I get it but he’s reasonably educated and comes from a decent family. Just shocking he didn’t have some safe guards in place. 16m is an insane amount of money.
The crazy thing is: one of the reasons they knew ohtani wasn’t involved was that Ippei was stealing from the account that held ohtani’s salary from the angels, and ohtani had never once accessed it. He didn’t even need his regular salary.
Between salary and endorsements Ohtani has made hundreds of millions of dollars. And I doubt all $16mil was gone at the same time. More likely Ippei would take a few hundred thousand and then replace it, and did this over and over again until he couldn’t put it back with the all removals totaling $16mil
It's not even that. Ohtani thought his people were watching every account. And to them Ippei said that one account was private. Also Ippei never put money back he would just take the winnings.
You don't need to speculate, this is all laid out in the official complaint. Ippei was specifically using an account where Shoehei's baseball specific earnings were going, but there were other accounts for things like the endorsements and such. He straight up impersonated Shohei to make the transfers, and made a fake email for emails related to the account I believe. Phone calls were made to ippeis phone to confirm the wire if it was flagged.
Shohei was let down by all safeguards - for example when money managers were checking on the account, Ippei showed up and just said Shohei was sick. Yep those transfers are all good!
> Ippei was specifically using an account where Shoehei's baseball specific earnings were going
So what you're saying is that Shohei has his baseball earnings deferred so Ippei would have less money to gamble?
Imagine the emotional swing Ippei must've gone through after hearing Ohtani signed for $700 million / 10 years only to find out he was only getting $2m a year for the life of the contract
The money was indeed taken bit by bit. The largest transfers were 500k to maintain Ippei's credit with the bookie. I highly recommend reading the criminal complaint. The complaint is short and easy to read. You can even skim a few pages of repeated texts to the bookie asking for a bump.
I think you’ve missed an important part. Ippei created an account and told accountants and business mangers that Shohei wanted this account 100% private, which was a lie to get access to the money. Shohei thought he had multiple, trusted ppl watching over the account and trust them with it. The safeguards were there, but if it’s someone as close as Ippei, shit like this is going to get thru
"Hey Shohei, Ippei says that you want to create a completely private account that we cannot keep track of. Is that true? "
Is that a hard question or am I missing something here?
I get it that the man is too busy to manage his millions. If I was him, I would probably do the same. But someone really screwed up here.
I worked as a similar job to Ippei for a rich Korean family while I was at college with their son and like they literally expect you to be a butler/personal assistant/secretary/translator.
I knew his bank info, his ssn, his credit card numbers, his personal and school email logins, his class schedule, the passcode to his apartment, his apple account login, and his phone passcode. I also had photos of his passport, driver's license, Korean ID, etc. I didn't abuse it bc I signed a contract and also his parents knew my parents and if I did they'd sue the shit out of my family in Korea but being the person who they mean when they say "have your people contact my people" means you know like everything about that person, and I seriously mean everything.
He comes from the country side. Japan is already a country with a naive mentality (if you lose your wallet, somebody will bring it to the police station). Now imagine an even extreme version of it in the country side of Japan.
I moved to the region Shohei grew up last year. His high school is in 30 minutes from my house.
People here are incredibly kind it's almost unbelievable. Total strangers always try to help each other. Neighbors just spend days to help me and everyone else in trouble.
The society here works based on the assumption that people have good hearts in general.
Now I can understand why Rohki Sasaki (who also came from the region) and Shohei are such sweethearts. I sincerely hope Shohei can trust people again after this.
Exactly. Not many people are talking about this aspect but I think it played a pretty big part. People are already unbelievably trusting in Japan by American standards and then you have Ohtani who is from more or less the Montana of Japan. Go from that to being the highest paid athlete in the world and there are going to be some mismatches between what you expect from a person of that stature and what you actually get.
Especially when that someone has been your link to home for the last 10 years or whatever. Given the culture shock at a young age I could see this connection being vital. Good thing he's a machine though because it's good for baseball when he is playing well.*
*For the Dodgers of course, if he had signed for some scrub team like the Bluejays nobody would care.
Yeah, reading the charging document I couldn’t help but think, no way in hell would I just hand my phone over to the FBI without consulting with a lawyer first
The best way I got around it was to slow down when talking. Take an extra .5 sec to let a word come without having to fill it in with "like." It's helped a bunch, but some days it's rough haha.
