To do something that’s never been done

September 20, 2024 11:46 AM

On Thursday afternoon, (Shohei) Ohtani’s legend continued to grow as he wrote the next chapter of one of the best individual offensive seasons in Major League history with arguably the best single-game performance the sport has ever seen. In an otherworldly game in which he stole two bases and went 6-for-6 with a career-high three homers and 10 RBIs, Ohtani proved he’s in a class of his own once again, becoming the first player to hit 50 or more homers and steal 50 or more bases in a single season in Major League history. from Otherworldly Ohtani creates 50-50 club in a 6-for-6 game for the ages [MLB]
posted by chavenet (50 comments total)

What a season. He's amazing to watch. Topping it all off with a World Series win would be perfect.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:11 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

It's been pointed out that the fact that the Angels did nothing with Ohtani and Trout together showed how criminally mismanaged they were.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:11 PM on September 20 [10 favorites]

According to an Instagram reel he went 51/51. Also, they were playing the Marlins. In the NBA it is considered bad form to put on a show when you are crushing the other team. I love the unspoken rules of sports.
posted by mecran01 at 12:15 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

Yeah, Ohtani has 51 steals and 51 homers this year, after that game. So it's really the 51/51 club. And he's the only player who's a member. [Also, he'd probably have some pitching record too but he's ... recovering from major elbow surgery.]
posted by chavenet at 12:20 PM on September 20

Yeah, he's not able to do his main job, and he's still smacking around other teams with his bat of many tricks.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:24 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

Despite having lived in LA for more than half of my life, I still find it hard to cheer on the Dodgers, but I wholeheartedly want Ohtani to get a ring. The amazing part to me - his hitting isn't really all that different this year when he's not pitching as it usually is!

The Angels are a dumpster fire that should be thrown out of the MLB for wasting two generational talents. (Ok, A's first - then the Angels)

How can you not like a guy who trained his dog, Decoy, to "throw" out the first pitch?
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:30 PM on September 20 [3 favorites]

How can you not like a guy who...?


Well. For those unfamiliar, it kinda looks like Ohtani is gambling on baseball and is having his guy fall on his sword. I'm not trying to spoil the fun, 'cause I think Pete Rose was done dirty, I think the spit ball and its ilk ARE the fun part of baseball. It's a child's game played by often slimy old men. Get over it.

If you haven't looked around at the world of sports in TYOOLord 2024, we've fully incorporated as a global culture that sports are profitable and that means there's always more going on than fair competition. I just try to enjoy it.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 12:50 PM on September 20 [3 favorites]

Reasonably Everything Happens, everything I've read about the gambling scandal points to the translator being 100% guilty, and Ohtani's team of agents, managers, finance people, etc. being astoundingly negligent about letting it all unfold -- giving the translator way too much unchecked power, the ability to falsify Ohtani's approval to move money, etc. -- and precisely nothing being connected to Ohtani himself directing or even knowing about any of it. Do you have some different info? That article you link to says it's bad for baseball and nobody handled the communications aspect well, but it doesn't put any blame on Ohtani himself.
posted by BlahLaLa at 1:01 PM on September 20 [12 favorites]

He was 6 inches away from having a cycle as well. That attempt at a triple looked like Ohtani was gambling to get a cycle on a hit to the Left field.
posted by indianbadger1 at 1:16 PM on September 20 [3 favorites]

He had a game with 10 RBIs, 6 hits, 5 extra base hits, 3 home runs and 2 stolen bases. No other player in history has had all those accomplishments in a CAREER and he did it in 1 night.

Go Dodger Blue. Unfortunately I, afraid their pitching is so hurt that it’s going to take more nights somewhere close to this to go all the way.

Edit: I should note this is since RBIs became a stat in 1920, but given the dead ball era before that I doubt it ever happened (outside of Little League)
posted by jvbthegolfer at 1:30 PM on September 20 [3 favorites]

No other player in history has had all those accomplishments in a CAREER and he did it in 1 night.

Can you explain what you mean by that? How else could a person achieve this landmark, if not all in one night?
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:35 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

(Never mind. I think I get it now.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:39 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

RBIs have been calculated in the years before they became an official stat.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:28 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

Wow. I haven't followed baseball in awhile but I still remember the 40/40 club being a thing. Looking at it now, I recognize 4 of the 6 names because I saw Acuña getting hit by a pitch several years ago while randomly watching a game at a bar.

