Free Friday: Ohtani, March Madness, J.D. Martinez and More
All your reminders, right up front:
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Several of you have asked about the benefits of becoming a Season Ticket Holder. Well, two things: (1) We’re bringing back Brilliant Reader Questions after the season begins, and you’ll be first in line to ask questions; and, (2) Big one: You will get an early signed copy of WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL before just about anybody else. I’m also trying to create a special online Season Ticket community, which I’ll get into later.
I’m heading to Cincinnati on Saturday. I’ll be at Joseph-Beth Booksellers at 7 p.m. Saturday evening, and accepting my third (third!) CASEY Award for best baseball book of the year on Sunday at 2 p.m.
A Shohei Update
There actually isn’t much of an update yet—nobody, and I mean nobody is talking—but it does appear that Shohei Ohtani’s folks are now fully behind the story that Ohtani’s longtime friend and interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, stole at least $4.5 million in order to pay off illegal gambling debts.
How they got to this story is still very much in doubt. It’s either the public relations catastrophe of all time or an attempt to cover up something (or, alas, both).
To briefly recap: Mizuhara got himself embroiled in the federal investigation of Matthew Bowyer, an alleged bookmaker in Southern California. It is illegal to bet in California—one of the few places left in America where betting is illegal—and Mizuhara says he bet millions with Bowyer on soccer, the NFL, the NBA and college football. (“I never bet on baseball,” he insists.)
Why Bowyer kept staking Mizuhara—a well-paid interpreter, but an interpreter just same—millions of dollars is obviously a big question, one of many.
When the news was about to break, an Ohtani spokesperson—in an apparent effort to get ahead of the story—made an at-risk Mizuhara available for an in-depth interview with ESPN. I simply cannot imagine ANY public relations decision that could have been more self-destructive. The best-case scenario here is that the spokesperson and Ohtani himself were simply duped by Mizuhara (who was, by all indications, fully trusted and as close to Ohtani as anybody) and that they simply didn’t understand the ramifications here.
Mizuhara said that (a) he didn’t realize that what he was doing was illegal and he would never do it again, and (b) Ohtani generously had paid off his gambling debts and had nothing to do with any gambling himself.
Once again, we are at a crossroads: Either Mizuhara lied to cover up that he had actually stolen the money from Ohtani, or said what he said because he believed it would exonerate his friend Shohei.
Either way, Ohtani’s lawyers caught wind of this and, basically, yeah, freaked out. Because whatever Mizuhara’s motivation, if Ohtani paid off illegal gambling debts, even if out of the goodness of his heart, he’s in real legal jeopardy. I spoke with a lawyer on Thursday who told me, point blank, that Ohtani’s motives are not material here; you can’t give millions of dollars to an illegal bookie for gambling debts, even if they aren’t your own.
Mizuhara’s story was immediately reversed, Shohei’s lawyers said that he was a victim of massive theft, and on Thursday the workings of a plausible storyline, in which Ohtani trusted Mizuhara too much and was not aware of what was going on, was floated. ESPN reported that Ohtani’s people have asked enforcement officials to investigate Mizuhara’s theft, though I’ve not seen that confirmed.
So what can we make of any of this?
Well, there are three problems (at least) with trying to get to the bottom of this now:
Nobody’s talking yet. Not Ohtani, not the Dodgers, not MLB, not anybody.
My friend Dan, a renowned crisis manager, has come up with a long list of rules and guidelines for dealing with crises, one that I think would make for an incredible book, and one of those guidelines is: “Early facts are ALWAYS wrong.” The key word there (based on capitalization) is “ALWAYS.” In his long career of countless cases, Dan says the early facts are—in important ways—always, always, always proven to be inaccurate.
Every statement that’s coming out now, every single one, seems conveniently pointed toward the exoneration of Ohtani. Every one. It’s uncanny. Someone leaks that Mizuhara definitely did not bet on baseball. Someone leaks that Ohtani’s people are turning investigators loose on Mizuhara for theft. Someone leaks that Ohtani didn’t even understand what Mizuhara was saying until Mizuhara apologized to the team for his gambling addiction. Multiple sources say Ohtani does not gamble. A source says that Bowyer, despite using Ohtani’s name to boost business, never asked any questions about Ohtani’s involvement.
I want all of these things to be true because I love Shohei Ohtani, just like so many baseball fans do, and I want this story to go away as quickly and painlessly as possible. And, yeah, all of those things might be true. But I’m just not sure life is ever quite that convenient or neat. Just as one example, if Mizuhara really stole $4.5 million from Ohtani, how could he possibly have thought he would get away with telling ESPN in an expansive interview that Ohtani gave him the money out of friendship? Does that make any sense to you? Was it just a moment of panic? Can a moment of panic explain something like this?
Here’s something else to think about: If Ohtani really did pay off Mizuhara’s gambling debt out of the goodness of his heart, and then he unleashes a false investigation about Mizuhara stealing the money, well, then this thing could go REALLY bad.
Sadly, I don’t think this story will go away, because there are just too many unanswered questions and bizarre allegations and cavernous leaps of faith. It has unfolded in such a way that, let’s be honest, you have an opinion about what really happened, I have an opinion about what really happened, everybody has an opinion about what really happened. When there’s that sort of uncertainty and curiosity in the air, the fire of the story will continue to burn. It’s the last thing that baseball needs. But here we are…
Happy Friday! Our Friday posts are free so everyone can enjoy them. Just a reminder that Joe Blogs is a reader-supported newsletter, and I’d love and appreciate your support. And here’s 20% off for Opening Day!