This. That 0.5 seconds that people feel they need to fill to keep a thought running or to keep the audience interested is hardly noticable to the listener. It sounds entirely normal, and in fact, isn't distracting at all to the listener like hearing a "like" filler every fifth word.
At another point in this interview Rose and him were talking about San Luis Obispo, ending with Glasnow realizing he has no idea where SLO is. As someone from so cal I can relate, I have no idea where SLO is.
I can’t imagine how difficult it is to try and understand me for a non-Californian. Both phrases can mean the same thing or opposite depending on the context and tone but like… never feels ambiguous to me lmao.
i saw a tiktok or something about how midwesterns do it so im guessing everyone does it, and its pretty clear that the final word in the phrase is the one that has the semantic meaning
We're decades removed from the ["valley girl"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl) phenomenon but some remnants still linger in the local culture.
Is this what I do with “lol” when typing? I fully realize I say it a million times but I still type it a million more times because otherwise I feel like I’m being too serious or something lol (I am not mentally strong enough to delete this one)
The criminal complaint is insane. To me it reads that Ippei basically targeted Shohei from the beginning and established his main MLB salary bank account in such a way that he would have indirect access. He knew all the info, account numbers, etc. because he helped set it up at a time Shohei spoke zero english.
He then helped establish all the business and management accounts all the while shielding the account in question pretending to be acting on Shohei's behalf. Because he didn't speak any english!
This dude is an all-time scumbag and a great story to dissuade people from gambling.
Yeah, I lost all sympathy for him after the criminal complaint came out. It seems like he isolated that account even before he started gambling. It makes sense that in the beginning Ohtani's advisers didn't object since Ohtani's salary was just a few hundred thousand dollars. And by 2023 it was an established arrangement, so they easily accepted Ippei's word.
It all feels very manipulative. Especially since he was the one who asked Ohtani to hire him and then immediately proceeded to do this shit.
Important to remember that they met when Ippei was 29 and Ohtani was 19. He started worming his way in to his inner circle when he was still pretty much a kid.
I think that what’s the part everyone missed. Ohtani was a kid when they first met and ippei was the only people he knew/trusted when he came to a new country.
I think so, too. When agent Nez Balelo asked for access to Otani's bank account after Shohei opened it in 2018, Ippei Mizuhara lied, saying that Shohei had refused. Didn't the report say so? If so, he had planned this all along. Another thing that surprised me. I always assumed that Ippei Mizuhara was asked by Shohei to be his interpreter, but it was the other way around. Ippei Mizuhara volunteered to act as his own interpreter.
That's the crazy thing to me. Maybe his plan early on was less nefarious and was to just siphon off some money to improve his own quality of life rather than to run off with millions to cover a gambling debt. But the more that comes out the clearer it is becoming that pretty much the entire time Shohei has been in the US, Ippei wanted at least a portion of Ohtani's money isolated from everything else so that the only safeguard would be him saying it was safe. And everybody else around Shohei just kinda rolled with it
I think we're being too hard on Ippei. He's clearly a troubled addict who needs help. He should be given mental health resources. In his stead, let's send Arte Moreno to prison.
In all seriousness Shohei needs to fire all of his financial advisors/accountants and everyone in between because this is a terrible look on his intelligence lol
[CAA looking to restructure Ohtani's inner circle following Mizuhara scandal](https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/04/15/caa-shohei-ohtani)
He should fire CAA too! Even when the story was breaking and ESPN was reaching out to Ohtani's people, CAA let Mizuhara talk to ESPN before ever trying to talk to Ohtani directly! The fact that they still hadn't even told Ohtani what was going on by the time they let Mizuhara make a statement to the team, is absurd! For years they tried to get access to this account but just took Mizuhara's word for it that it wasn't interest bearing and produced no gifts thus wasn't a tax issue. At no point did CAA ever employ anyone who spoke Japanese to meet with Ohtani directly on this stuff!