Now we're up to the 50/50 club? Wild. Go Ohtani!
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 2:32 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

All of this, and next year he will be resuming taking a regular turn on the mound, upon which he is also one of the very best pitchers alive.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:33 PM on September 20 [4 favorites]

Props to Schumaker for the Marlins’ part in making this happen.

"If it was a tight game, one-run lead or we're down one, I probably put him on," Schumaker said. "Down that many runs, that's a bad move baseball-wise, karma-wise, baseball god-wise. … I think out of respect for the game, we were going to go after him. He hit the home run. That's just part of the deal.”

posted by zamboni at 3:00 PM on September 20 [6 favorites]

Well. For those unfamiliar, it kinda looks like Ohtani is gambling on baseball and is having his guy fall on his sword. I'm not trying to spoil the fun, 'cause I think Pete Rose was done dirty, I think the spit ball and its ilk ARE the fun part of baseball. It's a child's game played by often slimy old men. Get over it.

Also quite different eras. Back in Pete Rose's day we didn't outright sanction ripping off the deluded the way we do now. MLB and and its network partners now take in billions from the $66 billion professional sports gambling racket. So moralizing about player behavior is policing marginalized millionaires while billionaires bankrupt us. Strange days.
posted by srboisvert at 3:24 PM on September 20 [5 favorites]

No other player in history has had all those accomplishments in a CAREER and he did it in 1 night.

Can you explain what you mean by that? How else could a person achieve this landmark, if not all in one night?

No player in their entire career has had 3 home runs in one game, 10 rbis in that game or another, 2 stolen bases in that game in any game, 5 extra base hits in some game and 6 hits in some game. He did it in one game while nobody else could take their best set of game numbers in all those categories and duplicate that.
posted by jvbthegolfer at 3:40 PM on September 20 [5 favorites]

For those unfamiliar, it kinda looks like Ohtani is gambling on baseball and is having his guy fall on his sword.

SSHHHHHH!! Quiet!! Shush! Shush! Let us enjoy one good thing in this world, forgodsakes!

I've been a Dodgers-hater for 30+ years (ever since moving to the SF Bay Area) but my wife is Japanese, and she adores him. We've been following him since long before the Dodgers acquired him, and we've watched him pitch and hit HRs at in-person games. It's nice to witness a piece of sports history like that. So I root for him personally at the same I root against his team haha.

The last time we saw him play in Oakland in August, the Dodgers were losing by 4 runs in the ninth inning when Ohtani was due to hit. We (and pretty much everyone sitting around us) agreed that it would be just fine if Ohtani hit a HR provided it was not a grand slam. Everyone was joking about it, but I was not. Lo and behold, he came to bat with two runners on, and he hit a 3-run homer. The Dodgers ended up losing by 1 run. In my own mind, it was quite possibly one of the most perfect endings to a game I've ever seen in person.

Now... I've also been in criminal law for most of my professional life. And years ago, I actually represented a very, very well known major league baseball player in a federal criminal trial. So I've got a little bit of insight into how these things work.

Here's the case that was filed against Mizuhara. The affidavit in support of the charges complaint is at the link.

The affidavit alleges the gambling activity went on from December 2021 until January 2024, with around 19,000 bets:

"Records reflect approximately 19,000 wagers between December 2021 and January 2024, and nearly 25 bets per day on average. The wagers reflected in the 35966 Records ranged in value from roughly $10 to $160,000 per bet, with an average bet amount of roughly $12,800. During this period, the 35966 Records reflect total winning bets of $142,256,769.74, and total losing bets of $182,935,206.68, leaving a total net balance of negative $40,678,436.94."

That affidavit provided grounds for a LOT of counts of bank fraud... And the dollar amounts involved are ginormous. The dollar amounts in a bank fraud case would be the main driver of the sentence ultimately imposed. If Mizuhara had actually been convicted of all this, he'd have been looking at decades in prison. And the affidavit makes it pretty clear the evidence of all this was very very solid.

Mizuhara ended up pleading guilty to two counts. He has yet to be sentenced, and we haven't seen the sentencing memorandums from the parties or a copy of the plea agreement. So we can't know exactly what his sentence will be, but my (very quick and superficial) run-through of the sentencing guidelines suggest he's probably looking at a sentence of about two to three years (e.g., 27 months to 37 months at an offense level of 18 or 19). This assumes he's got no criminal history (and I don't think he does).

