The Secret World of Baseball Interpreters — and Shohei Ohtani

Summary

---

Pablo Torre Finds Out: The Secret World of Baseball Interpreters — and Shohei Ohtani

Podcast: Pablo Torre Finds Out
Host: Pablo Torre (with Parakeet Cortez, Tim Rohan, and guests)
Date: July 11, 2024

---

Episode Overview

In this probing episode, Pablo Torre embarks on an investigative journey into the enigmatic yet vital role of baseball interpreters—focusing on Japanese stars in Major League Baseball (MLB), with a particular emphasis on Shohei Ohtani and the scandal involving his interpreter, Ippei Mitsuhara. Through original reporting and interviews, Pablo explores the immense trust, responsibilities, and unique intimacy that define the interpreter-player relationship, while unpacking the factors that let one interpreter access, and allegedly steal, millions from baseball’s biggest star.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

---

I. Opening: The Ohtani-Mitsuhara Scandal in the Spotlight

• Setting the Stage:
  • Shohei Ohtani, LA Dodgers superstar, lost his longtime interpreter Ippei Mitsuhara to a high-profile gambling and theft scandal.
  • Pablo frames the investigation: “Shohei Ohtani is the biggest star in baseball... He's been doing amazing, amazing without, you know, his interpreter, Ippei Mitsuhara.” (01:45)
• News Recap:
  • A $4.5 million gambling debt and subsequent federal investigation; Ohtani’s camp claims he was a victim of theft.
  • Public assumption: Surely Ohtani must have known about millions vanishing? Immediate reaction: “I expected it to play out in the obvious manner, which is Ohtani knows about this... the way it played out was, oh, Ohtani's... he doesn't know any of this.” — Parakeet Cortez (03:05)

---

II. The Role of Japanese Baseball Interpreters: Isolation, Intimacy, and the “Sports Au Pair”

• Unveiling the Job:
  • Pablo and Tim Rohan (investigative reporter) reveal the rarely-seen demands of Japanese interpreters: constant companionship, logistical support, cultural guidance, life management far beyond translation.
  • “A Japanese baseball player in America will spend more time with their interpreter than with their own wife. We're talking about roughly 300 out of 365 days together...” — Pablo Torre (12:08)
• Vetting Gap:
  • Tim struggles to get interpreters to speak on record; their isolation from media and a culture of discretion is palpable.
  • Tim reads polite refusals:
    • “I've made it a policy to avoid baseball related media engagement in which I'd speak for myself. I respectfully and quite regretfully ... decline your offer to chat...” — Masa Hoshino (07:24)
    • “I'd rather keep my distance from this mess. My hope is that the dust settles soon so that we all can enjoy the game we love.” — Kenji Nemura (08:08)
• A “Shotgun Marriage” Industry:
  • Hiring is often rushed, driven by scarcity of candidates and intense, unrelenting demands.
  • Example (Jeff Cutler, interpreter for Hideki Okajima):
    • Chosen after a less-than-hour-long interview.
    • Team only checks English proficiency, rest is a leap of faith.

---

III. Responsibilities: More Than Words

• Manager, Assistant, Friend, and Family:
  • "Maybe 1% is actually interpreting. The rest is more of a manager type of role, assistant type of role..." — Jeff Cutler (15:41)
  • Interpreters organize housing, help with banking and logistics, support player and family, even handle labor emergencies and personal events.
  • “Some interpreters apparently have even had to organize baby showers. Others have driven the player and his wife to the hospital during labor.” — Pablo Torre (16:20)
• No Uniform MLB Standards:
  • Unlike Spanish interpreters (whose CBA standards are detailed), Japanese interpreters operate under vague guidelines.
  • “Guess how many words MLB spends on Japanese interpreters?” “None. Zero.” (14:08)

---

IV. Case in Point: Ohtani’s Naïveté Meets Mitsuhara

• Young Star, Outsized Trust:
  • Ohtani’s psychological background: hyper-focused on baseball, coddled financially, lacking fundamental adult experience.
  • Telling story:
    • Mom worried he'd be financially illiterate, so she set up a bank account and deposited $1,000/month. “About a year later... the money's still there... Shohei hadn't touched the account.” (27:07)
• Financial Innocence, Professional Risks:
  • Ohtani came to MLB at 23, giving up a potential $200M+ by arriving before he could sign a top dollar deal. (28:22–30:20)
  • “He theoretically punted on 200, $250 million.” — Dylan Hernandez (30:08)
• How Mitsuhara Became Essential:
  • Mitsuhara first met Ohtani as a team interpreter for others, then, sensing the opportunity, reached out to offer his services when Ohtani moved to MLB.
    • “Ippei reaches out to Ohtani and asks him, hey, ... do you need an interpreter?” — Tim Rohan (34:17)

---

V. The Mechanics of the Scandal

• From Trust to Betrayal:
  • Details from the federal complaint reveal how Mitsuhara:
    • Positioned himself as accountant/manager by default, sitting in on all financial meetings and becoming critical to Ohtani’s professional life.
    • Used his access to set up and control Ohtani’s payroll account.
    • Lied to banks, impersonated Ohtani, changed account contact information, wired millions to cover gambling losses.
• Staggering Gambling Addiction:
  • In three years, Mitsuhara placed 19,000 bets (about 25 bets a day); net loss = about $40 million.
    • “Now he won $142 million...” (43:58)
    • “He lost 182 million...” (44:00)
    • “He's not a player, he's an interpreter...” (44:19)
• Systemic Blindness:
  • Ohtani’s agent and advisors failed to recognize or question the unusual financial arrangements, deferring responsibility to Mitsuhara as the indispensable intermediary.
    • “Ippei told the agent that Shohei wants that account private, and he doesn't want anyone monitoring it. And the agent apparently didn't ask any questions, and he didn't ask Shohei directly.” — Tim Rohan (45:03)
    • “Presumably hearing from Ippei is the same to them as hearing from Shohei.” — Pablo Torre (45:23)