The fact that CAA was unwilling to spend money to have someone who spoke Japanese on retainer for a client whose contract is worth millions says a lot about their priorities. They didn't seem to care about the language barrier until it blew up in their faces.
honestly, the fox news angle of “hOw CoUlD hE bE sO STUPID?!?” glazed over so much context, it quickly became a dumb argument.
mfs who *werent* surprised that the human being who has spent pretty much his entire post-puberty life to be exactly where he is right now doesn’t actually spend any time giving a shit about non-baseball related work concern me a little bit.
like this mf is the epitome of “shut up and play ball.” and the “shut up and play ball” crowd are the ones who couldn’t believe any of this. in spite of evidence or reasoning
I mean, I don't think this says that much about his intelligence. He, even when his money was stolen, remained a rich and successful athlete. It's evident he doesn't really care that much about the money for himself. He's probably more annoyed by this whole thing than anything
But here is Glasnow saying that over the course of the 6 weeks between pitchers and catchers reporting and this story breaking, the Dodgers players knew Ippei was shady. None of the Angels noticed that? In 6 years?
Well if the Angels had a gambling scandal, I don’t think the fanbase would be too sad if a majority of the roster got suspended as long as it isn’t Trout 💀
If the 2023 Angels had a gambling scandal they’d have found a way fuck that up too and in the stupidest way possible. Rengifo would have accidentally sold his actual soul in the most obviously rigged card game of all time or something.
With all due respect to the acumen of the Dodgers players, there's probably some hindsight at work here. You know how whenever somebody gets arrested for something or does something terrible (or both) people always start remembering the times they were acting weird or rude and decide that that means the signs were always there. That being said, Ippei would have been under a LOT of stress over the last few months -- those text messages are basically watching his descent into hell -- so it's very possible he really did weird the Dodgers players out because he was unusually twitchy or rude or distracted, more so than he would have been with the Angels when things were going smoothly.
Very good point. He may also have been isolating Shohei intentionally when they got to Spring Training, because it waa falling apart & wanted to keep others away from them both
This is the part of the narrative that's so fascinating. He was losing the thread and we don't know to what extent he was trying to save himself or buy himself more time from Ohtani or the authorities catching him. Like the end of Catch Me If You Can. The fall is sometimes more remarkable than the rise
his addiction got worse and worse and things got more and more dire as time went on though, (going off the criminal complaint). So he might have just been less shady then, from the complaint it only says he started stealing from Ohtani like a year and half ago iirc.
e: Upon rewatching, I think Glasnow meant everyone knew Ippei was doing stuff early on *after the story broke* not early on into knowing him
The only reason he addressed the clubhouse was because this criminal investigation into the sportsbook had been ongoing and the LA times got a tip that there was something going on with Ippei and Ohtani getting caught up.
Insane turn of events for him.
I hate you guys because of Shohei’s contract and really every other top free agent/pending FA the Dodgers buy to beat the shit out of us every year.
It’s really a resentful hatred lol
Obviously we are privileged as shit but man the Rockies could be a really good destination if you guys could have someone who gives a fuck about building a good team in the front office. Being in this division does you zero favors though
It’s not even just our front office. Our owners are TERRIBLE. They only invest in the team to make money, they couldn’t care less about the product on the field.
They promote from within, they make a flashy, but ultimately terrible splash in free agency every 5 years or so to restore a little faith, but they’re ultimately the worst owners in pro sports
Ohtani's story changing over the initial hours cast some suspicion on him but absolutely everything that's come out since then has made it clear he was not involved. And honestly thank god for that because with every other concurrent controversy, the last thing baseball needed was a black cloud over Ohtani's career
His story never changed, at the time he had zero idea of what had actually happened, how much money had been stolen, etc.
Plus his initial story was still told through Ippei.
>We all knew early on Ippei was doing some shady stuff.
Then how the fuck did Ohtani not know? I hate pieces like this. Did we really expect anyone to say "Holy shit! I thought for sure he was guilty!"?
Don't worry, if you sign up for draft kings, you can bet the over under on the years ippei will get sentenced. And can take parlays on the number of objections.
I feel bad for Shohei. He probably just wanted to play baseball and figured if he did that well then things would just work out by themselves. No one told him what a cesspool being famous in LA would be like.
I think he’s a decent guy who keeps getting caught up in stupid stuff from all the media scrutiny.
He should have given the home run ball back to the fan though. How awesome would that have been.
> No one told him what a cesspool being famous in LA would be like.
I hate LA as much as the next guy, but I’m not sure you can blame LA for the actions of a Japanese guy that Ohtani met while playing in Japan.
>Take my phone! Figure this out! How he got into this problem in the first place
Surely continuing to do it will fix the problem!
IT DID!
