New Pete Rose biography arrives head-first into Shohei Ohtani gambling crisis
Dodgers' two-way superstar embroiled in MLB's biggest gambling crisis since Rose bet on Cincinnati Reds as the team's manager
Talk about impeccable timing.
Author Keith O’Brien was just happy to release his new book, CHARLIE HUSTLE: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball.
He’d spent years working on it — I know because a few years ago he enlisted me to help. In 2021, I went to a Fort Lauderdale courthouse to pull old case files on Norman Janowitz, a known drug dealer in Florida in the 1980s who figured in to the gambling issues that would result in Rose’s lifetime ban from baseball in 1989.
But in a coincidental boost for O’Brien and Pantheon Books, Charlie Hustle arrived in bookstores like one of Rose’s signature head-first dives into third base — just as news was breaking about a gambling scandal engulfing Shohei Ohtani, the two-way superstar for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Ohtani, 29, hasn’t been accused of betting on anything. But, as the Los Angeles Times first reported, he was “uncomfortably close” close to a gambling operation now under investigation by federal authorities and Major League Baseball.
Ohtani’s representatives have accused his former interpreter and right-hand man, Ippei Mizuhara of engaging in a “massive theft” of Ohtani’s funds, allegedly using millions of the player’s dollars to allegedly pay off Mizuhara’s gambling debts.
It’s a real mess, unlike anything seen since the Rose saga, which O’Brien lays out in a 464-page biography that can be considered required reading in light of current events.
As O’Brien wrote in a column for CNN online, “Ohtani’s attorneys have not provided any details on how they believe the funds were stolen from the superstar’s bank accounts, which has only fueled questions about the scandal as Ohtani is set to make his much-anticipated debut with the Dodgers on Thursday after signing a 10-year $700 million contract late last year.’’
There’s no idea how long it will take investigators to figure out exactly what Ohtani knew. But as those probes unfold, Charlie Hustle offers an indepth look at MLB’s investigation into Rose more than 35 years ago — and how that probe, O’Brien says, is providing a road map of sorts for the league’s investigation into the Ohtani mess.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel in his monologue the other night may have made the best — and most accurate — comparison to the two gambling cases involving Rose and Ohtani:
"I don't know if you heard about this. The Dodgers yesterday fired Ohtani's translator for allegedly stealing Ohtani's money to cover gambling debts. The guy's name is Ippei Mizuhara. He's accused of transferring somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.5 million from Ohtani's account. A lot of the concern is about whether he was betting on baseball with this gambling. How they wouldn't know that, I don't know. I mean, the clues were there all along. The guy even had the same haircut as Pete Rose.’’