March Madness
It stupefies me—truly stupefies me—how little I know about men’s college basketball now. I used to live it, breathe it, think about it constantly. I became a North Carolina fan when I was 14 (our family had just moved to Charlotte and I was ordered by classmates to choose an ACC team), and I can regale you with hours and hours of talk about the ACC in the 1980s. I wrote extensively about Cincinnati and Xavier and Kentucky in the mid-1990s and have enough Bob Huggins and Skip Prosser and Rick Pitino stories. Then I spent more than a decade writing about Kansas and Missouri and Kansas State, I went to a dozen Final Fours, I jousted with Bob Knight, I spent hours just shooting the breeze with Roy Williams and Bill Self and Dean Smith and Dick Vitale and John Wooden and Jerry Tarkanian and John Chaney; college basketball was just a huge part of my life.
I have watched, perhaps, a total of nine minutes of men’s college basketball since October.
I don’t say this with any pride; I don’t know exactly why men’s college basketball faded from my life (I keep saying “men’s” because I HAVE watched a bit of women’s college basketball, particularly Caitlin Clark). I sort of miss it. But then, if I really did miss it, I would go back to watching, wouldn’t I? I didn’t watch one second of Thursday’s March Madness action. When our younger daughter called me to ask for help in filling out her bracket, I said that she would be better off just guessing on her own. This was true even when I was a pseudo-expert in the sport. Now, though, I know absolutely nothing.
I don’t think any other sport has so completely and utterly disappeared from my life—though golf, since the whole LIV fiasco, is getting there. I suppose the older we get, the shorter the time feels, and the more emphasis you put on how to spend that time. Being honest, we’re on season 2 of “Friday Night Lights,” and even though that show is like really old, I’m still more curious about how this whole Landry thing will work out than whether Connecticut or someone else wins it all. I wonder if that college hoops torch will ever get relit.
Hey, if you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends!
Mets Sign J.D. Martinez (and Other Stuff)
I put the Mets at No. 18 in my list with a predicted 80-82 record. I can’t decide if their signing of J.D. Martinez changes that dynamic in any meaningful way. And the answer, surprisingly (at least to me) is: Yeah, maybe. I already had the Mets right around .500—it wouldn’t surprise me if they went 84-78 or 78-84. Well, 84-78 might put them in the playoffs, and Martinez—who slugged .572 with 33 home runs in just 113 games last year—absolutely could help them get there. That seems to me a pretty good signing…
Speaking of "pretty good signings,” are the Yankees going to close the deal on Jordan Montgomery already? It seems like everybody has been predicting that for weeks, especially since Gerrit Cole’s injury, and I mean the season is about to get started, so let’s go already… So the Dodgers and Padres split the first two games of the season, both were sloppy free-for-alls, but the important thing is that Mookie Betts leads the league in hitting (.667), home runs (1), RBIs (7), total bases (10) and adjusted OPS+ (365). It will be interesting to see if he can maintain that pace.…
On Tuesday, Keith O’Brien’s excellent book, Charlie Hustle, will come out (and if you’re an audiobook person, this one is narrated by none other than the love of my life, Ellen Adair!). The book is really good, even if you are not endlessly fascinated by Rose. But so many of you ARE endlessly fascinated by Rose, and for you, this book will be like a trip to Disneyland…
While on the book tour, Brilliant Readers have been giving me gifts—which is just so kind—and one of those gifts was a copy of the 1947 book, Judge Landis and 25 Years of Baseball, by J.G. Taylor Spink. I’ll probably have a longer post about the book at some point after we get all the previews done (we’ll also be bringing back the Fame 50 list), but I did want to point out this passage, which might resonate a bit:
“[Landis] came to hate professional gamblers, or bookmakers, with a hatred which amounted almost to an obsession. … “Those wormy, crawly creatures once befouled and almost ruined this great game we all love,” he said with a depth of feeling.
Best Team Nicknames
Thank you all for playing Tom Tango’s Most Outstanding Team Nickname game. I’ll do a full post on this, too, in the near future, but for now, the best nicknames in sports, according to you, are:
Pittsburgh Steelers
San Francisco 49ers
Toronto Maple Leafs
Milwaukee Brewers
Philadelphia 76ers
Boston Celtics
Detroit Pistons
Baltimore Orioles
Green Bay Packers
I do think all of those are great nicknames. But I have some other thoughts, too. I’ll save them for the bigger post.
JoeBlogs Week in Review
Monday: No. 22: Miami Marlins and No. 21: Boston Red Sox.
Tuesday: No. 20: Milwaukee Brewers.
Wednesday: No. 19: Cincinnati Reds.
Thursday: Sports + Gambling Is Usually a Bad Bet and No. 18: New York Mets.
Maybe they can suspend Ohtani indefinitely and then Draft Kings can take over/under bets on how long the suspension will last. I hate to be snarky here, bit when you choose to dance with the devil, you shouldn't be surprised when your pants end up on fire.
As someone a few years younger than Joe who also followed college hoops closely in the 1980’s and eventually reached the point where I barely know who’s coaching where or in which conference, let alone the players, I think you can still enjoy the tournament in isolation.
I sat down yesterday and watched Oakland - Kentucky. The game was compelling in itself - the small school that had never won a tournament game other than a play in game against a third seeded blue blood big school. You had one of the Oakland players draining 10 three pointers, some clutch shots at the end, a struggling free throw shooter at the line late. It didn’t matter to me that I had almost no context - the story pulled me in. Much like many of Joe’s posts, even when they’re about a sport I don’t follow.