---

VI. The Professional and Ethical Fallout

• Cultural, Structural, and Personal Flaws:
  • The interpreter’s role is so close, so trusted, and so unchecked, that abuse is both almost impossible to anticipate—and, once it happens, difficult to prevent.
  • The job is emotionally and logistically overwhelming; most interpreters last only 3 or 4 years before burning out.
    • “Most people can't handle that kind of intimacy, that kind of responsibility for more than, like, three or four years.” — Pablo Torre (end)
• Open Questions:
  • Did Ohtani knowingly look away? Or was he genuinely that isolated? Both explanations seem plausible given the structure and culture described.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “A Japanese baseball player in America will spend more time with their interpreter than with their own wife.” — Pablo Torre (12:08)
• “I'd rather keep my distance from this mess... My hope is that the dust settles soon...” — Kenji Nemura, former interpreter (08:08)
• “Maybe 1% [of my job] is actually interpreting. The rest is more of a manager type of role...” — Jeff Cutler (15:41)
• “All my interpreters have done something similar with my car... that was part of my initiation.” — Jeff Cutler on damaging Daisuke Matsuzaka’s car (19:58)
• “My idea of fun is getting a good night’s sleep and playing well the next day.” — Shohei Ohtani, via Dylan Hernandez (26:09)
• “He theoretically punted on 200, $250 million.” — Dylan Hernandez (30:08)
• “If Shohei wanted to get to the Baseball Hall of Fame, maybe it was worth $200 million to him...” — Tim Rohan (31:03)
• “He’s not a player, he’s an interpreter.” — Tim Rohan (44:19)
• “No job in sports entails this kind of servitude and also this kind of power.” — Pablo Torre (end)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–03:45 — Banter, episode setup, Ohtani and Mitsuhara scandal introduced
• 06:06–08:30 — Tim Rohan’s difficulty getting interpreters to talk, culture of secrecy
• 09:28–12:08 — Jeff Cutler describes being hired, “shotgun marriage” metaphor
• 12:08–16:20 — Roles and responsibilities, “maybe 1% is interpreting”
• 18:51–20:26 — Catching for Matsuzaka, daily life intimacy, trust anecdotes
• 22:19–30:20 — Ohtani’s background, naïveté, financial decisions, the story of his mother’s training-wheels banking
• 31:28–34:17 — How Mitsuhara became Ohtani's interpreter (shift from general team to personal), relationship origin story
• 35:21–39:41 — The bank account, Mitsuhara’s omnipresence, celebrity status; the mechanics of access and trust
• 40:49–45:49 — How Mitsuhara committed theft; how others (agent, staff) failed to check
• End — Pablo’s reflections: why both betrayal and absolute loyalty are plausible in such a cloistered setup

---

Final Thoughts & Episode Tone

The episode is lively, gently irreverent, but deeply empathetic—balancing Pablo’s signature curiosity and wit with a sobering analysis of structural flaws in MLB and the human cost of unchecked trust. The discussion blends humor (“Not as bad as you would think... [the cardigan smells]”—Parakeet, 01:18) with pathos and insight.

Pablo and his team illustrate how the interpreter-player relationship, a product of both necessity and neglect, can make or break lives and reputations—leaving listeners to ponder where loyalty ends and accountability begins.

---

If you haven’t listened, this episode will give you a nuanced understanding of the human, cultural, and logistical forces shaping one of sports’ most opaque and consequential jobs—and why Shohei Ohtani’s story is not just about baseball, but about faith, vulnerability, and the limits of institutional safeguards.

---

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds Out I am Pablo Torre, and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Ippei Mitsuhara (as himself in 2018 clip)]

I feel like he's really trustworthy, so I felt really comfortable him being my.

[Pablo Torre]

Interpreter right after this ad. You're listening to Giraffe Kings. You.

[Parakeet Cortez]

Welcome to Parakeet Cortez finds out I am Parakeet Cortez. Today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Pablo Torre]

You know that I'm in Miami and that you had to zoom in from our studio. I did not give you permission to sit in my chair and certainly now wear my. My cardigan.

[Parakeet Cortez]

Let me just tell you, as much as I want to roast you for the cardigan, I get why you wear it every show. Like, it's very comfortable. It feels expensive. I don't want to take it off.

[Pablo Torre]

It is expensive.

[Parakeet Cortez]

I may not take it off. It fits me great. Like, it's. I'm filling it out in a way that you never have. Like, your arms, like, would sink in this thing that.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, let's not get out of control here.

[Parakeet Cortez]

I'm just saying.

[Pablo Torre]

How does it smell?

[Parakeet Cortez]

Not as bad as you would think.

[Pablo Torre]

Thank you. Thank you. I've been trying to say his to our audience for almost a year, but the entire reason I even had you back on the show today is because there, in fact, is somebody else. Cortez, who has been thriving in the absence of their own accomplice. One on, two out.

[Tim Rohan]

The one one Ohtani unleashes high into the Friday night sky.

[Pablo Torre]

And go. Shohei Ohtani is the biggest star in baseball. The Major League Baseball All Star Game is on Tuesday, and he's an MVP candidate, and he's been doing amazing, amazing without, you know, his interpreter, Ippe Mitsuhara.

[Parakeet Cortez]

Are you calling me your Japanese interpreter? Is that what you're doing?

[Pablo Torre]

I'm not not calling you that. I'm not not calling you my. Ippei Mitsuhara, the banished Japanese interpreter who was, by the way, at the forefront of the largest scandal in baseball.

[News Reporter]

Tonight, the stakes are rising in the scandal surrounding star LA Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani. With Major League Baseball launching an investigation after illegal gambling allegations involving Ohtani's interpreter and close friend Ippei Mizuhara. The scandal broke when the LA Times reported that Ohtani's name came up in connection with a federal investigation into a sports betting ring in Orange County. A source telling NBC News that Mizuhara initially said Ohtani bailed him out of $4.5 million in gambling debts. But Ohtani's lawyer Saying the pitcher was the victim. Victim of a massive theft.

[Parakeet Cortez]

This story, I gotta be honest, bro, it did not play out how I expected, because I expected it to play out in the obvious manner, which is, Ohtani knows about this. He's gonna get in trouble. Obviously, he knows about this. Look at how much money was taken out right that way.

[Pablo Torre]

Dollars. Yeah.

[Parakeet Cortez]

The reason it didn't play out that way, the way it played out was, oh, Ohtani's. He doesn't know any of this because that helps MLB think about it.

