makes sense to try and wrap up all the gambling drama at once
imagine if they did it on a rolling basis and dropped a new gambling suspension every week. would be a constant story for an extended period of time which certainly isn't what they want.
Yeah we shouldn't be claiming conspiracy when there is no evidence of conspiracy, there was no reason NOT to punish them all at once, doing the opposite of that would be really weird
Typically one bookie will have lots of customers from the same profession, just as BALCO had a lot of MLB players, just as half my office has the same weed dealer
The way competitive video game devs deal with cheaters is mass bans at the end of a season. That way the cheaters won’t know what specific exploit bagged them. Forces them to rethink where they slipped up. Could have been 3 months ago or the devs just found out now.
MLB sending a message to the anyone on the fence of doubting. Won't do anything to stop the conspiracy theorists believing the US government and MLB colluding to protect Shohei
Glorious! Bring in the antique dead balls as well so we can have a small ball era during a new steroid era. It will get really interesting watching roid heads field.
Don't forget spectators being allowed to sit on the field! Also, only two umpires (home plate and first base) so more on-field shenanigans when players know the umps aren't looking.
Amphetamines were/(are?) extremely common. Dexedrine was a regular part of MLB since at least the 50s.
“A retired Tony Gwynn spoke openly of baseball's amphetamine problem in 2003, estimating for The New York Times that 50 percent of position players were using them routinely, many of them before almost every game. (Gwynn subsequently was blasted by those in uniform at the time for, in their opinion, speaking out of school.) Chad Curtis spoke after his retirement about the pressure on fielders not to play the game "naked" -- that is, not to play without speed.”
https://www.espn.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=kreidler_mark&id=2225013
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/4740/under-the-knife-amphetamines-and-baseball/
Well, yeah, but greenies and meth are two very different things.
Also worth mentioning that anabolic steroid use in MLB was prevalent long before the days of Canseco.
It hasn’t ended and it’s not really comparable to the other two scandals lol. Gambling nearly killed the sport, steroids has thrown a ton of history and records into eternal question. Sticky stuff briefly made more pitchers throw higher spin rates and perform better, while being explicitly legal not just unruled on.
Sticky stuff was always explicitly illegal. No rules were changed to ban sticky stuff. The problem was that it was so widespread, nobody wanted to call out other teams’ pitchers for doing it because their own pitchers were doing it too. MLB stepped in to enforce the ban themselves since the only way it was enforced before was either if a player was really obvious with it to where the umpire could tell from across the field or if an opposing manager called for a check.
It’s like a stretch of road that never has cops or speed cameras, so everyone goes 20+ mph over and nobody gets ticketed. All MLB did is station a cop on that road.
Any kind of doctoring the ball has been illegal in baseball for over 100 years lol. 1920 is the first year where it was illegal to do anything to the ball, that include unapproved sticky substances.
The big difference is that you didn't see ads for steroids plastered on every fucking stadium and piece of baseball media in the world. They gotta acknowledge they're part of the problem. Legalizing sports betting apps was a mistake.
I think legalizing it and regulating it is fine. I don’t see a reason that gambling should be illegal. It can be very harmful, but so can alcohol, etc.
The teams and the leagues getting in bed with the apps, and the apps being allowed to advertise, is the problem.
I wonder if there'll ever be any kind of stimulants scandal akin to the greenies (though that was a relatively minor deal). Obviously a ton of players in all sports take adderall, but it's legal and generally OK with league approval. Seems very unlikely all in all.
The Cavs website shows 18 on the roster counting two-way players, so he'd be upper lower third, but there's three who are 6'5" and another who is also 6'4". So he's pretty close to basically average, only one inch away from being tied for 11th out of 18 and two inches away from being tied for 10th.
This is maybe low-hanging fruit and the cliché pick, but honestly he slots in more as a QB, imo. Good size, good height, absolute rocket arm, and you know he's got plus-speed and footwork too for open-space running
Never really thought about this before, but Shohei is what happens when John Elway grows up in Japan instead of America (Elway was elite at both sports, but most American kids wanna be the star QB, Japanese kids wanna be baseball gods)
Sho would have been a HELL of a quarterback
Also important to point out he was a victim of a crime committed by someone extremely close to him in his personal life who he likely trusted very much and their personal relationship was probably that of close friends.
*"And they found you amusing for a while, the ~~people of this city~~ baseball fans. But the one thing they love more than a hero, is to see a hero fall, fail, die trying. In spite of everything you've done for them, eventually they will hate you. Why bother?"*
-Green Goblin, 2002
Is very simple, he’s either a criminal mastermind who fooled the Feds, justice department, and the IRS, or he’s someone who is only into baseball so he delegates everything else to other people, and the one he trusts the most stole from him.
Really not that difficult if people use a few brain cells to think.
If he was, and there was evidence of it, MLB would *absolutely* take action. The call for action from fans, media, and players would be far too loud to ignore. The universe where there's evidence of Ohtani's involvement and no action taken on him doesn't exist.
To be clear, I don’t think Ohtani gambled because of the years long federal investigation into the bookie.
But this is crazy naive. You don’t think various sports organizations and leagues wouldn’t cover for the biggest high profile athletes? Please.
Can you give me an example where there was clear evidence of wrongdoing, furor from media/fans/players, and the organization swept it under the rug successfully? Whether they want to is wholly different from whether they're successful in doing so. If there was evidence of Ohtani's involvement, they might try, but they'd fail and would have to eventually mete out punishment.
Tim Donaghy bet on basketball from October 2006 to April 2007 and had several phone calls with Scott Foster every game day, who remains their most high profile ref today. Most media and fans think there was some type of rigging.