That would be served in a minimum/low security federal penitentiary, and he'd have to serve at least 85% time. If he's sentenced on the low end of the range, he'd get out in less than two years.

So, is all this a whitewash? Well, listen. If I can overlook the fact that Ohtani's a Dodger, and enjoy watching him hit home runs while wearing a blue uniform, then surely the rest of you can overlook all this gambling nonsense.

So I say again, SHUSH!!!
posted by mikeand1 at 3:53 PM on September 20 [7 favorites]

I went from being very skeptical about Ohtani's claims of innocence regarding his translator's gambling to pretty much believing him. The idea that he was overly reliant on his translator, to the point of having him handle his banking, seems plausible. The guy used that access to pay off his debts, then spun a version of things where Shohei helped him out, assuming that as Shohei's sole point of interaction with English speakers, he could paint whatever picture he wanted.

But then, after the meeting where the translator told his version of events to the clubhouse, Ohtani knew at least enough English to sense the story didn't match what he had been told. (Essentially: he said I paid WHAT??!?) He contacted an outside translator to help him investigate what had actually been said, found out the truth, stopped relying on the guy as an intermediary and then cooperated to get the guy sent up. All of this is very plausible.

Gambling is disgusting. MLB is rotten with it. If you want to believe a conspiracy theory where the league covered up his gambling, okay. I can see how cynicism gets you there.

But I personally find Ohtani's account of things consistent and believable, and there does not seem to be any evidence that contradicts any of it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:04 PM on September 20 [12 favorites]

there does not seem to be any evidence that contradicts any of it.


Well, I suppose. HOWEVER (and mind you, I'm not saying this happened), if a large group of well-coordinated, highly motivated (to the tune of $700 million dollars) lawyers, PR professionals, and crisis-manager types jumped on it early enough, coming together from all sides, and the U.S. Attorney was willing to "play ball" (in a figurative sense, but also perhaps in a somewhat literal sense), and the parties were lucky enough not to have the case assigned to a judge who might raise an eyebrow at all this, then we would not expect there to be much evidence contradicting any of it.

None that was ever made public, anyway.

One of the take-home lessons I learned during my experience in that criminal case against the MLB players years ago is that there's often a ton of inside information and evidence completely hidden from the public and the media. The case I worked on was covered in newspapers on a daily basis. Watching all this happen and reading the news about it changed the way I understand news.
posted by mikeand1 at 4:18 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

Don't you find that the "a perfectly organized team of experts made it go all go away" theory to be a little weakened by having his translator present multiple, contradictory, inadvertently damning to Shohei stories to the press on his own?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:21 PM on September 20 [3 favorites]

a little weakened by having his translator present multiple, contradictory, inadvertently damning to Shohei stories to the press on his own?


All it means is that it wasn't handled absolutely perfectly, and that some of the people involved (who don't do PR and legal crisis management for a living) were not particularly sophisticated about how the world works.

Some such people probably thought it wouldn't look all that bad for Ohtani if he was just paying his interpreter's gambling debts for him.

I should add that I am speculating about all this, BTW. I'm not on the inside of this particular case, and I'm not privy to any of the non-public facts and evidence. I'm not claiming to know anything factually provable about it, just looking at it from my perspective and experience.

That is not something I myself would bet a lot of money on.
posted by mikeand1 at 4:26 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

I'm totally open to the idea that he did indeed gamble, I would just need more than MLB is up to its neck in gambling and people are trash as "evidence." Valid viewpoints, but crap as evidence goes.

At this point, I find "guy who only thinks about baseball didn't know his translator was a con artist" to be a more believable story than "midway through the investigation, his lawyers, the league, and the press colluded to wrap everything up airtight with zero leaks."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:28 PM on September 20 [8 favorites]

I also find the dismissal a lot of folks have (not here but in general) of his claims of being dependent on a translator, even years after coming to the US, to be problematic. At best, this is wholly ignorant of how difficult learning a second language can be and how easy it is to depend on a translator, and, to be frank, nakedly racist at worst.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:35 PM on September 20 [3 favorites]

People really really want to pin the gambling thing on Ohtani. It will be a point of contention until the end of his career and beyond. It is what it is.

Several MLB players from outside the US have said that their interpreters have a lot of control over even their daily lives. Pro athletes don't want to think about stuff like going grocery shopping or how to pay the water bill, especially if it's in another language. At the same time, several celebrities have been bilked out of more than Shohei by their own assistants/staff and not known a thing until said people got caught somehow.

