Show them the money, Shohei Ohtani

“Back in the ’70s and ’80s I wish I’d had an interpreter. I’d be scot-free.” – Pete Rose, banned from baseball for life for gambling, on Shohei Ohtani’s explanation for illegal bets placed using his banking account.

Telford Vice / Cape Town

MAYBE you don’t know of Shohei Ohtani. Doubtless you do know of Babe Ruth, who arrived on the big league baseball scene in 1914 as a pitcher who could bat and became the greatest home run hitter the game had seen.

Ohtani, 29, is the closest thing to Ruth in modern baseball, where allrounders are mythical creatures. He bats! He pitches! He breathes fire! Not quite. But he is almost unheard of in strictly specialised American sport. His clunky classification as a “two-way player” didn’t exist as an official designation until 2020.

Major League Baseball (MLB) has been confounded by Ohtani since 2018, when he first played for the Los Angeles Angels after establishing himself with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in his native Japan. In December he signed the biggest contract in the history of sport — a 10-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers worth US$700-million. Or US$26-million more than Barcelona agreed to pay Lionel Messi in 2017, albeit for only four years’ work. 

Ohtani was Rookie of the Year in 2018 but struggled with injuries in 2019 and 2020. In 2021 he became the only player to hit more than 10 home runs, steal more than 20 bases, record more than 100 strikeouts and pitch in more than 10 games in a single MLB season. He was a shoo-in as the Most Valuable Player.

In 2022 Ohtani was the first player since Ruth’s era to bat and pitch often enough to make it onto the leaderboard in both departments. “Normally I don’t worry about those types of numbers but I was getting close and wanted to see what it feels like,” Ohtani said in Japanese. His words were translated by an interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. Remember that name.

In the World Baseball Classic (WBC) final in Miami in March last year, Ohtani duelled the US’ Mike Trout, then his Angels teammate and a bona fide star, with two out in the top of the ninth, no-one on base and Japan leading 3-2. Ohtani took Trout to a full count of three balls and two strikes. Unless the next pitch was hit foul something had to give. Ohtani produced a wicked slider that veered away from the swinging Trout’s bat to reel in a strike out and clinch Japan’s first title since 2009.

More than 55-million viewers saw that. Seven months later a total of 45.51-million watched all five games as the Texas Rangers earned their first World Series trophy by beating the Arizona Diamondbacks. That’s an average of 9.08-million per game, or more than six times fewer than for the WBC climax. 

Ohtani has yet to feature in a World Series. If and when he does, expect those numbers to be hit out of the park. Merely signing him improved the Dodgers’ chances of winning this year by 3.4%, according to the bookies. And that’s despite the team knowing he can’t pitch until at least 2025 because of an elbow injury.

Undoubtedly Ohtani is good for the baseball business. But is some of the business around baseball good for him? Here’s where Mizuhara, the interpreter, comes back into the story.

The Dodgers fired him in March after Ohtani’s lawyers alleged he had hacked the player’s banking account to pay a bookmaker in California, where betting on sport is illegal. A federal investigation cleared Ohtani, and Mizuhara has been charged with bank fraud for stealing more than US$16-million from Ohtani.

Gambling has been baseball’s kryptonite since the Chicago White Sox were bribed, reportedly by mob boss Arnold Rothstein, to throw the 1919 World Series. The scandal resulted in the appointment in 1920 of the game’s first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a judge who became the most powerful man in baseball. Ruth himself was obliged to write to Landis in 1924: “You can rest assured that I do not intend to do any more betting on the [horse] races.”

Not everybody is willing to let Ohtani go so quietly. Pete Rose was headed for the Hall of Fame before his betting on baseball while he was a player and a manager was exposed. He was banned for life. What did Rose make of Ohtani’s explanation? In a recent TikTok video that seems to have been shot in a casino, Rose says: “Back in the ’70s and ’80s I wish I’d had an interpreter. I’d be scot-free.” Doubtless Hansie Cronjé would concur. 

Financial Mail

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Without corruption, cricket would wither

Cricket’s dirty old secret: it needs matchfixing like a bicycle needs wheels.

