About a year ago I wrote a column saying that it was bound to happen, that somewhere along the line professional sports’ infatuation with gambling would bite some league in the butt. Right now, Major League Baseball is grabbing its rear end and yelling, “Ouch!”
As we begin the 2024 MLB season, the focus is not so much on who will emerge as the World Series champs in the fall, but rather what will be the outcome of the Shohei Ohtani scandal.
In case you haven’t heard, a Los Angeles Times story reported that Ohtani’s interpreter — and supposedly close friend, Ippei Mizuhara, has for some time been involved in sports betting. Millions of dollars from Ohtani’s bank account were wired to an alleged Orange County, California, bookmaker.
Mizuhara has since been fired by the Los Angeles Dodgers, who last winter signed Ohtani to a $700 million contract. Ohtani has denied any involvement in gambling and issued a statement indicating that his friend and interpreter allegedly stole the money involved from his accounts. Mizuhara has not been charged with a crime.
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MLB is investigating. The IRS and Homeland Security are investigating the bookmaking operation. Congress, which seemed to have suddenly become aware of gambling in the United States, is this week also talking about possibly enacting stricter regulations.
Two things here. First of all, Major League Baseball has had a strict policy concerning gambling since the Black Sox Scandal in 1919 and players get a harsh lecture on the subject every spring training.
Second, sports betting (with the exception of pari-mutuel horse racing) is illegal in California. Yes, it seems odd that one of the most liberal states in America is that conservative when it comes to gambling, but that’s the way it is.
As I pointed out in my earlier column, this whole sports betting business is crazy. You have all the major sports leagues prohibiting players from betting on games while you have sports betting parlors set up in stadiums where they play.
Competing sports betting companies buy commercial time during baseball, football and basketball (even college) telecasts while the leagues warn their players of the ramification of betting on games.
Sports teams, like Americans in general, seem to have developed a love affair with gambling. Last year a sports betting venue was set up in the Cincinnati Reds ballpark, the irony being that Pete Rose, who starred for the Reds in the 1960s and 1970s, has been banned from baseball since 1989 for betting on baseball.
Almost all the major betting scandals over the years seem to have involved baseball — the Black Sox Scandal, Pete Rose and now the situation with Ohtani’s interpreter, whatever it might be. Perhaps this is because MLB has always considered itself a cut above the NFL and the NBA and has been quicker to bring any improprieties to light.
The Ohtani scandal, no matter how it turns out, brings yet more controversy to MLB, which is already under fire from baseball purists for its recent rule changes.
Ohtani seems to be the epitome of the clean-cut ballplayer, almost the face of the game since bringing his pitching and hitting talents across the Pacific from Japan, but this scandal is about more than just baseball. It brings America’s fascination with gambling into the limelight. Within the past decade — and with the advent of cellphones and computers, gambling has become omnipresent in this country. Casinos are everywhere and sports betting has become a reality in about half the 50 states.
TV ads beg us to bet on games and buy lottery tickets and all this is allowed — and even encouraged — because gambling, when regulated, brings in tax dollars. And with betting venues in stadiums, sports leagues benefit, too, all while teams forbid players to gamble on games.
When you turn on a major sports event and see that the telecast — with children watching — is sponsored in great part by gambling and hard liquor companies, you’ve got to wonder if this country should begin to rethink its priorities.
We seem to be heading down a bad road. I’d bet on it.
Donnie Johnston’s columns appear twice per week on the Opinion page. Reach him at [email protected].
We’ve got employees at fast food restaurants who can’t make change without a calculator, and we have people dealing with mail who can’t read cursive. Yet we contend that we are one of the most educated countries in the world.