Rant #3,319: You Better, You Bet

This gambling thing somehow involving baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani and his former translator/confidant/best buddy kind of irks me.

The translator evidently had millions of dollars in gambling debts with a bookie, and if you want to believe the latest explanation of what went on, the translator, who has since been fired by the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team that gave Ohtani his historic multi-year contract and oodles of cash, stole the money from Ohtani.

Ohtani, in an obviously carefully vetted statement made during an obviously hastily called news conference by the Dodgers, basically took the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" way out by stating that not only didn't he know that his friend had robbed him, but that he wasn't a bettor himself, whether it was on baseball or any other sport.

And his buddy did not place any bets with the bookie for him; it was all the translator's problem, not Ohtani's.

Ohtani said this--through another translator, of course--then got up, without answering any questions, and walked away so quickly that you thought maybe he had to go to the bathroom --

Not to do #1 ir #2, but to look at himself in the bathroom mirror and wonder about what he said and perhaps, had gotten himself into.

Look, the guy is being paid millions as a baseball unicorn, a player who can both pitch and hit with the best of them.

Some say he is the face of Major League Baseball, which is hard to believe--and demonstrates why some believe that the sport is in trouble--because he evidently doesn't speak a word of English.

But beyond that, I have to wonder if Ohtani is telling the full truth about this situation.

I guess when you have millions of bucks in your bank account, what's a couple of million dollars thst can't be accounted for? 

It's not like the bank accounts that we peons have, where if $50 is missing, you see it immediately and want to know where it went.

When you have the money that Ohtani has, I guess you can't account for every penny that goes in or out of his account(s).

I am sure Ohtani has financial.people looking after his money--so why were there no red flags brought up by these people if they saw millions taken out of Ohtani's account(s) without any reckoning?

Or perhaps Ohtani did know about what was happening, unlike the innocence that he pled at the news conference, and was helping out his friend--even though the money thrown away went through a bookmaker, of all things.

I am not a betting person myself, but in this day and age, where betting is legal in many states--or better said, legal betting is easily available on a cell phone near you--I naively didn't even realize that bookmakers still existed.

And did you not think that something like this might happen--even in an age of legal betting--since betting on any sport is just so easy to do, and almost encouraged, right now?

Every sports broadcast running right now has gobs of commercials related to betting, some with up-to-date odds posted right there for you.

Like with the legalization of marijuana, some of our state governments are so intoxicated by the lure of tax dollars generated by these supposedly former "sin" categories now being made legal that they have lost their way in properly serving their constituents, and realizing that there are consequences to their actions that go beyond the almighty green.

You make these things legal, you have opened up a Pandora's Box of problems.

Even though these things are now legal--and lure new users each and every minute of each and every day--there remains an illegal market for gambling and pot availability, because the "thrill" of doing something illegal is still there for some people, and the payback might be more or better ... or st least those that go the illegal route think that way.

Plus, more importantly, some people simply can't handle these "fun" things, and they become real addictions, with everything that goes along with these things becoming a sickness.

Now, with the Major League Baseball season beginning tomorrow, the smell of the grass in the infield and outfield really stinks--

But with this lasseiz fare way we look at gambling right now, did anyone actually think something like this wouldn't eventually happen?

Major League Baseball is, of course. Investigating the matter.

Heaven forbid they find anything on Ohtani ... he and Major League Baseball won't be able to talk their way out of it, no matter if they try to talk their way out of a paper bag in English or Japanese or even Pig Latin.

The rules are in place for players to not gamble, in particular on their own sport, but how do you police it when you basically push gambling on every broadcast and throughout society, but forbid your players to do what many are doing anyway, legally or illegally?

Due to betting, major sporting events like the Super Bowl and the NCAA college basketball playoffs--"March Madness" indeed--are almost completely obscured by the betting angle, which has propelled these events to a level of idiocy that is truly difficult to fully contemplate.

Heck, we have a former president gleefully giving his college basketball brackets to the public each year, we have news anchors tearing up their brackets when they are busted, talking about it on the air as if it was an actual news story ... it goes on and on and on.

And this is betting millions upon millions of dollars on kids who are teens or in their early 20s yet.

Heck, you can even bet on professional wrestling--which is pre-planned and with the winners and losers pre-determined--if you want to.

As a sports fan, I prefer the game over the betting angle, and this Ohtani thing is obscuring baseball, my favorite sport, making the betting angle way more important than what is going on on the field.

Look, there have been betting scandals in sports across the decades ... the name Pete Rose comes to mind, pre-Internet, pre-legalization.

Way before that, we have the Black Sox scandal from more than 100 years ago, related to the throwing of the World Series, of all things.

Whether talking about Pete Rose  or Shoeless Joe Jackson or Ohtani, this has got to stop, but it won't.

So expect more betting problems cutting through sports in the future--

And you can bet the house on it.