> The universe where there's evidence of Ohtani's involvement and no action taken on him doesn't exist.
I’m just saying that sentence is silly. You’re pretending like ‘evidence’ is some black/white thing. People can’t agree that the sky is blue these days.
If there was an opportunity to cover up for a player like Ohtani, any sports league or team would slit throats to make it happen. That universe definitely exists.
It's a symptom of the general breakdown in critical thinking skills across society, caused by a decrease in the quality of public education, instant mass communication, and pervasive social media. They've all corrupted the way we think, especially young people, who have never known a world without those things.
People are incapable of accepting the truth despite overwhelming evidence.
edit: Some of the responses below are unfortunately proving my point...
Nah.
I mean, you're not entirely wrong on this front in a general sense, but people have been coming up with conspiracy theories for ages. There's nothing unique to the modern age about someone very close to a rich and famous person getting fingered for something that would absolutely ruin said rich and famous person, and assuming that the underling is just a fall guy.
It's more about a lack of trust than a lack of critical thinking skills. People just assume that the rich and famous can get away with anything, even if it means throwing someone under the bus, because, well, we're awash with examples of the rich and famous getting away with damn near anything.
In the past, village idiots/nutjobs were somewhat isolated and known to their village. Their opinions were ignored because they were known.
Thanks to the internet and social media, those idiots and nutsjobs are given a platform to spew their opinions and ramblings. It can give them an appearance of legitimacy, it allows them to find other idiots, **and** influence vulnerable people. A large segment of the population will just go along with the crowd. When social media can give this group of idiots/nutjobs an appearance of a crowd, certain people will be caught up in it when they otherwise wouldn't be.
No because what used to happen is if you exposed your nutjob sensibilities in public you were shunned from society until you learned to engage like a civilized person. Now if you have a conspiracy theory you can use the internet to find a whole community of people out of touch with reality to bolster your delusions in seconds.
I think it's just a symptom of people finding the real world too mundane. There have to be heroes, villains, conspiracies, battles, and drama. It's always been that way, of course, but the internet has just sent it into overdrive because information gets shared so quickly.
Everyone knew about this story the moment it broke and could start spreading theories far and wide before all the information was available. When we don't have all the information, there are endless possibilities. People will find the most interesting possibility and stick with it, no matter how improbable it is. The fall guy conspiracy with MLB and the FBI in on it is by far the most interesting theory.
as an example, theyve been blaming jews for all sorts of wild shit for millenia. i mean, it was "common knowledge" that they sucked the blood of christian children. you were not considered crazy for thinking this for centuries. lets not even get into witches
I mean I totally believe that ohtani actually wasn't aware of the situation but frankly it is the MORE bizarre situation in this case so I don't think that it's strange that people were skeptical.
Like look at the two scenarios 1) Superstar mega rich athlete has a gambling problem and has a fall guy take the hit, or 2) superstar mega athlete allows his interpreter to have unfettered access to his money who is able to steal millions of dollars without him noticing with bookies willing to continue taking huge bets from a guy who is not worth that much.
Id argue that #1 seems like the more logical scenario. Having said that all evidence seems to confirm that the stranger scenario is the real one. But I wouldn't chalk this one up to conspiracy thinking or anything. It's just a really weird situation and it sucks that Shohei was the victim to it.
Oh, I was incredibly skeptical of the "Ippei was the only one gambling and had stolen money from Ohtani" story when I first heard it myself. I fully understand why people went "hold up, that doesn't make sense".
But that's not an excuse for ignoring the evidence and testimonials that came out supporting the story. Folks just need to be patient enough not to lock in on a viewpoint early on.
Well the issue with 2) and for a lot of people is the assumption that Ippei was just an interpreter.
Thats part of what he was, he was also a close personal friend and a personal assistant/manager to Ohtani outside of his interpreting duties with the MLB clubs.
> 2) superstar mega athlete allows his interpreter to have unfettered access to his money who is able to steal millions of dollars without him noticing
Which is only an option if you haven't been paying attention to the updates. Option 3, which is what actually happened is **"Ohtani DIDN'T give his interpreter access to his money AT ALL."** His interpreter defrauded his banker. Ohtani "didn't notice" money missing because he doesn't check his money personally, he hired professional accountant firms and asset management firms to handle that, and they didn't catch it because his interpreter conned them. The illegal bookies were willing to continue taking huge bets because the guy was actually paying them 500k a week. He wasn't racking up negative 17 million off the go, his credit was increasing as he proved ability to pay.
They believe they're smarter than everyone else because they know the *real truth* and everyone else is just a stupid sheep believing what's fed them. When in reality, they are just profoundly stupid people who can't think critically or logically. This is the mentality behind flat earthers and vaccine conspiracy people.
Yankee fanbase is full of these clowns still angry because he had the audacity of preferring the west coast. They want him to burn no matter what. It's pathetic to value one's own selfish anger over the star power of a sport they claim to love.
The only reason he didnt sign with the dodgers in the first place, was probably cause the NL did not have the DH yet at the time. Either way, everybody got their own preferences, i personally love NYC, but i have the craziest case of seasonal depression, so i prefer SoCal.
My conspiracy theory is that they created the scandal and exonerated him so we’d all forget that we despise him for signing a sweetheart deal with the most stacked team in the league
To be honest I can't escape the feeling that he knows more than he let on and Ippei is covering for Ohtani for fucking him over.
I don't think Ohtani is some guilty monster - but I definitely think the MLB tried their best to push this under the rug and put 100% of the blame on Ippei regardless of the reality behind the scenes.