Aside from taking money from his employer, Mizuhara was going through a bookie but doing so in a state that doesn't allow sports gambling.

Pete Rose actively bet on his own team. Perhaps the lifetime ban was harsh but since he is the only point of comparison (in baseball anyway, an NBA player just got banned for betting on himself) he gets his name in the papers.

Anyway, pretty much everyone in Japan doesn't care and if the Dodgers win a World Series with Shohei there they will be forever be Japan's favorite MLB team.
posted by LostInUbe at 4:41 PM on September 20 [4 favorites]

(Essentially: he said I paid WHAT??!?)


OK, but here's another reason why I don't find that plausible: TAXES.

Another one of the take-home lessons I learned during my time as a criminal defense attorney is that when it comes to damning evidence, 90% of the time it's in the tax returns. Seasoned criminals like Al Capone and Donald Trump knows this very well.

I've seen 'em come up right in the middle of trials for the first time. When I was clerking for a federal judge, I used to sit right next to her on the bench (she was physically disabled and could not walk, so she needed someone to help her manage the documents, etc.) We were watching some poor schmuck getting demolished on cross-examination by his own tax returns, and she leaned over and whispered to me. "Tax returns. It's always the tax returns that trips 'em up."

So, I'm guessing that Ohtani's tax returns (whether filed in Japan, the United States, or both) are a mite complicated. I kind of doubt he sits down each year with a messy box of papers and fills out the tax returns himself, or that he just downloads a copy of Turbo Tax like the rest of us. No way. He has a team of accountants (probably both Japanese and American) who have to sort through all his monetary activities dollar and cent.

So even if you think Ohtani himself was that clueless and naive, do you think the accountants he hired were?
posted by mikeand1 at 4:51 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

"At best, this is wholly ignorant of how difficult learning a second language can be and how easy it is to depend on a translator, and, to be frank, nakedly racist at worst."

I'm not inferring that this was aimed at me personally, but I just want to point out that I've been struggling to learn some basic Japanese for a couple years now. They say going from English to Japanese (and vice versa) is one of the hardest combos to learn. And every time we go to Japan, I'm pretty much 98% dependent on my wife to translate everything for me. So I'm super aware of all this myself.
posted by mikeand1 at 4:55 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

One bit of context that might help: in Japan, Ohtani is famous not just for being a transcendent baseball talent, but also for having absolutely no interest in the world outside of baseball. While playing in Japan, his parents handled his finances. He doesn’t drink (the way he held the champagne he was given, the way it pretty painfully looked like he had no interest in drinking it, but understood what he was expected to do, and the downing of it to get it out of the way was, to me, pretty apparent), and just doesn’t really do anything other than baseball. In Japan at least, people saw the gambling thing as Mizuhara not only betraying trust, but also taking advantage of someone painfully naive in doing so.

Aside from all that, best comment I’ve seen so far: Ohtani doing this in a rehab season really makes pitchers who miss a whole year after Tommy John surgery look like lazy slobs.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:55 PM on September 20 [5 favorites]

The taxes were how Mizuhara was caught.

Not only that, but among his charges was one count of filing a fraudulent tax return on Ohtani's behalf.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:57 PM on September 20 [7 favorites]

Well we can wait to see the details of the plea agreement when it gets publicly filed (they'll have to include a factual basis for the plea), but I'd be flabbergasted if the story is that Ohtani hired Mizuhara as his one and only accountant in addition to being his interpreter. I know he was heavily dependent on Mizuhara for all kinds of things, but...
posted by mikeand1 at 5:04 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

Ohtani also came to the US before he would have had the right to come as a free agent. He did this simply because he wanted to play in MLB as soon as possible. It cost him hundreds of millions of dollars. He didn't care. He only cared about baseball. Also that famous "$700MM contract" with the Dodgers has so much deferred money, its actual value is more like $486MM. A lot of money! But it's believed to be $65-115MM less than the highest offer.

So to believe he gambles, you'd have to believe a guy who has walked away from an extra nine figures twice and famously doesn't care about any sport (or anything) other than baseball is also greedily placing illegal bets left and right on multiple other sports to make a few extra bucks.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:07 PM on September 20 [4 favorites]

For a lot of problem gamblers, it's not a matter of greed at all.