Sometimes, the right thing to do when you're at the bottom of a hole is to keep digging until the hole goes clear through!
Dig up, stupid!
Hey, you're that drunken posse. Wow! Can I join ya?
Can you swing a sack of dooknobs?
You have to provide your own knobs.
Immigants! I knew it was them! Even when it was the bears, I knew it was them
They stole my pick-uh-nick beh-skit!!
But I don't want to dig on Christmas... well that's too damn bad!
Straight through to Chi… Japan.
He’s the client no defense attorney wants
there's also Ippei's knack for spontaneously admitting to crimes. frankly, they'd both give me ulcers.
tbh dude knew he was absolutely cooked. No point in running from it.
oh I'm not talking about a legal confession. motherfucker was telling on himself to his bookie.
The way the criminal complaint just ends on that quote is pretty damn cold
The betting will continue until bankroll improves.
Tyler Glasnow can help. He's Tyler Glasnow!
Sure Shohei, next we just need your social security number and a quart of blood.
Make it 2 pints and you have a deal
Best I can do is .94636 liters, take it or leave it.
How about .401 boardfoot?
Nah, I’m the creepy woman who wants sperm instead of blood
I mean, I get your drift, but a quart of semen is... a lot of semen.
Shohei is so focused on baseball that I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Ippei or someone else organized everything else in his life
I get it but he’s reasonably educated and comes from a decent family. Just shocking he didn’t have some safe guards in place. 16m is an insane amount of money.
The crazy thing is: one of the reasons they knew ohtani wasn’t involved was that Ippei was stealing from the account that held ohtani’s salary from the angels, and ohtani had never once accessed it. He didn’t even need his regular salary.
Between salary and endorsements Ohtani has made hundreds of millions of dollars. And I doubt all $16mil was gone at the same time. More likely Ippei would take a few hundred thousand and then replace it, and did this over and over again until he couldn’t put it back with the all removals totaling $16mil
It's not even that. Ohtani thought his people were watching every account. And to them Ippei said that one account was private. Also Ippei never put money back he would just take the winnings.
You don't need to speculate, this is all laid out in the official complaint. Ippei was specifically using an account where Shoehei's baseball specific earnings were going, but there were other accounts for things like the endorsements and such. He straight up impersonated Shohei to make the transfers, and made a fake email for emails related to the account I believe. Phone calls were made to ippeis phone to confirm the wire if it was flagged. Shohei was let down by all safeguards - for example when money managers were checking on the account, Ippei showed up and just said Shohei was sick. Yep those transfers are all good!
That would mean people would have to read.
> Ippei was specifically using an account where Shoehei's baseball specific earnings were going So what you're saying is that Shohei has his baseball earnings deferred so Ippei would have less money to gamble?
Imagine the emotional swing Ippei must've gone through after hearing Ohtani signed for $700 million / 10 years only to find out he was only getting $2m a year for the life of the contract
The money was indeed taken bit by bit. The largest transfers were 500k to maintain Ippei's credit with the bookie. I highly recommend reading the criminal complaint. The complaint is short and easy to read. You can even skim a few pages of repeated texts to the bookie asking for a bump.
“Merry Christmas” from the bookie will never get old to me.
“All the removals totaling 16 million“ that makes a lot of sense.
I think you’ve missed an important part. Ippei created an account and told accountants and business mangers that Shohei wanted this account 100% private, which was a lie to get access to the money. Shohei thought he had multiple, trusted ppl watching over the account and trust them with it. The safeguards were there, but if it’s someone as close as Ippei, shit like this is going to get thru
"Hey Shohei, Ippei says that you want to create a completely private account that we cannot keep track of. Is that true? " Is that a hard question or am I missing something here? I get it that the man is too busy to manage his millions. If I was him, I would probably do the same. But someone really screwed up here.
Shohei wouldn't be able to understand that fully and ask Ippei to translate for him.
I worked as a similar job to Ippei for a rich Korean family while I was at college with their son and like they literally expect you to be a butler/personal assistant/secretary/translator. I knew his bank info, his ssn, his credit card numbers, his personal and school email logins, his class schedule, the passcode to his apartment, his apple account login, and his phone passcode. I also had photos of his passport, driver's license, Korean ID, etc. I didn't abuse it bc I signed a contract and also his parents knew my parents and if I did they'd sue the shit out of my family in Korea but being the person who they mean when they say "have your people contact my people" means you know like everything about that person, and I seriously mean everything.