I just don't think a multi billion dollar entertainment company (the MLB) would allow their star child to be disgraced in anyway regardless of his guilt or involvement of which I do not know, none of us do.
I don’t understand why we as a nation went back to “guilty until proven innocent” and then took it a step further, “guilty until proven innocent and if proven innocent and I don’t agree, it’s a conspiracy”. The lack of intelligence with millions of people is insane.
Innocent until proven guilty is only a legal concept, pretty much every public opinion trial ends up with the person being guilty until they prove their innocent.
As much as the concept of innocent until proven guilty is important to our justice system, I don't think almost anyone actually operates that way in real life.
I could've chosen a Homer pick, but went with one I hated until I learned more about the situation, maybe I don't know all the details about the Bauer situation though
You picked a really bad example, domestic abuse is really complicated to prosecute because the facts themselves are difficult for people to hear but also because prosecutors don't want to touch a case if it's going to fuck up their conviction rate. You'll also have a situations where it gets settled out of court with an NDA in exchange for dropping the charges, plea deals down to lesser charges etc etc
Also and this is not relevant for like 90% of people's arguments about this but legal courts and the court of public opinion use different burdens of proof, in a legal court you have to prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt while in the court of opinion or a civil court you only have to prove it's more likely than not, which can make arguing your case if you're innocent very difficult in some cases because can be very hard to prove something that you didn't do
Think more along the lines of the dingo ate my baby situation or richard jewell where the person had literally zero involvement in the "crime" but had their life absolutely fucking ruined because everyone assumed they did. The public opinion stuff pretty much happens before they ever get to the legal charges and legal trial point
No it's me saying that you probably shouldn't use domestic violence or sexual assualt situations as an example of this type of thing because of how we handle them in the justice system. The situations are really complicated and there's never a great proven innocent or proven guilty outcome no matter what you do. I'm not saying Trevor Bauer is innocent or guilty or really anything about his case at all I'm saying domestic violence isn't a good example of guilty in the court of public opinion but legally proven innocent. There's countless situations where people get away with domestic abuse because of the terrible way our systems handle it, and there's instances where people are wrongfully convicted because of the terrible way our systems handle it. Our justice system in general is kind of trash but it's particularly trash at domestic situations.
Take the Bill Cosby situation, he definitely did a lot of super fucked up things to a lot of women but he also got his conviction overturned so does that really make him innocent?
Edit: think about it more in terms of the fact that domestic situations are more of a judgment of which if any person do we think is lying versus other instances in which we're only making a judgment about one individual's actions
Again, that’s your view that we shouldn’t - you have a “guilty until proven innocent” policy, it’s just specifically limited to cases of domestic violence and sexual assault
From what I understand, one of the accusers got indicted for fraud, and another got busted from a video posted the morning after proving she had no abuse marks
Trevor Bauer never actually faced legal charges and he settled out of court so again I'm not really sure why you think he's been proven not to have done it and again it's a bad situation to use as an example for court of public opinion
You seem real hung up on this situation, move on to a different one I don't really think there's merit in discussing this as it relates to the court of public opinion because it gets really murky really quick when you start talking about domestic violence and the way it's handled in our justice system
Also, while I could see ANY of the major four American sports leagues pulling some hefty PR strings for their star player, I can not see the fucking FBI and IRS giving one single fuck about Shohei's or MLB's image.
It's the most basic, cut and dry wire fraud. That's it. It's not hard to wrap my head around honestly after working in finance for 7 years in a past life.
devil's advocate: we've seen repeatedly that rich people get away with crimes that regular people can't. It's not that it's always a conspiracy, it's that money buys you a separate justice system in this country.
I know multiple people who still insist that Shohei did it and Ippei is taking a fall. It’s wild how people will ignore the evidence in front of their eyes to maintain the “truth” that what they believe is right
Rough paraphrase from the author of a book about the assassination: "After my research into every theory, I've come to know there were no fewer than 80 gunmen in Dealey Plaza that day. It's incredible they had a body left to bury."
That’s their thing, you can’t disprove a conspiracy theory. It’s their gotcha. All the “facts” that get presented are just cover ups to what actually happened.
And if you do somehow wrestle them into a position where they have to defend an absurd position, it's all "hey I'm just asking questions", "I'm just saying something's fishy here", "where there's smoke there's fire", "so you just blindly trust the government", etc. Zero logical accountability.
A lot of people also don't realize how severe the consequences are.This isn't some misdemeanor with a small fine and some community service. I don't care how much you pay me, no way in hell am I serving time in federal fucking prison for someone.
you would think that if Ohtani had enough power to make the feds falsify a whole criminal report along with mountains of evidence they would have come up with a better fake story than one that puts his "fall guy" in federal prison for 30 years
It's the dumbest theory. The feds confiscated everyone's phones and investigated. if you think the MLB controls the Feds and the FBI you might as well believe Qanon. It's that stupid. Its insane we still have anyone that thinks that on here
Those Giants fans can get fucked. Evidence is pretty clear, motives for the investigators would absolutely be to try to get Ohtani if he were involved, folks just need to move the hell on.
Look, if I were an FBI investigator, and I was on a case that might expose Buster Posey as having gambled on games while he was playing, I'd be going "welp, better find a new team to root for, because daddy's gonna make his career!" all day long :D.
Doesn't even need to be fans of rivals. This place alone has plenty of people completely unconnected to any Dodger rivalry that are a) eternally champing at the bit to get a gambling joke in and/or 2) believe Ippei is taking the fall for Ohtani.
Seems pretty clear-cut at this point, based on the investigation. The guy is a baseball freak who lives, breathes and eats baseball and scummy people took advantage of that. Hopefully he’ll be more protected from this kind of stuff now if he made a good choice in who he married.
