Introducing: The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani - "The Letter O" | EP 1

"Hey everyone, it's Andrea." You know, growing up in Philly, sports were never something you watched casually. They were personal. Part of your identity, really. And when you're a lifelong sports fan like me, you understand loyalty. Between a team and its fans, between lifelong teammates, and between an athlete and the people they trust most. So when I heard a story that brings sports and betrayal together, I had to know more. Shohei Otani was one of the most celebrated athletes in the world. But behind his meteoric rise was a mysterious man Otani trusted more than almost anyone. His interpreter. After six years working alongside Otani, his interpreter became a close confidant. But that relationship filled on years of trust, almost threatened everything. ESPN investigated reporter Tisha Thompson and her team broke the story. Now they're taking us inside the investigation to show us how it all really unfolded. For our betrayal listeners, I'm excited to share a special preview of episode one of this season of ESPN's 30 for 30 podcast, the betrayal of Shohei Otani. This is The Letter O. Enjoy. It's November, 2024, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in their home stadium, celebrating their World Series win. The players line up on the podium. Team manager Dave Roberts takes the mic and introduces some of the stars. And then he calls out the name everyone's waiting for. Shohei Otani just finished his first season with the Dodgers. He's a head taller than a lot of his teammates. And he's wearing a t-shirt and backwards ball cap when he gives a shy grin as he takes the mic. This is one of the first times that Shohei has spoken publicly in English without an interpreter. He's here to be part of a team. Congratulations, Los Angeles, thank you friends. That's all he says, and the crowd absolutely loves it. By any measure, Shohei's first season with the Dodgers was extraordinary. Here's the 2-1. Many believe he could become the best baseball player of all time. It's really not hyperbole guys to say that Shohei Otani is the new Babe Ruth. It's the kind of success that helps overshadow what happened just months before at the start of this season when Shohei was caught up in a scandal that could have ended it all. We're going to turn to the scandal Rocky Major League Baseball. Shohei Otani is set to address the media today. The scandal has the potential to be one of the biggest sports scandals that we've ever seen. Certainly one of the biggest baseball scandals that we've ever seen. Our team at ESPN broke the story. It tied the money of one of the highest paid players in baseball history to a vast illegal sports betting operation. But when it was over, he would walk away and someone else, someone close to him, would confess to a shocking crime disappearing in disgrace. And in this moment, at the World Series celebration, you could almost forget it ever happened. But two years later, I still have so many questions. So I'm going to travel the country, chase down leads, and try to understand how one of sports most complicated friendships detonated into one of the biggest scandals in baseball history. I'm ESPN investigative reporter Tisha Thompson from 30 for 30 podcasts. This is the betrayal of Shohei Otani, episode one, The Letter O. I started working on this story a year before Shohei won that World Series when a source sent me a tip. At first, the tip seemed to have nothing to do with baseball or any sport. It was information from a federal court document still under seal, a list of items that had been seized from a house in California. It included the kinds of things you might expect from a federal raid, computers, hard drives, and cell phones. But there were also $40,000 brightling watches, handbags from Chanel, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, and Casino chips, lots and lots of Casino chips. Why were the feds interested in it? Because all of these things were taken from a house owned by a man, named Matt Boyer. The feds also seized a cash counting machine, sports betting records, and receipts for offshore bank wires. And that's when I say to myself, I think Matt Boyer is a bookie. A person who takes bets pays them out when they win and collects when they lose. My source confirms that Matt Boyer is a bookie, but he isn't just any bookie. According to my source, his clients include celebrities, millionaires, and seemingly one of the most famous athletes in the world. When my source tells me the name of that athlete, it's a name so big, so shocking that all I write down is the letter O. You tell me the name of the athlete involved and that the feds are involved in an investigation, and that is why we have to be so careful. This is my editor, Elaine Tang. We're really worried about putting a rumor out there that then comes back to us as fact. We have to be really careful about going out and saying like, "Hey, do you think is Shohei Otoni gambling with a bookie?" This tip was so potentially damning. We needed to tread really carefully, because it could turn into a very grown-up version of that kid's game, telephone, where someone whispers