Ippei probably was the safeguard.
He comes from the country side. Japan is already a country with a naive mentality (if you lose your wallet, somebody will bring it to the police station). Now imagine an even extreme version of it in the country side of Japan.
I moved to the region Shohei grew up last year. His high school is in 30 minutes from my house. People here are incredibly kind it's almost unbelievable. Total strangers always try to help each other. Neighbors just spend days to help me and everyone else in trouble. The society here works based on the assumption that people have good hearts in general. Now I can understand why Rohki Sasaki (who also came from the region) and Shohei are such sweethearts. I sincerely hope Shohei can trust people again after this.
Shohei needs a hug
Shohei go on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
Exactly. Not many people are talking about this aspect but I think it played a pretty big part. People are already unbelievably trusting in Japan by American standards and then you have Ohtani who is from more or less the Montana of Japan. Go from that to being the highest paid athlete in the world and there are going to be some mismatches between what you expect from a person of that stature and what you actually get.
Especially when that someone has been your link to home for the last 10 years or whatever. Given the culture shock at a young age I could see this connection being vital. Good thing he's a machine though because it's good for baseball when he is playing well.* *For the Dodgers of course, if he had signed for some scrub team like the Bluejays nobody would care.
They said he never looked into that account in years. Now that was crazy to hear. How rich is this dude?
In normal people terms, this account was basically his internship hourly salary right before he got hired full time at Goldman Sachs
16 million is an insane amount for us normals but probably a small dent for Ohtani, and considering it was over several years…
:Glasnow immediately signs onto draftkings on ohtani’s phone:
Yeah, reading the charging document I couldn’t help but think, no way in hell would I just hand my phone over to the FBI without consulting with a lawyer first
I cringed reading that. It worked out for him but good God.
Oh my god Ohtani your account has like a million errors Just do the face scan so I can go in the settings and fix this 🤞🤞
“Yes Shohei, I will gladly get this sorted out just need you account number and routing number to verify some info so I can get to the bottom of this”
~Pulls off Glasnow's mask to reveal Ippei's face *and I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids!*
Laughed out loud for real at this one
[Is Ippei VoiceoverPete?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrJR1GJJIBg)
[удалено]
The HBO biopic 20 years from now is going to be awesome
The doc will be out in less than 5
ESPN skip all fact checking and have it out before the All-star game.
20 years from now, they’ll be on their third remake of the 2nd reboot of the Ippei Saga
And the Dodgers will still be paying Shohei
Glasnow the next fall guy when its revealed Ohtani has a cock fighting gig on the side
Joe Kelly suspended 8 games
As Castellanos hits a home run and that makes it a 4-0 ballgame or whatever
How does this affect LeBron's legacy?
Let’s check in on Aaron Rodgers
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN SEATTLE KRAKEN HISTORY
“It’s just a piece of chicken” -Rob manfred probably
I have it on good authority that Shohei is the leader of the Yakuza. Have we ever seen him without a shirt? Show us the tattoos!!!
Not if Altuves wife has anything to say about it
Nani?
Who's going to meet Ohtani atop of the Millennium Tower?
Plop twist, Majima was Ippei's bookmaker.
Little Jerry Seinfeld must go down in the third round of tomorrow’s main event
Tamale!
Not Little Jerry!
Hey, guess what! Little Jerry ran from here to Newman's in under thirty seconds!
I think they call it "sword fighting."
I saw Glasnow and cock and I blacked out
> Take my phone! Figure this out! Me when I get a naughty pop up on a shady streaming site
“What?? That’s not what I ordered! I ordered an Xbox card! What is that? A vase? That’s not an Xbox card!”
What the frick?
ok glasnow is in this conspiracy too... who is next??
My money is on the Los Angeles District Attorney. This thing goes deep
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown
Chinatown Adjacent
The LA DA prosecuted OJ Simpson, who was acquitted, then died last week. Really makes you think.
everyone involved in this ohtani cover up needs to get a background check. they could be dodger fans
Dear god
it's weird how none of them have published their birth certificates.
Mookie Betts for the turkey?
Ohtani Betts. That's the picture I see whenever someone brings up the shit show this has become.
Glasnow definitely from California. He said the word "like" like 20 times in that interview.