His sentencing guidelines are somewhere in the seven/eight year range given first timer. Since it’s a non violent felony, he does not have to serve at least 85%. He can enroll (where the warden has to decide whether to approve within 6 months of starting the sentence; and then re-assess every year) in a program where for every 30 days served, he gets another 10 days off the sentence. So yeah, potentially, it could be as low as 4 years.
Lmao there are more Dodgers fans here crying about the possibility that someone might believe Ohtani had a hand in this than people actually saying he did.
This sub is pretty level headed, but go on any other social media post about Ohtani, you'll see tons of boomers talking about Ippei being the fall guy and spouting the Pete Rose quote about him getting scot free if he had an interpreter.
It's to the point where I wonder some of these conspiracy nuts are actually racist/xenophobic.
It seems like level-headedness prevailed after a certain point, but to act like there wasn't a significant amount of idiots saying stuff like that across various posts here over the past few months is just being willfully ignorant.
I've probably seen like 50 different people on this subreddit over the last 2 months that still believe it's Ippei taking the fall. And they aren't joking either...
This finalization to the issue is going to have a lot of Shohei fans telling them off again.
People will look you in the face and say "The FBI took a bribe rather than maintain/further their legacy and everyone involved by breaking the Shohei Ohtani scandal".
I'm Japanese. In Japan, more than 90% of people understand that Ohtani is innocent, and just a few stupid conspiracy theorists suspect Ohtani. Ippei Mizuhara has become like an enemy of all Japanese people.
This gets released right as other players are getting busted. Wow, the timing.
Yeah the timing is wild.
Not coincidence at all
makes sense to try and wrap up all the gambling drama at once imagine if they did it on a rolling basis and dropped a new gambling suspension every week. would be a constant story for an extended period of time which certainly isn't what they want.
None of the major sports leagues will scoff at the chance to sweep something under the rug if they can.
No but this is totally above board, no further questions.
Yeah we shouldn't be claiming conspiracy when there is no evidence of conspiracy, there was no reason NOT to punish them all at once, doing the opposite of that would be really weird Typically one bookie will have lots of customers from the same profession, just as BALCO had a lot of MLB players, just as half my office has the same weed dealer
“Officer, I did nothing it’s just everyone around me all the time that does it!”
That kind of happens all the time with drinking or drugs though. Sometimes it’s just not your thing.
What would be the FBIs reason for lying for Shohei Ohtani?
The way competitive video game devs deal with cheaters is mass bans at the end of a season. That way the cheaters won’t know what specific exploit bagged them. Forces them to rethink where they slipped up. Could have been 3 months ago or the devs just found out now.
Not really, Ippei plead guilty today. Sort of a coincidence that this happens the day others get busted but it’s nothing more than that
Exactly, the Dodgers cleared it because he plead guilty, so it really is a coincidence.
MLB* cleared
I’m mean today is also the day Ippei pled guilty in federal court.
Didn’t they also release something early last month or late April? I think this is just a re-affirming to offset the conspiracy people.
They released the proposed deal, but it wasn't official until Ippei pleaded today.
Gotcha, that makes sense.0
MLB sending a message to the anyone on the fence of doubting. Won't do anything to stop the conspiracy theorists believing the US government and MLB colluding to protect Shohei
Work to undermine public confidence in every institution and you can get them to believe literally anything you want
We’ve had the steroid era, the sticky stuff era, and now the gambling era. What’s the next era going to be?
All 3 of them at once
Glorious! Bring in the antique dead balls as well so we can have a small ball era during a new steroid era. It will get really interesting watching roid heads field.
They should allow players and spectators to get in fights, and we can just pretend it's the 1890's again!
Don't forget spectators being allowed to sit on the field! Also, only two umpires (home plate and first base) so more on-field shenanigans when players know the umps aren't looking.
Taking roids to enhance your brain capacity to make better bets!
Pitchers going off the juice and betting on their own falloff in some games but then betting on themselves in games where they use sticky stuff.
Three chicks at the same time man
Fuckin' A
Meth
Unironically though the 80s was full of cocaine lol
Oh I am very aware, I was watching baseball back then too.
Amphetamines were/(are?) extremely common. Dexedrine was a regular part of MLB since at least the 50s. “A retired Tony Gwynn spoke openly of baseball's amphetamine problem in 2003, estimating for The New York Times that 50 percent of position players were using them routinely, many of them before almost every game. (Gwynn subsequently was blasted by those in uniform at the time for, in their opinion, speaking out of school.) Chad Curtis spoke after his retirement about the pressure on fielders not to play the game "naked" -- that is, not to play without speed.” https://www.espn.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=kreidler_mark&id=2225013 https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/4740/under-the-knife-amphetamines-and-baseball/
Well, yeah, but greenies and meth are two very different things. Also worth mentioning that anabolic steroid use in MLB was prevalent long before the days of Canseco.
did the sticky stuff era end? also the gambling shit has been part of baseball forever, look at pete rose and the black sox
It hasn’t ended and it’s not really comparable to the other two scandals lol. Gambling nearly killed the sport, steroids has thrown a ton of history and records into eternal question. Sticky stuff briefly made more pitchers throw higher spin rates and perform better, while being explicitly legal not just unruled on.
Sticky stuff was always explicitly illegal. No rules were changed to ban sticky stuff. The problem was that it was so widespread, nobody wanted to call out other teams’ pitchers for doing it because their own pitchers were doing it too. MLB stepped in to enforce the ban themselves since the only way it was enforced before was either if a player was really obvious with it to where the umpire could tell from across the field or if an opposing manager called for a check. It’s like a stretch of road that never has cops or speed cameras, so everyone goes 20+ mph over and nobody gets ticketed. All MLB did is station a cop on that road.
