Is Shohei Ohtani another Pete Rose? Dodgers star may be in legal trouble if he paid gambling debt
Steve Henson

Left: Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani gestures during a game against the San Diego Padres in Seoul on Wednesday. Right: Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose leans against the dugout in Plant City, Fla., on March 22, 1989. (Ahn Young-joon and John Swart / Associated Press)
Shohei Ohtani is no Pete Rose. At least not yet.

For one thing, as accomplished as Ohtani is at baseball, his career 684 hits pale in comparison with Rose's 4,256, the most of any major league player.

More pertinent to the news cycle is that Ohtani hasn't been accused of betting on baseball, or betting at all. Rose famously was banned from baseball for life in 1989 by then-Commissioner Bartlett Giamatti (yes, Paul's dad), whose investigation concluded that Rose had bet on major league games as a player and as a manager.

Rose, 82, remains popular with fans, but his attempts at reinstatement have been unsuccessful. He also is barred from the Hall of Fame.

Ohtani, 29, doesn't appear to be in any such peril. However, as The Times first reported, the new Dodgers superstar was uncomfortably close to a gambling operation. His representatives accused his longtime interpreter and friend, Ippei Mizuhara, of engaging in a “massive theft” of Ohtani’s money allegedly used to pay off millions in gambling debts Mizuhara owed to a bookmaker.

Ohtani's representatives muddied the waters by making Mizuhara available for a telephone interview Tuesday with ESPN during which Mizuhara said Ohtani paid his gambling debts by making wire transfers to a bookmaker. A day later, Ohtani's representatives renounced Mizuhara's account and alleged theft. The Dodgers fired Mizuhara on Wednesday.

During the interview that ESPN reported as lasting 90 minutes, Mizuhara said, “I want everyone to know Shohei had zero involvement in betting."

Ohtani, however, might have broken the law if he paid Mizuhara's gambling debt, according to I. Nelson Rose, a gambling law scholar and professor emeritus at Whittier College.

"If he paid the debt knowing it was for illegal gambling, there is the potential for fairly serious federal penalties," Rose said. "There is a federal statute that says, in effect, that if you help an illegal gambling operator collect debts, you are in the business of gambling. Even if he was only doing this to help a friend, he certainly knew he was helping the bookmaker collect the debt."

Gambling by MLB players is strictly prohibited under Rule 21, which is posted in every clubhouse in English and Spanish and acknowledged in writing every year by every player. The rule addresses all sorts of misconduct, including a player not giving his all, giving a gift to an opposing player or an umpire, and committing a violent act on another player or umpire.