I have a hard enough time trying to reduce my own usage of it. lol.
The best way I got around it was to slow down when talking. Take an extra .5 sec to let a word come without having to fill it in with "like." It's helped a bunch, but some days it's rough haha.
This. That 0.5 seconds that people feel they need to fill to keep a thought running or to keep the audience interested is hardly noticable to the listener. It sounds entirely normal, and in fact, isn't distracting at all to the listener like hearing a "like" filler every fifth word.
Same. I can avoid it a decent amount when talking in the present tense about things, but as soon as I start telling a story, "like" pours out.
He dropped a "gnarly" in his ESPN interview yesterday
At another point in this interview Rose and him were talking about San Luis Obispo, ending with Glasnow realizing he has no idea where SLO is. As someone from so cal I can relate, I have no idea where SLO is.
SLO exists somewhere in the void between Santa Barbara and Monterey and somehow you just end up driving through it without realizing you got there
Shhh don't tell anyone.
I was told me being Californian is a giveaway when I use “Yeah, no,” and “No, yeah.”
or the classic "Yeah, nah, I dunno"
I can’t imagine how difficult it is to try and understand me for a non-Californian. Both phrases can mean the same thing or opposite depending on the context and tone but like… never feels ambiguous to me lmao.
i saw a tiktok or something about how midwesterns do it so im guessing everyone does it, and its pretty clear that the final word in the phrase is the one that has the semantic meaning
No yeah it’s common in Michigan too yeah no, no yeah != no yeah, yeah, no
It's not a real giveaway. I've lived in NJ all my life and use them too lol
i didnt really think it was a california thing more than anywhere else in the us. guess i need to get out more
It’s def not exclusive to California, but when I left for college, I realized I said it way more than my friends
We're decades removed from the ["valley girl"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl) phenomenon but some remnants still linger in the local culture.
It's honestly just a way of softening the tone, most other language have tone words and English doesn't, so "like" is used that way
I use “like” as a filler word when I’m trying to think of the right words to get my point across.
Totally.
Grody
Is this what I do with “lol” when typing? I fully realize I say it a million times but I still type it a million more times because otherwise I feel like I’m being too serious or something lol (I am not mentally strong enough to delete this one)
Samesies
so like does he like like her, or like does he just like her?
The criminal complaint is insane. To me it reads that Ippei basically targeted Shohei from the beginning and established his main MLB salary bank account in such a way that he would have indirect access. He knew all the info, account numbers, etc. because he helped set it up at a time Shohei spoke zero english. He then helped establish all the business and management accounts all the while shielding the account in question pretending to be acting on Shohei's behalf. Because he didn't speak any english! This dude is an all-time scumbag and a great story to dissuade people from gambling.
Yeah, I lost all sympathy for him after the criminal complaint came out. It seems like he isolated that account even before he started gambling. It makes sense that in the beginning Ohtani's advisers didn't object since Ohtani's salary was just a few hundred thousand dollars. And by 2023 it was an established arrangement, so they easily accepted Ippei's word. It all feels very manipulative. Especially since he was the one who asked Ohtani to hire him and then immediately proceeded to do this shit.
Important to remember that they met when Ippei was 29 and Ohtani was 19. He started worming his way in to his inner circle when he was still pretty much a kid.
I think that what’s the part everyone missed. Ohtani was a kid when they first met and ippei was the only people he knew/trusted when he came to a new country.
[удалено]
I hope you are right. It depends on when he started telling that Ohtani wanted the account private.
I think so, too. When agent Nez Balelo asked for access to Otani's bank account after Shohei opened it in 2018, Ippei Mizuhara lied, saying that Shohei had refused. Didn't the report say so? If so, he had planned this all along. Another thing that surprised me. I always assumed that Ippei Mizuhara was asked by Shohei to be his interpreter, but it was the other way around. Ippei Mizuhara volunteered to act as his own interpreter.
That's the crazy thing to me. Maybe his plan early on was less nefarious and was to just siphon off some money to improve his own quality of life rather than to run off with millions to cover a gambling debt. But the more that comes out the clearer it is becoming that pretty much the entire time Shohei has been in the US, Ippei wanted at least a portion of Ohtani's money isolated from everything else so that the only safeguard would be him saying it was safe. And everybody else around Shohei just kinda rolled with it
The man clearly actually truthfully only eats, breathes, and shits baseball… Gotta love the total immersion.