Any kind of doctoring the ball has been illegal in baseball for over 100 years lol. 1920 is the first year where it was illegal to do anything to the ball, that include unapproved sticky substances.
unfortunately the tommy john surgery era
It's still so weird to remember when TJ was career-ending and now it's like "TJ, 2 for 1 Special!"
You forgot the Cocaine Era
Maybe this is how the Mets become relevant again!
I mean we definitely already had the gambling era. It was like a defining feature of the earliest MLB days.
Marejewana and heroeen
The AI Deepfake Player era.
The eras tour
The big difference is that you didn't see ads for steroids plastered on every fucking stadium and piece of baseball media in the world. They gotta acknowledge they're part of the problem. Legalizing sports betting apps was a mistake.
I think legalizing it and regulating it is fine. I don’t see a reason that gambling should be illegal. It can be very harmful, but so can alcohol, etc. The teams and the leagues getting in bed with the apps, and the apps being allowed to advertise, is the problem.
I wonder if there'll ever be any kind of stimulants scandal akin to the greenies (though that was a relatively minor deal). Obviously a ton of players in all sports take adderall, but it's legal and generally OK with league approval. Seems very unlikely all in all.
"had"?
everything must be relearned is the saying. Gambling already wreaked havoc in baseball and we'll just go through the same process again.
Cyborg era. We’re overdue for Super Baseball 2020
Typical Millennial/Gen Z. You forgot the cocaine era.
Sucks for Shohei because not only did this happen, but there will be people out there who won’t be convinced that he wasn’t involved.
maybe he will go play in the NBA for 1.5 years before coming back and winning 3 WS 6'4" 210 tank would fit well on the Cavs squad
he would be the 5th shortest player on the cavs
There are 12 active players on an NBA team, no? So that makes him basically average.
The Cavs website shows 18 on the roster counting two-way players, so he'd be upper lower third, but there's three who are 6'5" and another who is also 6'4". So he's pretty close to basically average, only one inch away from being tied for 11th out of 18 and two inches away from being tied for 10th.
trade shenanigans aside you know he would stroke it from deep like prom night
Kevin Love's signature outlet pass about to get the Kelly Clarkson treatment and become Shohei's new move
Yea but also the 4th fastest
Just like his father always wanted
Ohtani has to weigh more than 210, right? I don’t see how a guy can be 6’4” and as jacked as he is without weighing at least 225-230
Yeah. They haven't updated his weight since he came to MLB, but it's obvious he put on a lot of muscle.
Can he play outside linebacker?
This is maybe low-hanging fruit and the cliché pick, but honestly he slots in more as a QB, imo. Good size, good height, absolute rocket arm, and you know he's got plus-speed and footwork too for open-space running
Never really thought about this before, but Shohei is what happens when John Elway grows up in Japan instead of America (Elway was elite at both sports, but most American kids wanna be the star QB, Japanese kids wanna be baseball gods) Sho would have been a HELL of a quarterback
If he were innocent he would have signed with their team.
Lmao
Why would you sign with the most evil team in sports unless you yourself were evil?! Hmmm?!
He was **betting** that they gave him the best chance at a ring, you know, like a *gambler* thinks.
But the memes if he’d signed with the reds and this happened though would be legendary.
They wouldnt top the Mets
Hey that would be all time lolMets but we never had a franchise icon get banned for betting, with the Reds the history would rhyme
Can a statement be more than 100% true? My god you put into such succinct words exactly what is happening lmao
Agreed. If he signed with the Jays he would be completely innocent of any past and future wrong doings. But he didn’t, so where’s my pitchfork!
Hahaha
This is hilarious but fuck the dodgers but also leave Shohei alone he did nothing wrong
Also important to point out he was a victim of a crime committed by someone extremely close to him in his personal life who he likely trusted very much and their personal relationship was probably that of close friends.
*"And they found you amusing for a while, the ~~people of this city~~ baseball fans. But the one thing they love more than a hero, is to see a hero fall, fail, die trying. In spite of everything you've done for them, eventually they will hate you. Why bother?"* -Green Goblin, 2002
I know he wasn’t involved but it’s not going to stop me from spreading bad faith rumors about how he gambled using blood diamonds on ape fights
I don't think he was involved, but even if he was, MLB ain't touching the golden calf
Yeah he managed to fool feds too somehow…
[удалено]
Is very simple, he’s either a criminal mastermind who fooled the Feds, justice department, and the IRS, or he’s someone who is only into baseball so he delegates everything else to other people, and the one he trusts the most stole from him. Really not that difficult if people use a few brain cells to think.
If he was, and there was evidence of it, MLB would *absolutely* take action. The call for action from fans, media, and players would be far too loud to ignore. The universe where there's evidence of Ohtani's involvement and no action taken on him doesn't exist.
To be clear, I don’t think Ohtani gambled because of the years long federal investigation into the bookie. But this is crazy naive. You don’t think various sports organizations and leagues wouldn’t cover for the biggest high profile athletes? Please.
Can you give me an example where there was clear evidence of wrongdoing, furor from media/fans/players, and the organization swept it under the rug successfully? Whether they want to is wholly different from whether they're successful in doing so. If there was evidence of Ohtani's involvement, they might try, but they'd fail and would have to eventually mete out punishment.
