t being scammed – which is basically what this was – throw you off your game?
But here’s the thing: It didn’t throw Ohtani off his. He might have gotten off to a slow start, by his standards, but if there was any indication that he has risen above whatever the outside world might throw at him, consider this most recent stretch of games.
In Friday night’s 8-7, 11-inning loss to San Diego, Ohtani was