[Pablo Torre]

So Ohtani, right now, he's not pitching. He's only hitting this year. He's leading the National League at home runs. He's by far the leading candidate for MVVP in the NL. He's the face of BAS. So on that level, you do have something of a point. And what I've started to do was go back and watch some videos of Shohei and Ippei together at all these press conferences they did. And there is one specific question that Ippei and Shohei both had to answer in their first spring training ever. This is back with the Angels. And the video I want to play for you now is from 2018.

[Tim Rohan]

Shohei, can you describe your relationship with Ippe and how you settled on him as your interpreter? I know you were involved in the process.

[Pablo Torre]

Us, yeah.

[Ippei Mitsuhara (as himself in 2018 clip)]

He's been working with me with the fighters for the last five years. And I feel like he's really trustworthy. So I felt really comfortable him being my interpreter.

[Pablo Torre]

Really trustworthy. Cortez, is what Ippe Mitsuhara said in the third person while speaking in the first person about himself, while dressed as.

[Parakeet Cortez]

The second person next to him, I.

[Pablo Torre]

Guess you could say.

[Parakeet Cortez]

I mean, what are we doing?

[Pablo Torre]

They are dressed up in identical, like, fully zipped up Angels track jackets. And the question was, just to restate it here, can you describe your relationship with Ippe and how you settled on him as your interpreter? And that is the question that I mostly wanted to try and find the answer to here. And so what I wanted to do was call up a third person, Tim Rohan. You know, Tim, a guy.

[Parakeet Cortez]

I remember Tim.

[Pablo Torre]

A guy who has great hair as well, unlike you.

[Parakeet Cortez]

Yeah, he washes his hair. Very hygienic.

[Pablo Torre]

He's an investigative reporter, former baseball beat writer for the New York Times. And what I wanted him to help us find out was how much vetting a Japanese player like Shohei Ohtani actually does when it comes to selecting the person who does the interpreting for them. And also how you can possibly learn to trust somebody to do what turns out to be a uniquely and incredibly intimate job.

[Parakeet Cortez]

I'll be your interpreter if you need one.

[Pablo Torre]

That is not helpful to anybody.

[Parakeet Cortez]

I'm just offering.

[Tim Rohan]

Wait, turn off my phone?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, let's do. Are you just checking your phone to make sure someone else has not said no to you?

[Tim Rohan]

That's what the intrepid reporter would do. No, it's been. Yeah, it's been weeks.

[Pablo Torre]

It's been the only sort of assignment so far that you get.

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Is the assignment where I say, can you get to the bottom of what is a fascinating story? And you realize that nobody wants to.

[Tim Rohan]

Talk to you, but if you're a journalist, you want to ask questions and investigate stuff that maybe people might not want to talk about or might not want to answer for. Right. So this is what we do. You know, I'm used to it at this point.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so the job of Japanese interpreter, which is a job that is unlike any other job in sports. How hard was it to get people to say even anything of interest to you? What was it like to try to report this?

[Tim Rohan]

So first we made a list of, okay, who are some interpreters we want to reach out to? My thought process was, why don't we try to talk to people who maybe aren't actively still working as interpreters? We made a list, started reaching out to people, and I reached out to seven interpreters. You know, people who've worked with Ichiro, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hiroki Kuroda, Hideki Matsui. And of the seven people I reached out to, they either didn't respond or politely declined.

[Pablo Torre]

The politeness of this though. Right. So when we had you investigate Rick Pitino, different sort of genre of reply. It sounds like when it came to a no.

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah, these were the most polite no's I've ever received as a reporter. This is from Masa Hoshino, who worked with Daisuke Matsuzaka. He said, quote, I'm honored by the opportunity, but I've made it a policy to avoid baseball related media engagement in which I'd speak for myself. I respectfully and quite regretfully as it sounds fun, decline your offer to chat kindly, Masa. And then another good one from Kenji Nemura, who worked with Hiroki Kuroda. He said, quote, I appreciate your reaching out to me. I'd rather keep my distance from this mess.

[Pablo Torre]

I.

[Tim Rohan]

My hope is that the dust settles soon so that we all can enjoy the game we love. Respectfully, Kenji. So these are. These are very nice little notes. Yeah, I mean, this Job is under siege right now, right? I mean, because of the Ippe Mizuhara scandal, this is suddenly in the news.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay, so I should probably admit that the assignment we gave Tim was kind of like cold calling a bunch of financial advisors and asking them how they are connected to Bernie Madoff, because nobody wanted to be even vaguely associated with Ippei Mitsuhara, whose entire existence now required a vigorous level of fact checking. At one point, for instance, it was reported that Ippei Pre Shohei had worked as an interpreter for former Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Hideki Okijiba. But before the media could descend upon Boston, the Red Sox quickly released a statement declaring that Ippe was, quote, never employed by the Boston Red Sox in any capacity and was not an interpreter for Hideki Okajima during the pitcher's time with the team. End quote. But all this did was raise a new question for us, actually. If Ippei did not handle Okajima with the Red Sox, then who was the person who did?

[Tim Rohan]

Jeff, thank you. Thank you for taking the time. It's nice to see you again.

[Jeff Cutler]

Of course. Of course. Likewise.

[Pablo Torre]

This is our guide into the remarkably cloistered world of Japanese interpreting. A guy named Jeff Kudler, who is also known as the guy who actually did handle Hideki Okajima for the Red Sox. It turns out that Jeff was in Japan when he first got hired to work with Okajima and the Red Sox, but he was born here in America.

[Jeff Cutler]

I grew up in Boston, the Boston suburbs, but spent a few years of my elementary years in Japan, which is the basis of my Japanese.

[Pablo Torre]

I got really lucky, and Jeff, thankfully, was down to answer our questions on the record. And this was in part because he also had to figure out how to enter this world as kind of an outsider himself.

[Tim Rohan]

So Jeff was working as an interpreter for a Japanese rugby team, and after a while, he decided, hey, you know, maybe I want to go back to the US And a friend heard that Hideki Okajima was looking for an interpreter. Hideki Okajima was this pitcher who was about to move from Japan to the Major League Baseball. And so this friend connected Jeff with Okajima, and Okajima's management team arranged for an interview, and they met at a cafe in Tokyo. Jeff sits down with Okajima, and I was just curious, like, what does that look like? What kind of questions is Okajima asking him?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, what's the vibe?