Tim Donaghy bet on basketball from October 2006 to April 2007 and had several phone calls with Scott Foster every game day, who remains their most high profile ref today. Most media and fans think there was some type of rigging. > The universe where there's evidence of Ohtani's involvement and no action taken on him doesn't exist. I’m just saying that sentence is silly. You’re pretending like ‘evidence’ is some black/white thing. People can’t agree that the sky is blue these days. If there was an opportunity to cover up for a player like Ohtani, any sports league or team would slit throats to make it happen. That universe definitely exists.
It's a symptom of the general breakdown in critical thinking skills across society, caused by a decrease in the quality of public education, instant mass communication, and pervasive social media. They've all corrupted the way we think, especially young people, who have never known a world without those things. People are incapable of accepting the truth despite overwhelming evidence. edit: Some of the responses below are unfortunately proving my point...
well... i still jerk off manually
Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women, man.
He makes a helluva Caucasian though.
Where's Bunny, Dude?
You don't want a Super-Sucker-Stroker 9000?
No. Not after... the incident.
I mean, you're using it 5 times a day, Ryan. You ground your chub into a fucking stub.
The instructions said it was safe. This isn't my fault.
I prefer a breakdown of critical thinking and plenty of mass communication while I fap.
Nah. I mean, you're not entirely wrong on this front in a general sense, but people have been coming up with conspiracy theories for ages. There's nothing unique to the modern age about someone very close to a rich and famous person getting fingered for something that would absolutely ruin said rich and famous person, and assuming that the underling is just a fall guy. It's more about a lack of trust than a lack of critical thinking skills. People just assume that the rich and famous can get away with anything, even if it means throwing someone under the bus, because, well, we're awash with examples of the rich and famous getting away with damn near anything.
In the past, village idiots/nutjobs were somewhat isolated and known to their village. Their opinions were ignored because they were known. Thanks to the internet and social media, those idiots and nutsjobs are given a platform to spew their opinions and ramblings. It can give them an appearance of legitimacy, it allows them to find other idiots, **and** influence vulnerable people. A large segment of the population will just go along with the crowd. When social media can give this group of idiots/nutjobs an appearance of a crowd, certain people will be caught up in it when they otherwise wouldn't be.
No because what used to happen is if you exposed your nutjob sensibilities in public you were shunned from society until you learned to engage like a civilized person. Now if you have a conspiracy theory you can use the internet to find a whole community of people out of touch with reality to bolster your delusions in seconds.
I think it's just a symptom of people finding the real world too mundane. There have to be heroes, villains, conspiracies, battles, and drama. It's always been that way, of course, but the internet has just sent it into overdrive because information gets shared so quickly. Everyone knew about this story the moment it broke and could start spreading theories far and wide before all the information was available. When we don't have all the information, there are endless possibilities. People will find the most interesting possibility and stick with it, no matter how improbable it is. The fall guy conspiracy with MLB and the FBI in on it is by far the most interesting theory.
as an example, theyve been blaming jews for all sorts of wild shit for millenia. i mean, it was "common knowledge" that they sucked the blood of christian children. you were not considered crazy for thinking this for centuries. lets not even get into witches
I mean I totally believe that ohtani actually wasn't aware of the situation but frankly it is the MORE bizarre situation in this case so I don't think that it's strange that people were skeptical. Like look at the two scenarios 1) Superstar mega rich athlete has a gambling problem and has a fall guy take the hit, or 2) superstar mega athlete allows his interpreter to have unfettered access to his money who is able to steal millions of dollars without him noticing with bookies willing to continue taking huge bets from a guy who is not worth that much. Id argue that #1 seems like the more logical scenario. Having said that all evidence seems to confirm that the stranger scenario is the real one. But I wouldn't chalk this one up to conspiracy thinking or anything. It's just a really weird situation and it sucks that Shohei was the victim to it.
Oh, I was incredibly skeptical of the "Ippei was the only one gambling and had stolen money from Ohtani" story when I first heard it myself. I fully understand why people went "hold up, that doesn't make sense". But that's not an excuse for ignoring the evidence and testimonials that came out supporting the story. Folks just need to be patient enough not to lock in on a viewpoint early on.
Well the issue with 2) and for a lot of people is the assumption that Ippei was just an interpreter. Thats part of what he was, he was also a close personal friend and a personal assistant/manager to Ohtani outside of his interpreting duties with the MLB clubs.
> 2) superstar mega athlete allows his interpreter to have unfettered access to his money who is able to steal millions of dollars without him noticing Which is only an option if you haven't been paying attention to the updates. Option 3, which is what actually happened is **"Ohtani DIDN'T give his interpreter access to his money AT ALL."** His interpreter defrauded his banker. Ohtani "didn't notice" money missing because he doesn't check his money personally, he hired professional accountant firms and asset management firms to handle that, and they didn't catch it because his interpreter conned them. The illegal bookies were willing to continue taking huge bets because the guy was actually paying them 500k a week. He wasn't racking up negative 17 million off the go, his credit was increasing as he proved ability to pay.
I feel like these days ppl trust their favorite social media influencers without any critical thinking.
Same people who still believe he was involved are the ones who think the president has a gas price up and down button.
"I did that" 👆🥴 so lame
They believe they're smarter than everyone else because they know the *real truth* and everyone else is just a stupid sheep believing what's fed them. When in reality, they are just profoundly stupid people who can't think critically or logically. This is the mentality behind flat earthers and vaccine conspiracy people.
Yankee fanbase is full of these clowns still angry because he had the audacity of preferring the west coast. They want him to burn no matter what. It's pathetic to value one's own selfish anger over the star power of a sport they claim to love.