BTW, I should add, even if one assumes (and I do not) that Ohtani was the one with the gambling problem, I still think that what he is doing as an athlete is downright superhuman, and I still love watching him play.
posted by mikeand1 at 5:11 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

mikeand1, to go back a few posts -- from what I've read, it seems the #1 problem was that Ohtani's professional team was explicitly not a mix of Americans and Japanese. It was Americans + the translator. Everything was going through the translator, both to and from Ohtani. Which gave the guy the extraordinary power to do and say whatever he wanted. Every email, every phone call, every document, right through his hands. And the guy had balls -- that last moment before he got fired, when he addressed the Dodgers with Ohtani *right there next to him* and lied his ass off? Ohtani understood enough of it, though, and the jig was up.

Still, I've read a good takedown of the agent, manager, accountant, etc. - can't find it now but I think it's also in the LA times. They were massively stupid about how they ran his team.
posted by BlahLaLa at 5:23 PM on September 20 [3 favorites]

Here's a story about Shohei Ohtani that Rob Lowe told. Lowe was taken by a friend into the LA clubhouse and met Shohei. This being hours before game time, he was not fully dressed. He had on his uniform shirt with gym shorts and sandals.

Lowe asked if they could take a picture together. Shohei said sure, but asked for a few minutes. He put on his cup, his pants, his socks, his stirrups, his belt, his cleats, and his hat.

Lowe said he didn't need to do all of that. Shohei said that he is a professional baseball player and he should present himself as such when photographed.

That is... a fairly striking picture of who he is and how he sees the game.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:27 PM on September 20 [4 favorites]

I have to go so I'm going to stop running my mouth in this thread, but one parting thought: If there are journalists out there looking for a source, I'm going to hazard a guess that one person who might be pretty miffed about how it's all playing out is Mr. Chris Seymour, Special Agent, Internal Revenue Service.

I'm guessing Mr. Seymour probably did See More, and that the hundreds of hours he put into the case might've given him a small sense of ownership in it.
posted by mikeand1 at 5:34 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

One thing that people rarely talk about: In 2015 - 2016, near the beginning of Shohei's career at Nippon Ham, there was a gambling scandal in NPB that led to the suspension of several Yomiuri Giants pitchers and the resignation of some executives. In the wake of the scandal I believe teams had to implement more anti-gambling lectures etc for their players.
posted by LostInUbe at 7:08 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

Here's the Slate article that breaks down how Ohtani's whole team facilitated the translator's crimes:

"Ohtani believed that his financial team was effectively monitoring his assets. But that became difficult given the translator’s perch as the one guy in the story speaking two languages. According to the federal complaint, Mizuhara shielded details about the account in question from Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo, telling Balelo that Ohtani wanted the account to be private and unmonitored by his team. Nobody broke down the language firewall between Ohtani and his money people. Only Mizuhara was positioned to do that, and he was the guy stealing Ohtani’s money and sending it to an unlicensed bookmaker."
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:47 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

Just dropping back in for a sec to point out the info here.

So the story is that the accountants (K.F.) asked what the hell is going on, and Ohtani and Mizuhara were supposed to meet with them, but Mizuhara showed up and said S.O. was sick and couldn't make it, but they, this bank account is "private", so you can't look at it.

Ok... While it's not impossible that an accounting firm would have gone along with that, they would've been exposing themselves to serious civil and criminal liability if they did. Now I've also represented multiple accountants in tax fraud cases, and, tax fraud happens, but if that was what happened here, then K.F. should be facing charges too. Maybe they are, I don't know, but a journalist would want to look into that.

Also, Mr. Bowyer hasn't been sentenced yet, but here's his plea agreement with the factual basis for it. Individual A is obviously Ohtani. But notice this excerpt:

"Individuals B and C were also clients of the Bowyer Gambling Business. Individual B was a professional baseball player for a Southern California baseball club. Individual C was a former minor league baseball player. Individuals B and C were also close friends. Individual B was assigned account number ending in x734 and placed bets with the Bowyer Gambling Business on basketball, football, and hockey. Individual C was assigned account number ending in x820 and placed bets with the Bowyer Gambling Business baseball, basketball, football, and hockey, which included bets on baseball games in which Individual B played."