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in London

A reporter walks into a hipster coffee joint on Whitechapel Road in London’s East End. He orders an espresso at the counter, then sits down and prepares to write a story on newly made claims of matchfixing in cricket.

So he needs wifi. He tries to sign in to the café’s complementary connection but it doesn’t want to know. He looks down the list of available networks and the only other open option is — here’s the punchline, folks — Ladbrokes, the betting shop, which has a branch nearby. Come on in, friend, say Ladbrokes, who soon have the reporter’s email address.

They’ve already been in touch, boasting “best odds guaranteed”, “VIP experiences”, “in-shop machine offers”, and “great offers on the go”. 

This, then, comes to you courtesy of the good people of the gambling industry and the customers whose money feeds the beast.

And who between them, cricket says, are stealing the game’s soul by paying players to do their evil bidding.

The latest episode in this ongoing and sorry saga has been broadcast by al-Jazeera, who alleged this week that 15 international matches were tainted by 26 instances of spotfixing in 2011 and 2012. The channel’s first foray into this territory hit the airwaves in May.

al-Jazeera say their sources’ predictions for how many runs would be scored at an agreed point in an innings — you can place bets on what that number of runs will be — were proved correct 25 times out of 26.

Cricket’s response has been to huff and to puff, and to demand that al-Jazeera blow their own house down by co-operating with anti-corruption officials. al-Jazeera have said they will put their trust in Interpol.

“The ICC [International Cricket Council] is committed to working to uphold integrity in cricket,” a statement quoted anti-corruption unit manager Alex Marshall as saying.

“As you would expect we will again take the contents of the programme and any allegations it may make seriously and will investigate fully. However I must refute the assertion that cricket does not take the issue of corruption seriously, we have more resources than ever before working to rid our sport of corruption.

“The investigation into these allegations has already commenced and will run alongside a number of other live unrelated investigations. When considering the claims we will work with professional independent betting analysts. “As with the first programme we have and will continue to ask for the co-operation of the broadcaster. We have made repeated efforts to engage with the broadcaster as it can play such a crucial part in the full and thorough investigation it has called for.

“We do welcome the commitment from the broadcaster to share the files with Interpol and, I hope, other law enforcement agencies who can act upon the information and support us in ridding the sport of these criminals.”

Here’s Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive James Sutherland: “CA takes a zero-tolerance approach against anyone trying to compromise the integrity of the game, and to suggest anything otherwise is unsubstantiated and incorrect.

“Prior to the broadcast of al-Jazeera’s documentary CA’s integrity unit conducted a review of the latest claims by al-Jazeera, from a known criminal source, and, from the limited information provided by al-Jazeera, our team have not identified any issues of corruption by any current or former player …”

So, because CA’s people can’t find what al-Jazeera say they have found the latter’s claims are “unsubstantiated and incorrect”?

What kind of bullshit argument is that? Because the umpires and the match referee don’t see you rubbing sandpaper on the ball doesn’t mean sandpaper has not been rubbed on the ball.

As for the ICC, they clearly don’t understand how journalism works. If al-Jazeera were to spill the beans why would their current sources keep trusting them and how would they cultivate new sources? Their credibility would be worth as little as crooked cricketers’.

Maintaining the good of the game is not the press’ responsibility. That’s for the suits to think about, and if they can’t see that exposing corruption is indeed for the good of the game they should be drummed out of cricket.

They should be only too pleased that someone is shining a light on their most pressing challenge, not trying to co-opt that light and bring it under their control. Then again, suits don’t like to be told how to do their jobs properly, especially when they aren’t doing their jobs properly. 

Conversely, journalists who out themselves as fans should be summarily sacked: their audiences cannot trust embedded stooges to tell the truth.

Unless, that is, those journalists know and act on the bulletproof principle that they owe their loyalty to their readers, listeners and viewers, and not to the source of the freebies nudged their way.

No-one should arrive at a cricket ground expecting free entry, free desk space, free power points, free wifi and free food and drink. But take any of those away and reporters will toss tantrums that would impress a two-year-old.