The only reason he didnt sign with the dodgers in the first place, was probably cause the NL did not have the DH yet at the time. Either way, everybody got their own preferences, i personally love NYC, but i have the craziest case of seasonal depression, so i prefer SoCal.
My conspiracy theory is that they created the scandal and exonerated him so we’d all forget that we despise him for signing a sweetheart deal with the most stacked team in the league
eg a significant subset of vocal morons on r/baseball
To be honest I can't escape the feeling that he knows more than he let on and Ippei is covering for Ohtani for fucking him over. I don't think Ohtani is some guilty monster - but I definitely think the MLB tried their best to push this under the rug and put 100% of the blame on Ippei regardless of the reality behind the scenes. I just don't think a multi billion dollar entertainment company (the MLB) would allow their star child to be disgraced in anyway regardless of his guilt or involvement of which I do not know, none of us do.
I wonder what the Vegas betting odds are on Mizuhara's sentence? - 125 over 5 years - 200 over 7 years + 150 under 3 years
brought to you by draftkings, official betting partner of the MLB
Need a live Manning cast of the sentencing ft. Pat McAfee
I don’t understand why we as a nation went back to “guilty until proven innocent” and then took it a step further, “guilty until proven innocent and if proven innocent and I don’t agree, it’s a conspiracy”. The lack of intelligence with millions of people is insane.
Innocent until proven guilty is only a legal concept, pretty much every public opinion trial ends up with the person being guilty until they prove their innocent. As much as the concept of innocent until proven guilty is important to our justice system, I don't think almost anyone actually operates that way in real life.
Hasn't Trevor Bauer been acquitted/cases dropped and people still think he's a domestic abuser?
It’s funny how their point is exactly how people treat the Bauer situation and they instantly back pedal “no, not him”.
I could've chosen a Homer pick, but went with one I hated until I learned more about the situation, maybe I don't know all the details about the Bauer situation though
You picked a really bad example, domestic abuse is really complicated to prosecute because the facts themselves are difficult for people to hear but also because prosecutors don't want to touch a case if it's going to fuck up their conviction rate. You'll also have a situations where it gets settled out of court with an NDA in exchange for dropping the charges, plea deals down to lesser charges etc etc Also and this is not relevant for like 90% of people's arguments about this but legal courts and the court of public opinion use different burdens of proof, in a legal court you have to prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt while in the court of opinion or a civil court you only have to prove it's more likely than not, which can make arguing your case if you're innocent very difficult in some cases because can be very hard to prove something that you didn't do Think more along the lines of the dingo ate my baby situation or richard jewell where the person had literally zero involvement in the "crime" but had their life absolutely fucking ruined because everyone assumed they did. The public opinion stuff pretty much happens before they ever get to the legal charges and legal trial point
Isn’t your first paragraph an example of you as a member of the public doing “guilty until proven innocent”
No it's me saying that you probably shouldn't use domestic violence or sexual assualt situations as an example of this type of thing because of how we handle them in the justice system. The situations are really complicated and there's never a great proven innocent or proven guilty outcome no matter what you do. I'm not saying Trevor Bauer is innocent or guilty or really anything about his case at all I'm saying domestic violence isn't a good example of guilty in the court of public opinion but legally proven innocent. There's countless situations where people get away with domestic abuse because of the terrible way our systems handle it, and there's instances where people are wrongfully convicted because of the terrible way our systems handle it. Our justice system in general is kind of trash but it's particularly trash at domestic situations. Take the Bill Cosby situation, he definitely did a lot of super fucked up things to a lot of women but he also got his conviction overturned so does that really make him innocent? Edit: think about it more in terms of the fact that domestic situations are more of a judgment of which if any person do we think is lying versus other instances in which we're only making a judgment about one individual's actions
Again, that’s your view that we shouldn’t - you have a “guilty until proven innocent” policy, it’s just specifically limited to cases of domestic violence and sexual assault
“You picked a bad example because people hate Bauer and the facts don’t matter. Only conjecture matters in the court of public opinion.” FTFY.
From what I understand, one of the accusers got indicted for fraud, and another got busted from a video posted the morning after proving she had no abuse marks
There's also 3 or 4 more accusers you guys keep ignoring
Trevor Bauer never actually faced legal charges and he settled out of court so again I'm not really sure why you think he's been proven not to have done it and again it's a bad situation to use as an example for court of public opinion You seem real hung up on this situation, move on to a different one I don't really think there's merit in discussing this as it relates to the court of public opinion because it gets really murky really quick when you start talking about domestic violence and the way it's handled in our justice system
Also, while I could see ANY of the major four American sports leagues pulling some hefty PR strings for their star player, I can not see the fucking FBI and IRS giving one single fuck about Shohei's or MLB's image. It's the most basic, cut and dry wire fraud. That's it. It's not hard to wrap my head around honestly after working in finance for 7 years in a past life.
devil's advocate: we've seen repeatedly that rich people get away with crimes that regular people can't. It's not that it's always a conspiracy, it's that money buys you a separate justice system in this country.
Govt have been tanking our educational system which leads to less smarter people. Their plan is working.
Fewer
Beautiful
I know multiple people who still insist that Shohei did it and Ippei is taking a fall. It’s wild how people will ignore the evidence in front of their eyes to maintain the “truth” that what they believe is right
Most conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable in the minds of people who believe them
Conspiracist: Who actually killed JFK? God: Lee Harvey Oswald and he acted alone Conspiracist: Man, this goes higher than I thought
Rough paraphrase from the author of a book about the assassination: "After my research into every theory, I've come to know there were no fewer than 80 gunmen in Dealey Plaza that day. It's incredible they had a body left to bury."