[Jeff Cutler]

He told me that he was impressed that I wanted a suit, I believe so. I think that impressed him, showed respect so he liked that at the end of the day, you spend so much time with an interpreter. That becomes an important factor, whether you feel that you can get along, spend a lot of time together.

[Tim Rohan]

As Jeff came to understand, he was going to be spending a lot of time with Okajima. And so the thing that Jeff said that really stunned me was he said.

[Jeff Cutler]

That meeting was probably, probably less than an hour. I recall it being quick. And I heard back a few days later that I passed and that I would be connected to the Red Sox for their interview.

[Tim Rohan]

From there, the management team had Jeff meet with the Boston Red Sox. And Jeff said that was also a quick meeting too. And one of the most important, I guess, facets of that was the Red Sox just needed to make sure, hey, you speak English, right?

[Pablo Torre]

And so I just gotta jump in here to note some of the basic math involved, because while nobody but Jeff wanted to go on the record here, there was an interpreter that I wound up interviewing who agreed to help us fact check all of this on the condition of anonymity. And what our anonymous interpreter kept on stressing was that a Japanese baseball player in America will spend more time with their interpreter than with their own wife. We're talking about roughly 300 out of 365 days together in close quarters, in cultural isolation, often on the road. And yet the fact that Hideki Okajima shacked up with Jeff after less than an hour of meeting him, less than an hour, it's shockingly typical, I am told, in part because not that many qualified people want to be what amounts to this sort of sports au pair, a kind of bizarro live in nanny who gets paid a starting salary, according to my Source, of between 40 to 60 thousand dollars American, plus benefits and possibly a visa or green card as needed. And so this whole profession quietly is this industry of trans specific shotgun marriages. And in terms of paperwork and the qualifications required to do this job, something else is worth noting here, which is that the collective bargaining agreement of Major League Baseball requires every team to employ at least one Spanish language interpreter. And those standards for the Spanish interpreters are very specifically enumerated.

[Tim Rohan]

The Spanish interpreter must be able to work long hours, including nights, holidays and weekends, be able to travel both domestically and internationally. The Spanish interpreter also should have a working knowledge of baseball media relations and baseball related statistics. The Spanish interpreter should be certified as a translator by an accredited institution or have the equivalent work experience to fulfill the duties described herein.

[Pablo Torre]

Now, guess how many words MLB spends on Japanese interpreters?

[Tim Rohan]

None. Zero. So it's kind of left to every team to decide how to hire these people.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I was asking around about this, like, okay, so who does the interpreter work for? And it turns out every interpreter, even though they are the de facto new spouse of the player, they're employed by the baseball team that the player works for.

[Tim Rohan]

Well, they have to be team employees because as it was explained to me by a official with Major League Baseball, they want all interpreters to be team employees. So they're subject to the gambling policy, the drug policy, the domestic violence policy. You know, if Hideki Okojima just has this guy hanging out and he's not an employee of Major League Baseball, Major League Baseball has no control over him.

[Pablo Torre]

Right, right. This guy that you decided to get married to after an hour is now hanging around the clubhouse.

[Tim Rohan]

And oftentimes what Jeff told me is the team just kind of accepts, okay, this is who the player wants to be their interpreter. You're the interpreter. That's why I think one of the most important aspects of this job in the interview process and figuring out, are you a good hang or not, Right?

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Tim Rohan]

Because we're going to be going to dinners, we're going to be hanging at the ballpark. We're going to. You're going to be my buddy. You're together 24 7, so, you know, when life happens, you know, the interpreter is there to help out.

[Pablo Torre]

So in terms of like the pie chart of responsibilities here, there are like a million slices. And how big is the interpreting part?

[Tim Rohan]

Well, if you ask Jeff, it's really not that big.

[Jeff Cutler]

It's hard to define, but I would say maybe 1% is actually interpreting. The rest is more of a manager type of role, assistant type of role. Obviously I would be there with them at the ballpark, but afterwards we'd usually go to lunch together, have dinner together. Yeah, really Anything from making reservations, phone calls, buying a car, or conversations with agents. You know, any range of things that can happen in anyone's life on a day to day basis.

[Pablo Torre]

A quick pause to acknowledge what Jeff Cutler just said there, which is that 1% of his job as a Japanese interpreter had to do with actual interpreting. 1%. And even the tasks Jeff began to list at the end there, they barely begin to cover the full range of actual responsibility. Because what my anonymous interpreter confirmed is that you are also expected to handle finding a place for the player to live, sorting out government forms like travel visas and driver's licenses for both the player and his family members. Some interpreters apparently have even had to organize baby Showers. Others have driven the player and his wife to the hospital during labor. And in Jeff's case, with the Red Sox, as if his portfolio was not immersive enough, he also wound up adding a second client, starting pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. And so Jeff was also in every conversation Daisuke was having with the press. Obviously.

[Jeff Cutler]

I'm still far from my goal where I want to be, so I'm just taking it day by day and do what I can each day. But I've been told by the trainers that my rehab is going well. So happy about that.

[Pablo Torre]

But Jeff was also there for the conversations Daisuke was having with the trainers and the front office and coaches and teammates. And one day, Daisuke Matsuzaka needed him for another position catcher.

[Tim Rohan]

You know, he was describing how all of a sudden, here he is playing catch with Daisuke Matsuzaka. And there were occasions when Daisuke, you know, would potentially want to work on a new pitch, and Jeff would have to crouch down and try catching a major league curveball.

[Pablo Torre]

That feels like the metaphor here, Right? Like, this whole thing is a curveball, and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to be doing. Exactly.

[Jeff Cutler]

It's very scary at first. It's not the easiest thing to catch when you're not used to that. So just trying to get your glove in front of it. Fighting for my life out on the ballpark.

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah. And he was saying he was scared.

[Pablo Torre]

Out of his mind because statistically, again, there just aren't that many other Japanese speakers on a baseball team in the sport. And so you wind up, I guess, if you're Jeff being entrusted with everything.

