Ohtani & Pete Rose Are Not Alike

SPRINGHILL, FL- It has been over 35 years since MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti famously banned Pete Rose from baseball for life. Since then the MLB has seen frequent scandals. These have included the 1994 MLB season being cancelled due to a lockout, the Mitchell report exposing widespread steroid use, and more recently the blackballing of former Cy Young winner Trevor Bauer. Now reports involving Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani have surfaced that threaten to throw the league into turmoil once again, and which are drawing comparisons to the Pete Rose scandal so many years ago. I am here to tell you, however, that the emerging Ohtani story and the Pete Rose scandal have the barest of superficial similarities. Anyone on social media leading you to believe otherwise is misinformed or reckless with the facts.

Let's first start with the similarities. Ohtani and Rose are baseball players who have been connected to illegal gambling, and that's it, that is where the similarities end. While Pete Rose was personally betting on games he had the ability to influence as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, and as a player, Ohtani is alleged to have wired money to an illegal bookmaker to cover the gambling debts of his close friend and interpreter Ippei Mizuhara. Whether these transfers are the result of “massive theft” as Ohtani’s attorneys are alleging, or were sent directly by Ohtani, there is no evidence that Ohtani himself bet on major league baseball games, let alone those in which he participated. Ippei Mizuhara stated that he was placing bets on the NBA, NFL, College Football and international soccer. Clearly a full investigation, and frankly one going beyond the bumbling efforts of the Baseball “Commissioner’s” office, is necessary, but sensationalistic comparisons of Ohtani to Pete Rose should stop, now.

At the outset, the juxtaposition of the two players we are discussing today is a jarring contrast. On one end of the morality spectrum is Pete Rose, a man who spent his playing and coaching career, and the time since, revealing exactly what kind of man he really is. Beyond the betting scandal he intentionally injured 23-year-old Ray Fosse in the 1970 All-Star game, engaged in an affair with a minor at the age of 34 in 1975, and served a five-month prison sentence in 1990 for falsifying tax documents. On the other end of that spectrum, we have Shohei Ohtani, a man whose morality is being questioned for the first time in his eleven-year career. On top of being almost universally well-liked by the other ballplayers who know him, he has engaged in recurring charity work including raising money for earthquake victims and donating 60,000 baseball gloves to elementary schoolers in his home country of Japan. Shohei Ohtani is a quiet, unassuming man whose greatest ‘crime’ may have been being foolishly kind to a good friend. Pete Rose is an egotistical loudmouth who never showed an ounce of compassion or concern toward anyone but himself.

The second key difference between these stories is how the two ballplayers approached their situation. Since the initial reports broke it appears that Ohtani has been fully and willingly cooperative. You can debate whether the money was taken without Ohtani’s knowledge or was wired by him to cover the debts of Mizuhara, but you cannot claim that he has attempted to cover it up. On the other hand, Rose was given countless chances in 1989 to come clean about which games he was betting on and lied each time, even faced with documented evidence. It wasn't until 2004, when his book My Prison Without Bars was released, that he took some responsibility for his actions, arguably simply to sell copies of his book. In the end, it was Rose’s arrogance and behavior surrounding the investigation that earned him a lifetime ban as a player and manager. Pete Rose thought he was bigger than the game of baseball, and likely still thinks that.

Shohei Ohtani will absolutely face consequences for his actions and those of Ippei Mizuhara. I find it incredibly hard to believe that Ohtani had no idea what his translator was doing when they spent so much of their time together personally and professionally. Some on social media question whether anyone would simply give a non-relative nearly five million dollars, suggesting more direct involvement. I believe that Ohtani would do precisely that, because he saw a good friend suffering the effects of a gambling illness, and possibly personal threats. Ohtani has stated that he understands the severity of violating the MLB’s gambling policy and I expect him to accept the consequences with grace, unlike Rose, who has never shown grace about anything.

What must stop, and stop now, are attempts to equate Ohtani with Rose, in any respect. Those efforts are repugnant and foolish. Let the Ohtani story be investigated, but also let it stand on its own, and be judged on its own merits. Leave the abhorrent story of the fall of Pete Rose in the trash bin of baseball history, where it belongs.

John Siebels is the owner of Springhill Sports Cards, he collects and sells sports cards on Ebay, you can find him on Instagram and his Ebay store here