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

Hey guys, it's Stephanie. Something you may not know about me is that I've been a baseball fan my entire life, and I was lucky enough to spend part of my career working for the Chicago Cubs. When I heard about this new podcast from ESPN's 30 for 30, I knew I had to share it with you. I remember exactly what it felt like when this story broke. At the time, Shohei Otani wasn't just the biggest name in baseball. He was a once-in-a-generation athlete at the peak of his career. Then millions of dollars from his bank account were linked to an illegal gambling operation. Suddenly, he was trapped inside a scandal that could have ended his career. At the center of it all was the man Otani trusted most, his interpreter, his guide, and one of his closest friends. ESPN investigative reporter Tisha Thompson reveals how she broke the story, landed the only interview with Otani's interpreter, and ultimately uncovered the truth. For our Love Trapped 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 Lord of the Rings is here. And the Lord of the Rings is here. 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. Let's hear it! Friday! Friday! Friday! Friday! And then he calls out the name everyone's waiting for. Who wants to hear from Shohei Otani? 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 so special for me. This is one of the first times that Shohei has spoken publicly in English without an interpreter. I'm so honored to be here and to be part of his team. Congratulations, Los Angeles! Thank you, guys! 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 a 2-1. There's a drive! It's a point! Shohei Otani arrives in October with a three-run home run. Otani sends one in the air. Back it goes! Goal! One-of-a-kind player! One-of-a-kind season! Shohei Otani starts the 50-50 club! 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. Otani! Right field! Forget it! 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. Shohei Otani! And in this moment, at the World Series celebration, you could almost forget it ever happened. Thank you, fans! 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. Here's the pitch to Otani. Shohei Otani! Possibly the greatest player that's ever played the game. Generational talent. Federal investigation. Questions about wire transfers. Four and a half million dollars to a Southern California bookmaker. And he has no idea of it. I'm ESPN investigative reporter Tisha Thompson from 30 for 30 podcasts. This is The Betrayal of Shohei Otani. Episode 1. 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 Breitling 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 the man. I think Matt Boyer is the man. 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 it. 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, like, do you think, is Shohei Otani gambling with a bookie? This tip was so particular, 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 got to the clubhouse, by the time I call several someones 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 Otani 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. We are in Las Vegas, baby. 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. Who do you think the biggest moneymaker is for the casino? Penny Slot. That's correct. Am I right? 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 sportsbook watching as people place bets. Do they put the sportsbook in the back on purpose? Yes, to make you walk through all the flop machines. I wanted to talk to Purdom about the tip I received because he has a massive Rolodex of sources in the sports betting world. Had you ever heard of Matt Boyer before? No, I had not. 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 a lot, I talked to people here and they knew of him. A source would say, 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 Cocaine 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, be careful, right? Because Owen Hansen was not known as a good person. He was known as a violent person around the betting community. And when there was ties to Boyer, there was concern. Over the next few weeks, we gathered more sources and confirmed Boyer was running a huge sportsbook 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 bet. Sports betting is now legal in 39 states, plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Depending on where you live, you can place bets through a state-licensed app, a website, or in a casino or a bar in those states. But unless you're betting on a horse race, sports betting in California is illegal. There is no legal way to place a sports bet there. Not on DraftKings, not on FanDuel, not in the tribal casinos. So if you live in California and you want to bet on a sports betting app, you can bet on a sports betting app. 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 betting. Purdom says a big reason is credit. People want to 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 $1,000. The guy says, OK, 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 betting with the DraftKings, there's a chance that we could find it. But if you could be betting with this illegal sports book over here, I would not be able to know it. So Purdom says a celebrity who wants to bet discreetly might use a bookie. When I told him that Shohei Ohtani was the athlete my source told me might be involved with Matt Boyer. I was stunned. I remember when you relayed the message to me who the athlete was, I was like, oh, my gosh, I believe I cursed. Why is sports betting 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 betting 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 betting scandal is Pete Rose. Number 4,192 makes Pete Rose the all-time Major League Baseball hit leader. All-time hits leader. He eventually admitted to betting on the game of baseball. I was wrong. I'm just stupid. Worst thing I ever did in my life. In 1989, MLB punished Pete Rose with a lifetime ban for betting on baseball. Pete Rose was one of the greatest ballplayers 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 Ohtani, the greatest player of his generation, be the next Pete Rose? If they were to have found out that he was betting on baseball, he 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 Ohtani 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 Kuhn. Tim specializes in writing profiles of the most famous and oftentimes controversial names in sports. People like Barry Bonds, Aaron Rodgers, Floyd Mayweather Jr. Tim says he's been trying to decipher the enigma that is Shohei Ohtani ever since he first arrived here in the United States. When he came here, I first started observing him knowing. 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 the husband had eluded him 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. 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 felt like it was a good timing because it's before the season. I didn't want really any distractions once the season started. I think there is this, the sort of the aura, right? Like just leave him alone to do what he does. Because the distractions are going to be there. 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. If he hits two home runs in a game, he'll stand there and answer questions in the most anodyne way possible. Are you nervous at all playing in the postseason for the first time? Nope. 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 online. 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 a hundred miles an hour and he can hit a ball five hundred 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. Seven hundred million dollars over ten years. Oh my goodness! Come on! One of the league's premier 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 in endorsements a year, with much of that money coming from advertisements in Japan. When I was there, I was. 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. 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. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can binge all six episodes of The Betrayal of Shohei Otani on the 30 for 30 podcast feed. Or by searching The Betrayal of Shohei Otani on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as I do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans. Visit your local CVS store or cvs.com slash extra big deals for this week's deals. 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