something to someone, and then they whisper it to someone else, and by the time it comes back to you, it's totally different from what you said. I couldn't just ask sources questions like, "Hey, does Shohei gamble?" Even if the answer was no, they might tell someone else in the clubhouse that ESPN was asking if Shohei gambled. And then that person says to someone else, "Hey, I heard Shohei gambles. By the time I call several someone's later, that person then says to me, "Oh yeah, I have heard he gambles. All I have done is confirm a rumor that I started a rumor about Shohei Otoni paying millions of dollars to an illegal bookie." I think it was the amount of money involved as well as the caliber of the athlete that feels really loaded and, you know, extremely damaging if true, right, to the athlete, their reputation, their career. It's a very serious allegation. I want to learn everything I can about what someone could get themselves into betting with a bookie, so I head to the sports betting epicenter of the country. I'm in Las Vegas to meet with the reporter I think knows more about bookies and sports betting than anyone else in the business. What do you think the biggest money maker is for the casino? Penny Slot. That's correct. This is ESPN's David Purdom. I met him in a casino just off the Vegas strip. We sit down in a room near the sports book, watching as people play speds. Did they put the sports book in the back on purpose? Just to make you walk through all the Eta Flaka sheets. I wanted to talk to Purdom about the tip I received because he has a massive roll of decks of sources in the sports betting world. Had you ever heard of Matt Boyer before? I had not. I never heard of him. We gave you Matt Boyer's name and you called sources. You do the David Purdom magic and disappear for 12 hours and came back with info. Right. I usually go to you start with your guys that you know have had this. And when they didn't know, I had to expand and I did and found some people that knew of him. And then when we found out that he was coming to Vegas with a lot of talk to people here and they knew of him. A source warned Purdom that Boyer was connected to a man with a dangerous reputation. A guy named Owen Hansen, a former USC football player who became known as the Kochame QB. When I got the original tip, Hansen was in prison for bookmaking and drug trafficking and was rumored to have ties to the cartel. We had a source who was involved with running money for that group and he was telling us to be careful, right, because Owen Hansen was not known as a good person. He was known as a violent person around the bedding community and when we were ties to Boyer, there was concern. Over the next few weeks, we gathered more sources and confirmed Boyer was running a huge sports book operation in Southern California. Is California more prolific with bookies than other parts of the world? Massive, massive bookmaking operations in California. Why? Because there's no legal sports bed. Sports bedding is now legal in 39 states, plus Washington DC and Puerto Rico. Depending on where you live, you can place bets through a state license app, a website, or in a casino or a bar in those states. But unless you're betting on a horse race, sports bedding in California is illegal. There is no legal way to place a sports bed there, not on drive-kings, not on fan duel, not in the tribal casinos. So if you live in California and you want to bet on sports, you either have to go somewhere like Vegas or find a bookie, which is, of course, illegal. But there are many reasons why someone might want to use a bookie, even if the state they live in has legal sports bedding. Cardam says a big reason is credit. People want a bet on credit. You don't want to give over your cash. If you can bet on credit, huge advantage. I can just place my bet for $100 and my money never changes hands. You go down a thousand bucks. The guy says, okay, let's meet up at the waffle house and you go there and you pass over an envelope and that's how it's done. Another reason someone might seek out a bookie is anonymity. If you are an athlete bedding with the drive-kings, there's a chance that we could find it. But if you can be bedding with this illegal sports book over here, I would not be able to know it. So Perdom says a celebrity who wants to bet discreetly might use a bookie. When I told him that Shohei Otani was the athlete, my source told me might be involved with Matt Boyer. I was stunned. I remember when you relayed the message to who the athlete was, I was like, oh my gosh, I believe I cursed. Why is sports bedding such a sensitive topic for Major League Baseball? Well, you start with the Black Sox way back at the beginning of the century. The Chicago White Sox, several players of them got engaged with some criminals and they allegedly agreed to throw a world series. Major League Baseball banned eight players from the Chicago White Sox for life. And after that scandal, the league created a set of rules about bedding on sports. It forbids players, coaches, and staff from using a bookie and you may never bet on baseball. So that was the big one. The next time you get some sort of bedding scandals peat rows. All-time