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah. You are the player's lifeline. You are there at their beck and call. Jeff did tell me one story about a time when Daisuke asked him, hey, can you go get my car washed? But it wasn't just any car. It was a Porsche Cayenne. And as Jeff described, it had a nice body kit on it. And so, you know, Daisuke tosses Jeff the keys. Say, hey, go take it for a spin. And if you've been to Fenway park, you know, the streets around Fenway are pretty tight and narrow.

[Pablo Torre]

That's like an advanced mode in a driving video game.

[Tim Rohan]

Exactly.

[Jeff Cutler]

Apparently, I went over a curb that I wasn't supposed to, and of course, it damages the body kit. And I was like, oh, what am I gonna do? And panicked and just started driving the car and just driving around Boston, right down Storo Drive for 10, 15 minutes before I was like, I gotta get back I gotta get back.

[Tim Rohan]

So you can imagine what's going through Jeff's head.

[Jeff Cutler]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, about to be fired.

[Tim Rohan]

Daisuke is going to kill me. You know that I just damaged his.

[Jeff Cutler]

Porsche Cayenne, and long before I get back, and Daisuke's like, where. Where were you? And I was like, I have something to. To tell you. Or it's probably easier if I just showed you. So he would go out to the garage in the FM way, and he was like, oh, I, I, I knew it was something like this. I knew this was coming. All my interpreters have done something similar with my car. So she was ready for it. And that was part of my initiation.

[Pablo Torre]

I suppose there's a strange form of intimacy here. Even as much as Jeff is learning that, like, I've had lots of you do this work, it is unusually and uniquely intimate.

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah. I mean, think about the level of trust there, Pablo. Right. The level of trust to drive you and your wife to the hospital when she's in labor. The level of trust to find a place to live. The level of trust to go get your Porsche Cayenne washed.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, Is that a Hillary Clinton political slogan? Who do you want answering the phone at 3am Someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone? You want Jeff.

[Tim Rohan]

Yep.

[Pablo Torre]

That's the job. Be on call 24 7.

[Tim Rohan]

Yep. Exactly.

[Pablo Torre]

And they're also just, like, living this life together that, like, is not visible from the outside. Like, no one else knows what Daisuke or, or Shohei Ohtani or you Darvish are going through, except for this guy who is around them all of the time. Yeah.

[Tim Rohan]

I mean, if you've ever been in a baseball clubhouse, it's very, you know, clicky. Right. Players hang out with their friends or, you know, they're countrymen. They're countrymen a lot of times. So naturally, you're gonna bond, you're gonna get close to one another. Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Which brings us back around to the reason why we were interested in the story in the first place, which is the most obvious and conspicuous apparent abuse of this occupation, which would Ippei Mitsuhara did to Shohei Ohtani? So if that's how Jeff and Hideki Okajima and Daisuke were operating, what was it like for Shohei Ohtani when he got to Major League Baseball?

[Tim Rohan]

Jeff made the point that when both Daisuke and Hideki came over, they were both married and their wives spoke English. So Jeff wasn't doing absolutely everything for them because they had wives at home. When Shohei Ohtani came over, he was 23 years old and he was famous. He was already famous. He was already a huge deal in Japan. A lot of these guys are, but for Shohei, he was bigger than life, coming over to a new country. So you can just imagine what it was like for him in finding an interpreter to help him navigate this new world.

[Jeff Cutler]

Most, you know, Japanese players can somewhat be naive, especially when they're younger because they've only played baseball their entire lives and they were superstars from high school and if they went straight to the pros, superstars there. So they probably lack some of the knowledge of daily life that most people kind of are forced to walk through. So that probably.

[Tim Rohan]

And so I was curious, I wanted to know more about 23 year old Sh Otani.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Tim Rohan]

I wanted to know what was he like at that point? Why did he come over to the U.S. where was he at that point in his life and what kind of help did he need, transitioning from Japan.

[Pablo Torre]

To the US as like a child star, effectively.

[Tim Rohan]

Exactly. And this, whoever he chose to be his interpreter was going to be there every step of the way. And so, you know, I reached out to someone who knew Ohtani back then, a Japanese speaker who could answer some of these questions.

[Pablo Torre]

So I've mixed a lot of metaphors here, right? Like how these interpreters are spouses and managers and assistants. But with Ohtani, given that he has almost this child stardom from the jump, there's also like a parental dynamic that I am suspecting here with ippe. So what was the young Ohtani like, Tim? What did you learn about his arrival in America?

[Tim Rohan]

So to learn more about that, I reached out to Dylan Hernandez, columnist for the LA Times. Baseball writer. Dylan is one of the best baseball writers in the country, and he is uniquely qualified to talk about this because A, he's covered Ohtani since he came into Major League Baseball. But also Dylan is the rare sports writer who can speak English, Spanish and Japanese. It's, you know, if some would say it's his superpower.

[Dylan Hernandez]

My father is from El Salvador. My mother is from Japan. Like, I don't remember not being able to speak Japanese or not being able.

[Tim Rohan]

To speak Spanish in 2017, around that time when word was starting to pick up that Ohtani was going to come over, Dylan went to Japan to report out a feature on Ohtani ahead of his arrival. During that time in Japan, Dylan followed a band of scouts who were, you know, watching Ohtani and he spoke to all these people around him, like Ohtani's high school coach. And he learned a lot about just what it was like at that time in this. This kind of time in Ohtani's life when everything was about to change. Dylan talked to the cab driver who would take Ohtani to and from the ballpark. And Dylan asked him, well, what does Ohtani talk about? What's he like? He's like, he just talks about baseball. You know, he's sitting with another player. You know, he might ask him, hey, do you remember your first home run? You know, after games, the other players might go out drinking, and Ohtani wouldn't. And Dylan said that one of the other, you know, players asked Ohtani once, hey, you know, don't you like to have fun? And Ohtani's response apparently was, my idea of fun is getting a good night's sleep and playing well the next day.

[Pablo Torre]

So he's a total nerd. He is a nerd. He's a baseball nerd is what I'm getting.

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah, I mean, he's just focused.

[Pablo Torre]

What about his actual, like, family, his parents? What did they say about their son?