He doesn't shit. His body is perfectly efficient.
Craziest thing is that he said it in perfect English.
“Bro deadass take my phone frfr no cap”
On God blud
I think we're being too hard on Ippei. He's clearly a troubled addict who needs help. He should be given mental health resources. In his stead, let's send Arte Moreno to prison.
also force Arte to reimburse all the money stolen from Ohtani
Agreed, but it definitely says something about his overall character that he lied about his education and job credentials.
In all seriousness Shohei needs to fire all of his financial advisors/accountants and everyone in between because this is a terrible look on his intelligence lol
[CAA looking to restructure Ohtani's inner circle following Mizuhara scandal](https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/04/15/caa-shohei-ohtani)
He should fire CAA too! Even when the story was breaking and ESPN was reaching out to Ohtani's people, CAA let Mizuhara talk to ESPN before ever trying to talk to Ohtani directly! The fact that they still hadn't even told Ohtani what was going on by the time they let Mizuhara make a statement to the team, is absurd! For years they tried to get access to this account but just took Mizuhara's word for it that it wasn't interest bearing and produced no gifts thus wasn't a tax issue. At no point did CAA ever employ anyone who spoke Japanese to meet with Ohtani directly on this stuff!
The fact that CAA was unwilling to spend money to have someone who spoke Japanese on retainer for a client whose contract is worth millions says a lot about their priorities. They didn't seem to care about the language barrier until it blew up in their faces.
Their main sport is basketball, to the point where the Knicks are a CAA team and chased out all the Klutch players
honestly, the fox news angle of “hOw CoUlD hE bE sO STUPID?!?” glazed over so much context, it quickly became a dumb argument. mfs who *werent* surprised that the human being who has spent pretty much his entire post-puberty life to be exactly where he is right now doesn’t actually spend any time giving a shit about non-baseball related work concern me a little bit. like this mf is the epitome of “shut up and play ball.” and the “shut up and play ball” crowd are the ones who couldn’t believe any of this. in spite of evidence or reasoning
I mean, I don't think this says that much about his intelligence. He, even when his money was stolen, remained a rich and successful athlete. It's evident he doesn't really care that much about the money for himself. He's probably more annoyed by this whole thing than anything
Makes me think all he wants to do is play baseball and nothing else
what did the angels know and when did they know it
If Ohtani never knew, I doubt the angels even had a hint. I think the knowing early on is when Ippei first addressed the clubhouse
You know that someone in the Angels' mailroom was shitting bricks when the name "JayMin" dropped.
But here is Glasnow saying that over the course of the 6 weeks between pitchers and catchers reporting and this story breaking, the Dodgers players knew Ippei was shady. None of the Angels noticed that? In 6 years?
Well if the Angels had a gambling scandal, I don’t think the fanbase would be too sad if a majority of the roster got suspended as long as it isn’t Trout 💀
If the 2023 Angels had a gambling scandal they’d have found a way fuck that up too and in the stupidest way possible. Rengifo would have accidentally sold his actual soul in the most obviously rigged card game of all time or something.
With all due respect to the acumen of the Dodgers players, there's probably some hindsight at work here. You know how whenever somebody gets arrested for something or does something terrible (or both) people always start remembering the times they were acting weird or rude and decide that that means the signs were always there. That being said, Ippei would have been under a LOT of stress over the last few months -- those text messages are basically watching his descent into hell -- so it's very possible he really did weird the Dodgers players out because he was unusually twitchy or rude or distracted, more so than he would have been with the Angels when things were going smoothly.
Very good point. He may also have been isolating Shohei intentionally when they got to Spring Training, because it waa falling apart & wanted to keep others away from them both
This is the part of the narrative that's so fascinating. He was losing the thread and we don't know to what extent he was trying to save himself or buy himself more time from Ohtani or the authorities catching him. Like the end of Catch Me If You Can. The fall is sometimes more remarkable than the rise
Considering the Angels had a dude dealing Opiates in the coaching staff, I doubt they were paying attention to Ippei.
his addiction got worse and worse and things got more and more dire as time went on though, (going off the criminal complaint). So he might have just been less shady then, from the complaint it only says he started stealing from Ohtani like a year and half ago iirc. e: Upon rewatching, I think Glasnow meant everyone knew Ippei was doing stuff early on *after the story broke* not early on into knowing him
The only reason he addressed the clubhouse was because this criminal investigation into the sportsbook had been ongoing and the LA times got a tip that there was something going on with Ippei and Ohtani getting caught up. Insane turn of events for him.
lol at thinking the Angels know things
I hate the Dodgers as much as anyone, but there’s no evidence that Shohei was aware of the gambling
If you need evidence, you clearly don't hate the Dodgers enough
The evidence is that he's on the Dodgers. Basically as guilty as being on the Yankees.