hits leader, he eventually admitted to bedding on the game of baseball. I was wrong. I just stupid worst thing ever did in my life. In 1989, MLB punished peat rows with a lifetime ban for bedding on baseball. Peat rows was one of the greatest ball players of his generation. He holds records that have never been broken, but all of his feats on the field have been overshadowed by what he did off the field. Could Shohei Otani, the greatest player of his generation, be the next peat rows? If they were to have found out that he was bedding on baseball, you would have been banned for life. And this is your biggest star, banned for life. Part of what made the allegation so shocking was how Shohei Otani had a reputation for being squeaky clean. Before this, there's never been a whisper of a scandal attached to his name, which makes it all the more surprising to hear allegations that he might be tied to a bookie with dangerous connections. But we realized we don't actually know all that much about Shohei's life outside of baseball. He is the most guarded and protected athlete that I think I've ever been around. This is ESPN's Tim Cuen. Tim specializes in writing profiles of the most famous and oftentimes controversial names in sports. People like Barry Barnes, Aaron Rodgers, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Tim says he's been trying to decipher the enigma that is Shohei Otani ever since he first arrived here in the United States. When he came here, I first started observing him, knowing that I was going to have to observe him to write about him rather than talk to him because it was established early on that it was a dead end. He will only take questions about the game and very few, three, maybe four in each language. And these are in like bit questions. I want to know like you just threw 117 pitches. Are you what do you feel today? And he would not, he just doesn't entertain those. He's just not built that way. Tim says most of what you know about Shohei is limited to what Shohei is willing to tell you, and it rarely leaves the realm of the ballpark. And when it does, it's on Shohei's terms. Like when he got married, people didn't even know Shohei was in a relationship until he posted about his wife on Instagram. He has lots of titles MVP, gazillionaire, superstar, but husband had alluded them until now and he made the announcement where else, but on social media that reads, not only have I begun a new chapter in my career with the Dodgers, but I also have begun a new life with someone from my native country of Japan who is very special to me and I wanted everyone to know, I am now married. Shohei's teammates and even Dodgers manager Dave Roberts didn't know about it. I think there is this sort of the aura, right? Like just leave him alone to do what he does because the distractions are not something he's interested in. He's not interested in talking to me, to be honest. He does it as an obligation after he pitches, he hits two home runs in a game, he'll stand there and answer questions in the most anodine way possible. Are you nervous at all playing in the post season for the first time? No. But the league, the teams and the fans don't seem to mind not knowing much about Shohei's life off the field because what's happening on the field is record breaking. He's really challenged our idea of limits because he has shown his talent to be limitless. He does the two things that excite baseball people more than anything else. He can throw a baseball over 100 miles an hour and he can hit a ball 500 feet. It's like the two headline acts of baseball. He is among the best in the world at both if not the best. He is a dream for Major League Baseball. And the Dodgers rewarded him in the fall of 2023 with a record breaking contract. It is the announcement that took the baseball world by storm today. 700 million dollars. Over 10 years. One of the league's premiere franchises made a historic bet on Shohei because they knew his success would be their success. They stood to make a lot of money too. Ticket sales, merchandise, partnerships, Shohei's success could pay off big time for the Dodgers and MLB. Shohei himself makes more than 125 million dollars in endorsements a year with much of that money coming from advertisements in Japan. When I was there, I was shocked by you could literally not walk more than two blocks in Tokyo without seeing his face on something. Whether it was a green tea or a water, sports drink or Hugo Boss or something. I mean, everywhere is Otani. After touching down in Tokyo, it's easy to see Otani Mania is really a thing. Everyone in Japan is by default a Shohei fan. The appetite for Otani, the love for Otani, appears to be as limitless as his talent. If Shohei's reputation takes a hit, it wouldn't just tarnish his name. It would have devastating consequences for the Dodgers, for Major League Baseball and for Japan. app, Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as I do. I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the survivor files. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a bookshelf and you're a for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. 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