[Tim Rohan]

So one story Dylan told me was, apparently, you know, when Shohei's playing professional baseball in Japan, he's starting to make some money. You know, he decided, he's like, I'm gonna have my parents handle that. So when he would get his checks for playing baseball, he set it up so the checks would go to his parents banking account. He was like, you guys handle this. I don't want to deal with this. I'm focused on baseball. You guys handle all the money stuff.

[Dylan Hernandez]

They were so concerned. Hiltani's mother was so concerned that he would grow up to be financially illiterate.

[Tim Rohan]

Oh, my God.

[Dylan Hernandez]

Like, my son's going to not know anything about money. So she set up a personal bank account for him and just dropped in $1,000 a month just for some spending money.

[Tim Rohan]

And she, here's your first bank account. You know, I mean, we've all been there, right?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. A training wheels version of adulthood.

[Tim Rohan]

Exactly. And about a year later, she goes back to check the account, and the money's still there. There's more money in there than she had put in because it had accrued interest. Shohei hadn't touched the account.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is all to say that the psychological scouting report of young Shohei Ohtani suggested an ignorance, a kind of arrested development that only athletic precociousness can enable. Remember that Ohtani, at age 23, winds up moving to America, not long after his mom sets up that bank account. Ohtani, when he joined the Angels, had never lived on his own before. And so if you want a sense of how insanely non strategic he was about his wealth, you should also know something else about the reason why Japanese superstars typically do not cross the Pacific to join Major League Baseball at that young an age, even if they're an aspirational hall of Famer whose only discernible interest, by the way, is baseball. It's because coming to America at age 23, by rule, costs a prospect like Shohei Ohtani millions upon millions upon millions of US Dollars. We're talking nine figures in wealth.

[Tim Rohan]

So when a Japanese player wants to come over to Major League Baseball, if they are 25 years old, there's two criteria. If they are 25 years old and have six years of experience in a professional league, then they can come over and sign a free agent contract with a major league team. And there are no restrictions. You know, you just saw with Yamamoto.

[Pablo Torre]

This offseason, the Dodgers new Pitcher, he.

[Tim Rohan]

Was 25 years old and met the criteria. So he came over and signed the.

[Pablo Torre]

Richest contract ever for a pitcher.

[Tim Rohan]

Exactly. Now, if you are not 25 or you don't have six years of experience, you can't do that. You're restricted and you are treated as an amateur international free agent. If you decide to do that, then you have to sign a minor league contract. You're under team control for six years.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Tim Rohan]

That means you have to wait six years before you hit free agency. And the team is limited by their international pool and of how much signing bonus money they can give you. So that's what S.H. otani decided to do.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I'm just kind of blown away by how utterly disinterested and therefore potentially, arguably irresponsible Otani is being when it comes to the money he has available to him.

[Tim Rohan]

You know, Dylan actually spoke to Ohtani's high school coach, who actually sat down with sh and had a conversation about.

[Dylan Hernandez]

This, you know, and I told him, you know, the coaches tell me, I told him, you know, if you wait two more years, you could sign for right there, you know, because he was hearing 200 million, 250 million.

[Tim Rohan]

Right.

[Dylan Hernandez]

And the coach said he told Ohtani, hey, you're an adult now. Like, I get the value of chasing your dreams, but, you know, you're an adult now, and maybe you need to start, like, considering other things, not just baseball. And Ohtani said, no, I still want to go.

[Tim Rohan]

Right.

[Dylan Hernandez]

And he wound up signing for a $2.3 million bonus. So basically, by like going two years early, he theoretically punted on 200, $250 million.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I didn't know this, Tim. The idea that Shohei Ohtani punted on a quarter of a billion dollars because he couldn't wait to play baseball in America.

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Like, what are you doing? I mean, look, he made lots of money otherwise, but it, it just. It's insane.

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah, I mean, it's quite the decision. But if you are focused on making the Baseball hall of Fame, you know, what is baseball other than counting numbers? Pablo? 500. 500 home runs, right. X number of RBI. Right. If Shohei wanted to get to the Baseball hall of Fame, maybe It was worth $200 million to him to get an extra two seasons, you know, of home runs in there. I don't know.

[Pablo Torre]

So I betray my own bias here. Right? So I clearly am more capitalistically cur than Shohei Ohtani has ever been. And into this specific portrait walks Ippei Mitsuhara, a man who knows it sounds like more than Shohei about how to move around dollars and cents. How do they even meet?

[Tim Rohan]

So they met in 2013, when Ohtani was a teenager, when he was just starting his professional career in Japan.

[Pablo Torre]

Ikume.

[Tim Rohan]

Now Ippei, was an interpreter for the Nippon Ham Fighters.

[Pablo Torre]

Just a great team name.

[Tim Rohan]

Flash forward to 2017. So 2017 comes. Ohtani's made it clear. Word's starting to get out that, hey, Ohtani's moving to Major League Baseball.

[Pablo Torre]

And even though he's punting on $250 million, there's still a lot to come. Okay, so this is where I pause to acknowledge that you probably didn't read the affidavit that federal prosecutors filed back in April in the case of the United States of America versus Ippei Mitsuhara. And I say this because I myself did not read this, not before assigning Tim this story, but the whole thing is worth it. As the U.S. attorney who brought the case explained.

[U.S. Attorney]

According to the complaint, Mr. Mitsuhara stole this money largely to finance his voracious appetite for illegal sports betting. Our investigation revealed that Mitsuhara, a Japanese language interpreter, began working as a translator for Mr. Ohtani.

[Pablo Torre]

Over 37 pages, there are text messages and bedding records and bank transfers. And all of it adds up to the case for an eight figure felony bank fraud totaling more than $16 million over less than three years. What prosecutors allege is that Ippei had illegally wired funds from Ohtani's checking account to this illegal bookmaker. And they said that Ippei, in maybe the least surprising news of it all, had also lost a bunch of money on crypto. But the other thing that the complaint does is help fill in the gaps of how Shohei wound up officially hiring Ippei, his future best friend, in the first place. Which is a little different from how Jeff Cutler got connected to Hideki Okajima. And it's actually a little different from how Ippei himself described his relationship with Ohtani in that video from 2018 that we played for you at the top of the show.

