If I had $5 from every Giants fan who is convinced that Ohtani is guilty, I could probably retire, or at least afford playoff tickets.
I’m not asking for pure journalistic integrity. I hate the Yankees and Cardinals with a passion, but I’m capable of having a rational discussion about them. Letting fandom poison your OP is a disservice to a really interesting discussion and important* topic.
“important” insofar as baseball happenings can be
Baseball isn’t a matter of life or death. It’s more important than that.
IMHO, it’s important to separate the players from the partisan fandom. I hate the Red Sox reflexively, but Perdro Martinez is one of my favorite players of all-time.
I’m neutral on the Dodgers, but who doesn’t enjoy watching this guy? The term ‘generational player’ gets tossed around too much, but it applies here. I wouldn’t experience schadenfreude if Ohtani went down in flames; I’d feel sad for the loss, and the sport in general.
I never like Pedro, but I had the utmost respect for Yaz.
I got it and thought it was hilarious.
After all this time here, I hope my understanding of Japanese culture and corporate culture is adequate, and I agree completely with this.
Resignations actually are a way of avoiding taking responsibility by the organization by implying that it was a particular individual’s fault, even if they had nothing to do with whatever happened. Essentially, it’s simply a method used to end controversies.
Something happens. Someone resigns and “takes responsibility.” The organization doesn’t answer any more questions from the press about the incident.
Japanese people often find this annoying as, more often than not, organizations will then not take any further steps for reforming problems.
This article, in Japanese, suggests that Harasawa was already in the dog house and had been removed from his duty as GM in May of that year. It’s not hard to see how this was a convenient time to dump him for good.
Anyone who pays $15,000 for a signed Ohtani foul ball* is beyond enjoyment and into bizarre worship.
*the at-bat resulting in the foul ball ended in a strikeout.
**the Dodgers falling short of a championship would not bother me.
All professional athletes and teams have their irrational fans, as well as fans with more money than they know what to do with. Ohtani’s irrational fans are at least irrational fans of a really extraordinarily great player.
I dont get why people would think he’d take a chance betting in the first place I mean he knew he had teams wanting to throw insane money at him for years … I mean 400k isn’t anything to sneeze at but when you’re going to make 40 mil +
It would take a crippling addiction to short-circuit critical thinking that badly I would think anyways
I do.
So does Otani’s former manager, Joe Maddon. Maddon thinks it’s more likely that Otani’s agent is somehow involved.
Looks like the Feds also believe Ohtani, based on the indictment released today. Apparently the actual amount of money stolen was over $16 million, and the indictment quotes numerous texts of the translator begging his bookie for more credit. So it looks like this is the best case scenario for Ohtani and MLB.
You lack the seething hatred of a Giants fan with half as many wins this season as the Dodgers.
While it does make you wonder how a man could have his bank accounts drained of $16 million without noticing… let’s be honest, the history of professional sports is rather full of athletes not really knowing what the hell is going on with their money, and often being swindled by the people who were supposed to be helping them.
The part that stands out to me, though, was that Ohtani’s salary while he was with the Angels was quite modest. Even with the Dodgers, his pay is being deferred, so he’s still only earning a small sum for now by sports standards. So $16 million would be a big chunk of that.
Anyhow, he probably earned big bucks in endorsements.
Big? Giganticly massive. Like $50 million/year.
No cite, but from what I’ve read Ohtani was particularly lax about managing his money, even compared to other athletes.
On a scale of Manti Teo fake girlfriend (“Sure, it looks like just an incredibly naive jock getting pranked by a pair of useless twerps, but what more is there to it? What more? What more? C’MON, THERE’S GOTTA BE SOMETHING, DAMMIT!!!”) to Michael Jordan gambling debts (“He’s $5,000 in debt to me, which I’ve decided to blab to the media with zero evidence instead of just demanding it from him, because that’s what you do in that situation! Wait, did I say $5,000? I meant $25,000! Wait, that’s still too low, I mean a hundred grand! No, two hundred grand! THREE HUNDRED! FIVE HUNDRED! FIVE HUNDRED AND A FERRARI!!!”), based on the available evidence…yeah, the needle’s pointing toward the first thing.
See, here’s the thing about vices (mine were video games and fast food): It takes a lot of time and effort to break them. You build such a strong attachment to them that even when they start causing real harm to you (among a myriad of other things, both of my vices have given me serious blood pressure issues), you don’t want to give them up. All I’m saying is, if Shohei Ohtani had a gambling problem to the point where he was blowing several million in a short time span, we’d be seeing it right now. There’s no way he’d be able to slam the brakes on such a runaway habit even if he wanted to.
Also…and this is sort of a parallel to the Jordan situation…if he did blow a huge chunk of cash on illegal betting, why haven’t there been any opportunistic slimeballs trying to turn a quick buck on that? This is America, dangit! Every time there’s the tiniest whiff of anything even remotely salacious, you can count on some chunk of gutter trash crawling out of the sewer to sell secrets, score a spot on a news show, publish a book, or plug an Instagram page. For that matter, where the hell are all the racists? I guarantee you that if a Japanese-born superstar on an MLB team got into any real trouble, Fox News would be running it into the freaking mantle.
I’m going with RickJay on this one. Yeah, I know, Occam’s Razor is the dullest tool in the shed, but we don’t have anything better.
At this point I, too, have come to the conclusion that Ohtani’s story is substantially true, mainly because the FBI seems to have come to that conclusion, and nobody involved appears to be the sort of clever master criminal who might be able to fool the Feds.