So we don’t see reporting on the clear conflict of betting companies sponsoring major teams. Instead we see betting companies advertising on some of sport journalism’s biggest platforms.

Maybe that’s why we’ve seen at best tepid acknowledgment in the mainstream press that al-Jazeera may be onto something. Mostly we’ve seen flaccid dismissals of the documentary on the grounds that not enough names have been named. And this from people who know that using the right names at the wrong time will get them sued just as easily as using the wrong names at the right time.

These are the some of the same people who will be noisily outraged if the free wifi in the pressbox is a touch slow or the caterers run out of free cake at the tea interval.

The best case scenario is that they’re pissed off that they don’t have the story al-Jazeera do, and the worst that they know the alarming truth and don’t want to tell it.

Here it is: fixing has been an important part of cricket’s success as an industry for more than 200 years and is crucial to the game’s continued growth and prosperity.

Gambling built Lord’s, whose website informs us breathlessly that, “Around £20 000 was bet on a series of games between Old Etonians and England in 1751!” That’s right, exclamation mark and all. By 1787 Thomas Lord — that’s his name on the tin of cricket’s poshest ground — was cashing in on the market.

The modern incarnation of all that is the growth explosion in the T20 market, which serves up bottomless fodder for bookmakers and punters alike.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce estimates that the betting market in that country is worth US$60-billion, and that 80% of it — or US$48-billion — is spent on cricket. All good, except that you cannot legally bet on cricket in India.

So, in the same way that authorities struggle to protect sex workers from abuse in places where sex work is criminalised, there is little cricket can do about fixing where it matters most.

Whether cricket wants to do something about fixing in India is the more pertinent question, perhaps even more so whether something should be done.

Cricket knows that India keeps it financially healthy, and that for the money to keep rolling in Indians placing bets on ever further flung and less relevant tournaments in the fastest growing (only growing?) version of the game have to be tolerated; protected even.

Like the banks that failed the world in 2008, cricket’s betting market is too big to be allowed to fail. The game has always needed gambling like a bicycle needs wheels, and that won’t change. And where there is gambling there will be corruption.

Corruption is against the law? As is betting on cricket in India? Since when has capitalism respected any law that doesn’t promote or at least safeguard its own interests? Politicians use prostitutes, don’t they?

Those questions have been brought to you by Ladbrokes. They might also have the answers. 

Don’t bet on sport ever ridding itself of gambling

Television and sport are each other’s life support. What keeps television sport alive? Gambling.

Times SELECT

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

THINK not a lot could connect a pioneering New York mob boss with the man for whom cricket’s grandest ground is named? Think again.

They are awkward bedfellows because of money, which they knew was readily generated in gambling on sport.

And before television bought sport lock, stock and smoking broadcast rights deals, everything sport achieved as an industry was paid for by gambling.

These days television and sport are each other’s life support. What keeps television sport alive? Gambling.

The life of Arnold Rothstein, nicknamed “The Brain” by Damon Runyon for his reimagining and reorganisation of common thuggery as the profitable business we now call the mafia, was always going to end badly.

It did in November 1928 when he was rubbed out for refusing to pay up after racking up debts of what in today’s money would be US$5-million in a poker game he considered fixed.

If Rothstein’s name rings a bell it’s because he’s the figure most often accused of fixing baseball’s World Series in 1919 — which the Chicago White Sox admitted throwing, creating what the papers enthusiastically wrote up as “the Black Sox scandal”.

Rothstein denied his involvement to a grand jury. Another theory is that he said it ain’t so with reference to one plot but was central to another, and even that he was in on both ends of the fix.

There is less doubt that he fixed more horseraces than you could shake a whip at, including at the track he owned in Maryland.

The son of a banker and the younger brother of a rabbi, Rothstein was a bad man to the bitter end. “Me mudder did it,” he told the cops when they pitched up at his deathbed to ask who shot him.

Thomas Lord, Yorkshire-born but a Londoner all his adult life, was engaged as a general skivvy at the White Conduit Club (WCC) in the days when gentlemen batted and professionals bowled.