[Ippei Mitsuhara (as himself in 2018 clip)]

He's been working with me, with the fighters for the last five years. And I feel like he's really trustworthy. So I felt really comfortable him being with interpreter.

[Pablo Torre]

What you should know is that Ippe had not been individually working with Ohtani as his interpreter for the last five years. Since 2013, what IPPEI had been doing was working as an interpreter for Ohtani's English speaking teammates on the Nippon Ham Fighters. That it was only later that Ippe even sought out Ohtani himself to escalate their personal relationship.

[Tim Rohan]

And so, according to the federal complaint at that time, once word gets out that Ohtani's moving to Major League Baseball, Ippei reaches out to Ohtani and asks him, hey, did you need. Do you need an interpreter?

[Pablo Torre]

Right. I heard you love baseball.

[Tim Rohan]

Exactly.

[Pablo Torre]

Allow me to help with the things you may like less.

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah. And so that's how it happened. And so then Ohtani comes over, comes over to Major League Baseball, and Ippe turns into his de facto manager. Well, good afternoon and welcome to sunny Arizona. We thank you for attending today's media session with SH Otoni and his friend and translator, Ippe Muzahara.

[Ippei Mitsuhara (as himself in 2018 clip)]

So question off the field. So your food, it's hard to find Japanese food in the States. And do you have any food that you're missing? And how are you? What kind of food are you eating daily? Also, today's Valentine's Day. How many chocolates did you have?

[Tim Rohan]

And so, you know, one of the first things they do is in 2018, they go together to set up a bank account. And so Ippei and SH are there at the bank. And this bank account they open, it's basically to serve one purpose. It's to be the place where Shohei's checks, his paychecks from the Angels are deposited.

[Pablo Torre]

But even in this job, he's now Ippei is already like accountant, you know, business manager, financial advisor. Like, that is the power vacuum. It Sounds like he is stepping into.

[Tim Rohan]

Well, there's actually people who had those jobs. You know, Shohei had an agent. Right?

[Pablo Torre]

Right. He's at CIA.

[Tim Rohan]

Yes. And he had an agent at caa and the agent had financial advisor, accountant. He had all these people on staff who were going to be Shohei's team. He's going to handle his money. And what we've learned now is that in all these meetings with the agent and with the financial people on Shohei's team, Ippei was in these meetings. And Ippei is the one doing the interpreting. He is the one essentially speaking on behalf of Shohei with all of these people handling his money. And you know, one of the things that stood out to me in the federal complaint later on was the agent didn't have a Japanese interpreter on staff, didn't hire one. He was basically like, well, Shohei's got Ippei, so we'll just use Ippei.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, it's not like, you know, this kid's mother thought that he might be financially illiterate or anything. I'm sure they got it under control.

[Tim Rohan]

That's, that's the, you know, that's the gray area I don't know the answer to. Right. Like how, how where was the agent of these concerns or, or how much do you defer.

[Pablo Torre]

Because the whole point of this job of Japanese interpreter has been so established throughout time, decades and decades of like, this is the guy who does the stuff. This is the guy we deal with. This is the person who everybody who's come over from Japan has trusted to do exactly this sort of genre of thing.

[Tim Rohan]

Exactly. This is how things are done and this is how things have been done for the last 20 plus years as more and more Japanese players have entered Major League Baseball. So the key thing, Pablo, is that Ippe was there from the start. He was there when they set up the bank account and he's there in all of these meetings with the agent, the financial advisor, the accountant. He's there.

[Pablo Torre]

And that's like the, the behind closed doors stuff he's doing. What I remember Ippei being as I was like watching this transcendent athlete show up in America pitching and hitting. I remember Ippe being the guy in like the dugout with the bangs being SH's literal voice to America. But he was also, I presume, just doing the baseball stuff that you would see. And we've heard from all these interpreters anonymously and on the record, Ippe is.

[Tim Rohan]

He'S doing all the stuff that Jeff Cutler was doing. He's doing the interpreting. He's with the. With the teammates, with the coaches, with the media, but he's going beyond that. Like, Ippei was looking at analytics. He was monitoring recovery timetables. I mean, there was one anecdote in a Sports Illustrated story where Joe Madden was texting Ippei, asking if it was okay with Shohei to push his start back. So, you know, he's the intermediary for everything, for.

[Pablo Torre]

For an incredibly visible and famous. But it sounds like singularly isolated celebrity who has been. Yeah. Attended to as a young person by others for a very long time.

[Tim Rohan]

Dylan made the point that, you know, Ohtani seemed isolated from his teammates, and part of that was just given the unique nature of his role. He's a pitcher and a hitter, so you can imagine he's got to get ready to pitch every five days. And there's Ippe next to him. And he's also playing catch with Shohei. He's also, you know, going through workouts. There was one story that they actually worked out together on Christmas one year. That's how close these two, right?

[Pablo Torre]

Christmas isn't baseball. Of course. We do baseball.

[Tim Rohan]

Not only that, Ippei, you know, in some of these stories, Ippei was said to help manage Ohtani's offseason schedule with the marketing. Right? Ippei then becomes famous just by proximity, just by being close to Shohei. I mean, I looked it up today. Ippei has almost 400,000 Instagram followers.

[Pablo Torre]

It's so depressing.

[Tim Rohan]

Can you imagine? Ippe's wife at one point found signed baseball from Ippe that was being sold on Japanese ebay.

[Pablo Torre]

I was watching the Angels several years ago now, like, wear shirts emblazoned with Ippei's face.

[Tim Rohan]

I don't know if it was a joke that the shirts. Amazing.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, the photo is a glamour shot. It's like sun falling, you know, dappled light. He's in front of, like, a canyon, bangs glistening. It's ridiculous.

[Tim Rohan]

I asked Dylan, you know, what. What did the Angels make of Ippe? Right? They're wearing these shirts. He's around the team. He's. He's basically a star in his own right. Like, what did the players make of Ippe?

[Dylan Hernandez]

You know, there was one opening day. Ippei got like a standing ovation, you know, and I asked Ohtani about that, you know, because he was warming up in the bullpen. He was. The opening day started that year. I asked him, like, do you see that? What do you Think. And he tells me, yeah, I kind of. I kind of didn't like it. You know, he was, like, joking around about it. All of a sudden, this guy's like a household name, not just here, but also in Japan.

