Pete Rose is not Shohei Ohtani. Not yet, anyhow.
For starters, Rose has the most hits of any major league player (4,256), whereas Ohtani’s 684 career hits are minuscule in contrast.
The fact that Ohtani hasn’t been charged with baseball betting or any betting at all is more relevant to the news cycle. In 1989, Commissioner Bartlett Giamatti (yep, Paul’s father) famously banned Rose from baseball for life after finding that Rose had placed bets on big league games both as a manager and as a player.
Rose, eighty-two, is still well-liked by his supporters, but his efforts to be reinstated have not succeeded. In addition, he cannot enter the Hall of Fame.
See also: The interpreter is accused of “massive theft” by Shohei Ohtani’s lawyers, which is connected to alleged gambling.
The 29-year-old Ohtani doesn’t seem to be in any danger. But the new Dodgers superstar was dangerously linked to a gambling business, as The Times first revealed. Ippei Mizuhara, his longtime friend and interpreter, was accused by his lawyers of committing a “massive theft” of Ohtani’s money, which was allegedly used to settle millions of dollars in gambling debts that Mizuhara owed to a bookmaker.
By allowing Mizuhara to speak with ESPN over the phone on Tuesday, Ohtani’s representatives attempted to create confusion. During the interview, Mizuhara claimed that Ohtani cleared his debts from gambling by sending money transfers to a bookmaker. Ohtani’s representatives denied Mizuhara’s testimony and the claimed theft a day later. On Wednesday, Mizuhara was let go by the Dodgers.
“I want everyone to know Shohei had zero involvement in betting,” Mizuhara stated during the 90-minute interview, according to ESPN.
Continue reading: An overview of the Shohei Ohtani interpreter gambling scandal
But if Ohtani paid off Mizuhara’s gambling debt, he might have been breaking the law, says I. Nelson Rose, an expert on gaming law and an emeritus professor at Whittier College.
“If he paid the debt knowing it was for illegal gambling, there is the potential for fairly serious federal penalties,” Rose stated. According to a federal statute, you are effectively operating a gambling business if you assist an illegal gambling operator in collecting debts. If he was merely assisting a friend, he was aware of this.
Rule 21, which is posted in both English and Spanish in every clubhouse and signed by every player annually, forbids gambling by MLB players. The rule covers a wide range of misbehavior, such as when a player doesn’t give it their all, when they provide a present to a rival player or an umpire, and when they physically harm another player or umpire.