Lord was, of course, a bowler among as ripe a collection of cricketing young and old farts as could be found.

In 1786 two of his supposed betters at the WCC, the ninth earl of Winchilsea and the fourth duke of Richmond, known by their titled peers as George Finch and Charles Lennox, tasked Lord, and backed him financially, with finding a ground that was less accessible by the public.

Among the motivations put forward for the move was that Joe and Joanne Soap were sometimes less than complimentary about the poncy players’ efforts. That’s right: what became, in 1787, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) was snobbish even before it existed.

Importantly, entry to a ground that was less like a public park and more like today’s stadiums could be controlled by the sale of tickets — and that meant cricket’s burgeoning betting market could be kept from prying eyes and thus more easily manipulated.

After two false starts in other parts of London, what we call Lord’s — don’t forget the indelible apostrophe — opened for  business in June 1814.

And we do mean business. In 1793 alone one of the previous Lord’s grounds hosted 14 matches that attracted a total of 11 000 guineas — a guinea is a pound and a shilling — in bets.

Most of them would have been laid by the earls and dukes of the day, who had inherited money to burn unlike people who had to work for a living.

When the MCC assumed superiority over every organisation in cricket, just a year after the club was founded, their rendition of the laws included regulations on gambling, as had two previous versions issued by other clubs.

You can see where this is going. In 1785, Finch himself — remember him, the ninth earl of Winchilsea — recruited Billy Beldham, then 19 and on his way to becoming a revered player, having seen him in action a year earlier.

In an interview with James Pycroft, a noted writer on cricket, in 1836, Beldham was quoted as saying, “You may hear that I sold matches. I will confess I once was sold myself by two men, one of whom would not bowl, and the other would not bat, his best, and lost 10 pounds.

“The next match, at Nottingham, I joined in selling, and got my money back. But for this once, I could say I never was bought in my life; and this was not for want of offers from C [sic] and other turfmen, though often I must have been accused.

“For where it was worthwhile to buy, no man could keep a character; because to be out without runs or to miss a catch was, by the disappointed betting-men, deemed proof as strong as Holy Writ.”

Which sounds a bit like Hansie Cronje blaming the devil for making him do it. Perhaps South Africa’s crooked captain should have blamed the British aristocracy instead.

Pycroft held up cricket as the epitome of life as a Victorian gentleman: “Cricket is essentially Anglo-Saxon, … Foreigners have rarely imitated us. English settlers everywhere play at cricket; but of no single club have we heard that dieted either with frogs, saur-kraut [sic] or macaroni.”

But, odd ideas and all, he knew corruption when he saw it: “Lord’s [at the turn of the 19th century] was frequented by men with book and pencil, betting as openly and professionally as in the ring at Epsom, and ready to deal in the odds with any and every person of speculative propensities.”

Rothstein, had he been old enough at the time and on the right side of the Atlantic, would doubtless have jumped in, expensive shoes and all, at Lord’s with offers that couldn’t be refused to make sure the ball bounced his bank balance’s way.

Not a lot has changed, except that betting companies now sponsor teams and advertise on mainstream sport websites.

And that the gambling industry has grown exponentially in the internet age. Globally, the online sport and gaming betting business is set to be worth almost US$60-billion by 2020, and most of it will be spent from half a world away by people watching television.

This also holds true in the bricks-and-mortar world. Show me a betting shop and I will show you walls covered in televisions beaming events thousands of kilometres distant. True story: on April 2, 2011 — the day of the cricket World Cup final between Sri Lanka and India in Colombo — I walked into a gambling den in Galle, Sri Lanka and was able to watch live racing from Turffontein, Johannesburg.  

Maybe Rothstein wouldn’t have been shot had he been playing poker from behind a screen in 1928.

Maybe Lord would have cut to the chase and become an online bookmaker, and Lord’s wouldn’t exist.

But it’s no maybe that sport and gambling are as wedded to each other now as they were then, and will be long after television is obsolete and every game we watch — and bet on — is streamed online, perhaps even from empty stadiums.

Don’t think so? Want to bet on it?