[Pablo Torre]

I am staggered by how in plain sight he was while how private. This part of the story remained only uncovered because of, yeah, hugely scandalous lawsuits that have shaken up the entire occupation that he was, you know, a part of.

[Tim Rohan]

You know, we've been covering how close Ippei and Shohei were. Right. They're spending every day together, all day together. And apparently, according to this federal complaint, while that's happening, as Ippei is getting closer and closer to Shohei, he started stealing millions of dollars from it. So you remember that bank account they set up in 2018? So apparently, according to the federal complaint, from 2018 until 2021, for about three years, no one accessed that account online. You know how you can go on your phone and check your bank account? Yeah. App or something three clicks away, you check your bank account. No one did that for three years. We talked about it. Shohei would just let his money sit there.

[Pablo Torre]

That was his mom's nightmare.

[Tim Rohan]

And then in late 2021, IPPEI starts gambling with this bookie and he starts losing. And once Ippe starts losing, suddenly the contact information on that bank account gets switched to Ippei's phone number and to an anonymous email that's connected to Ippe. Not only that, but when the bookie starts reaching out to Ippe, asking to cover his gambling losses, Ippei starts accessing the account and he starts transferring money from this account where Shohei Ohtani is getting his paychecks from the Angels. And Ippei starts taking money from the account to cover his gambling losses. The ex interpreter of Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani is pleading guilty in his federal sports betting case.

[U.S. Attorney]

What is more, Mr. Mitsuhara lied to the bank to access the account. For instance, we've obtained recordings of telephone calls in which Mitsuhara spoke with bank employees, lied to them about being Mr. Ohtani, gave personal biographical information for Mr. Ohtani in order to impersonate him, and thereby convinced the bank to approve large wire transfers of large amounts of money to the bank bookmakers.

[Tim Rohan]

At one point, he lied and said that the transfer for was for a car loan, when in fact it went to pay off a gambling debt. And then all of the IP addresses or the devices accessing the account were all linked to Ippe. And a lot of these transfers that are happening are coinciding with text messages that Ippe is having with the bookmaker, who's saying, hey, where's my money? And, you know, it's also helpful to understand just how deep of a hole Ippei was getting himself into. So Ippei starts gambling at the end of 2021, and he goes until January 2024, when this all blows up. In that time, IPPEI placed 19,000 bets.

[Pablo Torre]

Jesus.

[Tim Rohan]

Which is about 25 bets a day. Now he won $142 million.

[Pablo Torre]

That is a lot of money.

[Tim Rohan]

It's a lot of money. But how much did he lose? He lost 182 million. So the net loss was about $40 million. So he's $40 million in the hole. And what's Ippei going to do on an interpreter's salary? He starts according to the.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, right. He's an interpreter.

[Tim Rohan]

He's an interpreter. He's not a player, he's an interpreter. And so, according to the federal complaint, Ippei would take money from the account to cover his losses. But the wins, he would take the money from the wins and put it in his own account.

[Pablo Torre]

So much of the conversation around Ohtani, because of course, Ohtani is the actual celebrity, has been, did he know? Did he do any of this? Was he part of this gambling problem that Ippei had? Did he have his own gambling problem? How can you be so close to somebody and not know what your shadow is doing? And what you're seeing in what this complaint is alleging is that it was actually disturbingly easy for Ohtani to be isolated even from the most important financial matters of his own life.

[Tim Rohan]

Where was the agent? Where was the financial advisors that the agent employed? And what ended up happening, according to the complaint, was Ippei told the agent that Shohei wants that account private, and he doesn't want anyone monitoring it. And the agent apparently didn't ask any questions, and he didn't ask Shohei directly.

[Pablo Torre]

Because presumably hearing from Ippei is the same to them as hearing from Shohei.

[Tim Rohan]

Exactly. And so when other people in this, in. In this, in his orbit, the financial planners raise questions, are like, hey, what's going on with that account? The agent told them, hey, Shohei wants that private. Don't worry about it.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Is this thing that has the whiff of suspicion to it? Is that actually just how their culture operates?

[Tim Rohan]

Yeah, it's. You know, this is why all these interpreters didn't want to talk to me. Pablo.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I see. I. You know what I see that now this is why.

[Tim Rohan]

Because this is what could happen when you place so much trust in someone. But that trust is misplaced, right? And they take advantage. And this is what happens if the federal complaint is to be believed.

[Pablo Torre]

Tim, thank you for taking another assignment in which you got a lot more no's than yeses, but got us where we wanted to go.

[Tim Rohan]

Maybe next time someone will talk to me. What do you think?

[Pablo Torre]

I wouldn't. I wouldn't bet on it, as it were. All right. So as I sit here hovering over my keyboard, wondering what it is that I found out today, I realized that I should probably bring you behind the curtain, behind the blue cardigan, if you will, of this episode. Because what I am still stuck on, even after all of our reporting, and even after Ippei Mitsuhara's guilty pleasure, is this glaring and stupidly obvious possibility that Shohei Ohtani knew something. That at the very least, he knew more about what Ippei was doing with his money than he wants federal prosecutors to know. And of course, I have zero proof that Ippei Mitsuhara fell on his sword in some elaborate plan to shield his best friend. But what I found out today is why either option, unthinkable personal betrayal or unthinkable personal loyalty seems plausible. Because, yes, in the world of Japanese interpreters, it is fully normal for a barely vetted stranger to be fully entrusted with an athlete's reputation and car and house and diet and curveball and family and bank account, let alone their voice. No job in sports entails this kind of servitude and also this kind of power. But there is one more thing that my anonymous Japanese interpreter also told me, which is that most people can't handle that kind of intimacy, that kind of responsibility for more than like, three or four years. Our own guide into this world, Jeff Cutler, is actually out of the business himself now, as is Ippei Mitsuhara, the man who publicly disgraced an unsustainably private profession, all because the trust he had with Shohei Ohtani was broken or unbreakable. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out A Meadowlark Media Production and I'll talk to you next time, Sam.