Among the many many oddities surrounding the playing scandal involving longtime interpreter and pal of Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, Ippei Mizuhara, is how rapidly the account of issues modified.
If the various storylines weren’t unusual sufficient, the reason revealed for the wishy-washy timeline solely makes issues weirder.
On Thursday, a supply near Ohtani gave ESPN’s Tisha Thompson a cause for the abrupt shift.
“As Ohtani’s handlers tried to find out what had occurred, they initially relied solely on Mizuhara, who continued to translate for Ohtani,” Thompson wrote.
The remark insinuates that Mizuhara, the important thing determine concerned, was the one Japanese speaker in Ohtani’s circle who might translate the main points of a particularly severe state of affairs. Whereas this may certainly be true, it is not exhausting to search out that element odd as nicely.
That additional tidbit is one among many who have surfaced over the 24 hours or so for the reason that story rocked the baseball world.
Initially, Mizuhara claimed in an interview with ESPN that Ohtani was conscious of his troubles and wired cash to a bookmaker to assist his buddy out. Then, as soon as phrase of Mizuhara’s firing emerged, his story modified.
All of a sudden, Ohtani had “no data” of his interpreter’s dealings. Moreover, he solely grew to become conscious of the theft of roughly $4.5M of his cash when Mizuhara confessed Thursday contained in the Dodgers clubhouse.
As exhausting as it’s to consider that the Dodgers would embarrass its star by breaking such delicate information in entrance of his teammates, it is even tougher to suppose he ignored such a big chunk of cash as if it had been a forgotten Netflix account.
Additional muddying the waters is the connection between Mizuhara and bookmaker Mathew Bowyer, who’s underneath federal investigation. In keeping with ESPN, financial institution info confirmed two wire funds of $500K from Ohtani’s account to an affiliate of Bowyer, however there could also be extra.
One other element that creates questions is why Bowyer would enable an interpreter making a pair hundred thousand {dollars} a 12 months to run up thousands and thousands in debt. The reasoning for that’s additionally suspicious.
Allegedly, Bowyer dealt solely with Mizuhara however was conscious the cash transfers got here from Ohtani’s account and even bragged that the Dodgers slugger was a consumer.
Ohtani’s representatives have requested legislation enforcement to research, so that is solely the start of what is sure to be one of the talked-about tales in sports activities.
Nevertheless, an already difficult state of affairs is seemingly changing into much more absurd with each morsel of data revealed.