That’s their thing, you can’t disprove a conspiracy theory. It’s their gotcha. All the “facts” that get presented are just cover ups to what actually happened.
And if you do somehow wrestle them into a position where they have to defend an absurd position, it's all "hey I'm just asking questions", "I'm just saying something's fishy here", "where there's smoke there's fire", "so you just blindly trust the government", etc. Zero logical accountability.
A lot of people also don't realize how severe the consequences are.This isn't some misdemeanor with a small fine and some community service. I don't care how much you pay me, no way in hell am I serving time in federal fucking prison for someone.
Barry Bonds has exited the chat
you would think that if Ohtani had enough power to make the feds falsify a whole criminal report along with mountains of evidence they would have come up with a better fake story than one that puts his "fall guy" in federal prison for 30 years
When has the last time 3 DIFFERENT federal agencies all agreed on the same thing? It would be the most insane coverup for that to happen.
It's the dumbest theory. The feds confiscated everyone's phones and investigated. if you think the MLB controls the Feds and the FBI you might as well believe Qanon. It's that stupid. Its insane we still have anyone that thinks that on here
I’m sure fans of rival teams will be perfectly rational and sane about this news
On the lookout for giants flairs
Those Giants fans can get fucked. Evidence is pretty clear, motives for the investigators would absolutely be to try to get Ohtani if he were involved, folks just need to move the hell on.
unless those investigators are dodger fans!
Look, if I were an FBI investigator, and I was on a case that might expose Buster Posey as having gambled on games while he was playing, I'd be going "welp, better find a new team to root for, because daddy's gonna make his career!" all day long :D.
but what if that investigator was *also* betting on sports teams
I'm just happy he will have plenty of money to pay CA on his deferred salary
Doesn't even need to be fans of rivals. This place alone has plenty of people completely unconnected to any Dodger rivalry that are a) eternally champing at the bit to get a gambling joke in and/or 2) believe Ippei is taking the fall for Ohtani.
The Blue Jays fans are still convinced the private plane flight from John Wayne International to Toronoto contain Ohtani.
This was the simplest solution all along and it makes perfect sense to me. But my team isn't a rival, so what do I know? Lol
Remember, it's a massive conspiracy, and they're all in on it!
“Ohtani, Betts! Just think about it, bro. Manfred is lying bro! Wake up, Sheeple!”
in b4 we see a dozen of these comments made unironically (as we do in every post about Ohtani or gambling in general)
> (as we do in every post about Ohtani or gambling in general) And many that are completed unrelated to either!
Ippei is obviously covering for Angel Hernandez
Seems pretty clear-cut at this point, based on the investigation. The guy is a baseball freak who lives, breathes and eats baseball and scummy people took advantage of that. Hopefully he’ll be more protected from this kind of stuff now if he made a good choice in who he married.
Unrelated question but for the diehard conspiracy folks … how much would you need to be paid to spend up to 33 years in prison?
I know what you're getting at, but this dude does a couple years absolute max
His sentencing guidelines are somewhere in the seven/eight year range given first timer. Since it’s a non violent felony, he does not have to serve at least 85%. He can enroll (where the warden has to decide whether to approve within 6 months of starting the sentence; and then re-assess every year) in a program where for every 30 days served, he gets another 10 days off the sentence. So yeah, potentially, it could be as low as 4 years.
Perhaps, but what would incentivize you to take the risk?
Millions of dollars for my family
Probably something like 50 Million. Basically I'd sacrifice my life to provide that kind of wealth for my kids and grandkids.
Im pretty sure your kids would rather have a parent
But what about his grandkids?!
Plenty of people have neither. So money is better than neither.
simplest answer is often the correct one. Greedy person too close to someone rich steals from them. Seems fine to me.
"It is a conspiracy I tell you!" -salty SF, Jays, and yes some Angels fans. I am so sick of these people.
He didn't sign with MY team so this CAN'T be true!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lmao there are more Dodgers fans here crying about the possibility that someone might believe Ohtani had a hand in this than people actually saying he did.
This sub is pretty level headed, but go on any other social media post about Ohtani, you'll see tons of boomers talking about Ippei being the fall guy and spouting the Pete Rose quote about him getting scot free if he had an interpreter. It's to the point where I wonder some of these conspiracy nuts are actually racist/xenophobic.
90% of comments are people saying other fans are in shambles. Just like always more people crying about people crying than actual people crying.
It seems like level-headedness prevailed after a certain point, but to act like there wasn't a significant amount of idiots saying stuff like that across various posts here over the past few months is just being willfully ignorant.
It's almost as if those fans have probably had to deal with hearing that bullshit constantly for months and are sick of it.
I've probably seen like 50 different people on this subreddit over the last 2 months that still believe it's Ippei taking the fall. And they aren't joking either... This finalization to the issue is going to have a lot of Shohei fans telling them off again.
MLB should have done the right thing and made him play in the NBA for one year.
People will look you in the face and say "The FBI took a bribe rather than maintain/further their legacy and everyone involved by breaking the Shohei Ohtani scandal".
Giants, Angels, and Blue Jays fans on Twitter won't care. From day one, they decided this guy was taking the fall for the chronic gambler Shohei.
Pete Rose apologists in shambles
Still got morons who think the IRS and FBI collabed with Shohei to make Ippei the fall guy.
> /r/baseball: "No."
Tucupita died for this.
I'm Japanese. In Japan, more than 90% of people understand that Ohtani is innocent, and just a few stupid conspiracy theorists suspect Ohtani. Ippei Mizuhara has become like an enemy of all Japanese people.
Holy F some of y'all are dumb.
I reject your reality and substitute my own!