The face of baseball shrugging off a betting scandal to keep making history

Shohei Ohtani’s season began with him embroiled in a betting scandal of which he was no fault, has included him achieving something no one else in the 150-year history of professional baseball has, and will likely end with him winning third most valuable player. (MVP) of his career.

He also looks increasingly likely to lead the Los Angeles Dodgers to a World Series appearance, and it would be fitting that a roller-coaster 2024 campaign concludes with the face of Major League Baseball (MLB) gleefully hoisting the commissioner’s trophy.

Simply put, Ohtani is a baseball phenomenon. He’s an icon in his baseball-crazy homeland of Japan, and he’s become the sport’s biggest star in the US, doing things no other player can do.

After dominating Japanese baseball for half a decade with the excellent Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, he moved to the United States in 2018 at the age of 23 and joined the Los Angeles Angels. The story of Japanese stars making the switch to MLB is a mixed bag, to say the least. For every success story in the form of Ichiro Suzuki or Hideki Matsui, there are plenty of highly touted prospects splashing around.

And the challenge Ohtani faced was even greater as he tried to make it as a two-way player: a hitter. i a pitcher For context, there are no other two-way players in the MLB currently, and you have to go back to the first half of the 20th century to find someone doing it with particular success. Either pitching or hitting in the major leagues is incredibly difficult, but doing both… And Ohtani didn’t just do it. do both, immediately stood out.

He won American League (AL) Rookie of the Year honors with the Angels in 2018 and after injury somewhat ruined his 2019 and 2020 campaigns, 2021 saw him ascend to truly ‘elite and become the best player in baseball. He made dominant history with bat and ball, being unanimously voted AL MVP, and sports news ranked his campaign as the best season of all time, in any sport.

He was the AL MVP runner-up in 2022 after another strong season before being unanimously voted to win the award for the second time following the 2023 campaign. However, despite his individual brilliance, the playing for the largely hapless Angels ensured that, incredibly, he never made the playoffs.

So last winter, Ohtani took advantage of being perhaps the most sought-after free agent in baseball history and made the short hop across Los Angeles to join the Dodgers. He signed a 10-year, $700m (£527m) contract, the biggest contract in American sports history for baseball’s most unique player.

It was a match made in heaven, with the face of the sport joining one of its most illustrious and richest franchises in a huge media market, where the eyes of the country would always be on him. But scandal was just around the corner

In March 2024, a remarkable story emerged that shocked the world as Ohtani’s player Ippei Mizuhara was arrested for being caught in an illegal gambling ring. Mizuhara would plead guilty to bank and tax fraud after allegedly stealing nearly $17 million from baseball’s biggest superstar to pay off his own illegal gambling debts.

Federal investigators say Mizuhara made about 19,000 bets between September 2021 and January 2024. Mizuhara’s winnings totaled more than $142 million, which he deposited into his own bank account and not Ohtani’s, but his losing bets were about $183 million, a net loss of nearly $41 million. .

Investigators found no evidence Mizuhara had bet on baseball, and prosecutors confirmed there was no evidence Ohtani was involved or had knowledge of Mizuhara’s gambling. Ohtani was considered a victim and fully cooperated with investigators.

The revelations coincided with the start of the 2024 MLB season, Ohtani’s first as a Dodger, but apparently had no impact on his baseball performance. Although he has not pitched this year due to recovery from elbow surgery, he has reached historic heights at the plate.

The 30-year-old entered the 50-50 club as he became the first player in MLB history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single game when, in a Sept. 19 game against the Miami Marlins, had six hits. six at bats – one single, two doubles and three home runs – and stole two bases. It was one of the greatest single-game performances in the history of the sport and pushed him past the threshold of a unique achievement in MLB’s 150-year history. He finished the regular season having played in 159 games, posting a .310 batting average and a league-leading 54 home runs while stealing 59 bases.

After helping the Dodgers win the National League West with a 98-64 record, Ohtani finally gets a chance to prove what he can do in the playoffs. He gave an exciting taste of things to come when, in his first postseason game against the San Diego Padres, he hit a home run in his second at-bat.

Finally, the Dodgers fought back for a tense 3-2 NL Division Series win over the Padres and now lead the New York Mets 2-1 in the best-of-seven championship series after a win 8-0 in the third game on Wednesday evening. The winners will advance to the World Series, where the New York Yankees or the Cleveland Guardians will await them.

Since that home run in Game 1 against the Padres, Ohtani has struggled a bit at the plate. He had a five-hit streak in his next 28 at-bats, all five of which were singles. He didn’t put the ball in play or hit for power.

But in the eighth inning on Wednesday evening, the Japanese phenom blasted a monumental home run into the upper deck of the Citi Field bleachers as the Dodgers jumped from a 4-0 lead to 7-0 with a swing of beat They are just two wins away from a World Series appearance and a chance for a second title since 1988. Even the most they won in that time was during the Covid-shortened 2020 season, with just 60 regular season games instead of the normal 162. Dodgers fans have been waiting a long time…

Baseball’s biggest and only star is about to end that drought and the celebrations will be felt around the world.