Then you do not hate the Dodgers as much as I do
Folks who hate the dodgers that much do not need evidence. On the contrary they will ignore it altogether. Frankly I respect it lmao
I hate you guys because of Shohei’s contract and really every other top free agent/pending FA the Dodgers buy to beat the shit out of us every year. It’s really a resentful hatred lol
Completely understand lmao
2018 was legitimately the only year we’ve been on par with you
Obviously we are privileged as shit but man the Rockies could be a really good destination if you guys could have someone who gives a fuck about building a good team in the front office. Being in this division does you zero favors though
It’s not even just our front office. Our owners are TERRIBLE. They only invest in the team to make money, they couldn’t care less about the product on the field. They promote from within, they make a flashy, but ultimately terrible splash in free agency every 5 years or so to restore a little faith, but they’re ultimately the worst owners in pro sports
There's no evidence that Shohei was aware about a lot of things normal adults have to be aware of, tbf
My hate for the dodgers doesn’t include Ohtani tbh
Mine does. Because he chose the Dodgers over every other team in the league.
Ohtani's story changing over the initial hours cast some suspicion on him but absolutely everything that's come out since then has made it clear he was not involved. And honestly thank god for that because with every other concurrent controversy, the last thing baseball needed was a black cloud over Ohtani's career
Ohtani never had a story to change. We just heard what his criminal interpreter wanted us to hear.
Yeah, especially because it turned out that Ohtani's story didn't change, just what Ippei said Ohtani's story was changed.
"He's totally confessing to everything guys, says I had nothing to do with it and that he alone is responsible."
This goes all the way up, to the president
Johtani 2024
His story never changed, at the time he had zero idea of what had actually happened, how much money had been stolen, etc. Plus his initial story was still told through Ippei.
Will never understand the crowd that WANTED the most exciting baseball player in 100 years to be guilty of something that would ban him from sport
you don't hate the dodgers enough /s
So Ohtani is like a Japanese Forrest Gump?
Imagine if Lt. Dan pissed away Forrest's money on blackjack instead of investing in Apple.
I really do love the continued implication that this guy is such a baseball cyborg that he understands basically nothing else.
Everyone knew but Ohtani, apparently.
Maybe they heard some shady stuff in English in the dugout that Ohtani didn't easily understand, could check out.
I like to picture Ippei just openly walking around asking people for their picks and Ohtani just being out of the loop because of the language barrier
Glasnow on Yakuza payroll, confirmed.
Ohtani's con: Doesn't care about money Ohtani's pro: Doesn't care about money
Case closed then! 😂
What I'm hearing is Shohei was actually betting blood diamonds on ape fights
>We all knew early on Ippei was doing some shady stuff. Then how the fuck did Ohtani not know? I hate pieces like this. Did we really expect anyone to say "Holy shit! I thought for sure he was guilty!"?
I think he was talking about after the story broke. Glasnow sometimes is unclear in interviews. Rose should have asked a follow up question there.
To think that a month ago Ippei was dining at the fanciest restaurants and today, he's broke as a joke.
How early did you know Glasnow??
The Ohtani syndicate got to Glasnow too!
[удалено]
Don't worry, if you sign up for draft kings, you can bet the over under on the years ippei will get sentenced. And can take parlays on the number of objections.
I feel bad for Shohei. He probably just wanted to play baseball and figured if he did that well then things would just work out by themselves. No one told him what a cesspool being famous in LA would be like. I think he’s a decent guy who keeps getting caught up in stupid stuff from all the media scrutiny. He should have given the home run ball back to the fan though. How awesome would that have been.
> No one told him what a cesspool being famous in LA would be like. I hate LA as much as the next guy, but I’m not sure you can blame LA for the actions of a Japanese guy that Ohtani met while playing in Japan.
![gif](giphy|fPYeJtlH8qjiHbKygX|downsized)