Individual C might be Wayne Nix. I'm not sure who B might be, but somebody probably does.
posted by mikeand1 at 8:21 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

I’ve gambled on sports and know people who do so professionally. Everyone has a bookie and is cash only. Of course I haven’t seen that crazy amount. I’d look into golf or sports where it is easy to pay off the officials like WNBA. I have no inside information or else I wouldn’t post but it is really odd to bet on yourself doing well as you can’t control that. You take a flop. Not play the best baseball ever.
posted by geoff. at 8:27 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

Oh, Individual B is probably Yasiel Puig. Dodgers player before Ohtani arrived.
posted by mikeand1 at 8:52 PM on September 20 [2 favorites]

Ohtani Cashes In 50-Home-Run Futures Bet Ticket

sorry guys
posted by catcafe at 9:00 PM on September 20 [3 favorites]

People tried to connect bets to things like games where Ohtani got lit up as proof that it was he and not Ippei who was making the bets and Ippei was only the middle man. I believe we know that Ippei would bet on stuff like soccer as even he knew not to touch baseball.

In the case of Jontay Porter, the NBA player who got a lifetime ban, he was not betting on himself directly but was telling others to make certain prop bets like betting the under on how many shots he would make in a game by faking injuries so that he would never touch making those numbers.

Anyway, here's the Japanese call of Shohei making 50/50.

One way Japan Post tries to make money is selling limited run collectibles but way beyond just stamps. This is the current Ohtani offering. I'm looking forward to next year's line of 50/50 stuff.
posted by LostInUbe at 9:20 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

Ok, gambling derail aside - and seriously, have we not seen a shit ton examples of "speclialist" people getting taken advantage of? The one pro pitcher I know, who's made a gob smacking amount of money, was so damned focused on pitching (to the point of having to be on the spectrum because he's so awkward outside of that world) that he could have been taken advantage of even without the language barrier...

so... putting that aside...

What Ohtani did on the diamond yesterday was lights out one of the most impressive things ever on the field.

Willie Mays made "The Catch" 70 years before his death and it's half of what people talked about when passed this year. In terms of effort, this puts the Catch to shame (except in terms of importance to the game in play, which is really why the Catch stuck beyond athleticism)

All this makes me want to go watch "The Baseball Bunch" but that doesn't seem to be available.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:34 PM on September 20 [1 favorite]

Lots of great players have not been very lovable (Cobb/Ruth/Rose/Mantle/Maris/Bonds/McGuire/Arod/etc.), but Ohtani really is.

Baseball is so lucky to have him and has done very little to deserve that good fortune as far as I can tell.
posted by jamjam at 11:15 PM on September 20 [4 favorites]

Not a baseball comment, but I've lived in non English speaking countries (as an English speaker) for more than 20 years now, and I know tons of people who have been taken advantage of in similar situations. Not, obviously, to the extent of Ohtani, but I've known plenty of people who should have known better get ripped off just because they can't be bothered to worry.

And honestly I am annoyed by this derail of the post because Ohtani is on the way to being the best baseball player of all time and everyone her is focusing on a gambling scandal. I don't want to say it is racism, but I feel like if this was the reverse and it was Tom Selleck who had the same problem in Japan, we would be all over the translator.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:02 AM on September 21 [4 favorites]

Also if you are gambling on your own games and still have the kind of games that Ohtani does, well, you are obviously not taking dives.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:03 AM on September 21 [2 favorites]

From drewbage1847's link;

"That's a really sweat treat bag."
"That's a 700-million-dollar-man treat bag."

Cute dog.
posted by porpoise at 5:08 PM on September 21 [2 favorites]

My pet theory is that when Ohtani finishes his career, the Dodgers are not actually going to cut him checks for that deferred $680MM. I think they're going to make him a part owner.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:12 PM on September 23 [1 favorite]

Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout: Final At Bat in the USA vs. Japan 2023 WBC Championship

Top of the ninth, two outs, Japan leads USA 3-2.

0-0: 88 mph breaking ball misses low by ~6 inches
0-1: 100 mph swing-and-miss on fast ball down the middle
1-1: 100 mph ball misses outside by ~6 inches
2-1: 100 mph swing-and-miss on fast ball down the middle
2-2: 102 mph fast ball in the dirt
3-2: Swing-and-miss on a very uncharitable 87 mph slider after 4 straight 100 mph+ pitches. Ballgame.

Mike Trout has had 3 swinging strikes in only 24 of his 6,174 career MLB plate appearances. Trout didn't move on the two fast balls that missed.

Easily the best at-bat I've ever seen. The only way it could've been better would be if it was the bottom of the ninth and there was a runner on base so Trout could've won the game with a home run.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:42 PM on September 23 [1 favorite]