(l-r) Pete Rose and Shohei Ohtani
Pete Rose is betting he would have been off the hook from punishment for gambling on baseball if he had an interpreter when he was playing and managing in Major League Baseball.
Rose, who is the all-time hits leader for Major League Baseball, has been banned for life from MLB since 1989 for being found to have gambled on games while manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
However, the 17-time All-Star and three-time World Series champion claims, seemingly in a joking manner, that he would have never been banned from baseball if he had an interpreter like Los Angeles Dodgers' star Shohei Ohtani, who alleges his now-fired interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, stole money from him to place illegal sports bets.
Mizuhara has denied placing bets on baseball, but has told ESPN that his bets were on international soccer, the NBA, the NFL and college football.
"Welp, back in the '70s and '80s, if I had an interpreter, I'd be scot-free," Rose said in a video posted to Instagram.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
At a press conference on Monday, Ohtani reiterated that Mizuhara stole and lied from him, and that he never placed bets or knowingly paid off gambling debts for Mizuhara.
"Ippei has been stealing money from my account and has told lies," Ohtani said Monday through Will Ireton, the team’s manager of performance operations who served as his interpreter during the news conference. "It's really hard to verbalize how I'm feeling at this point.
"I'm very sad and shocked that someone who I trusted has done this."
Ohtani said he only found out the payments from his account to an illegal bookmaker based in Southern California after media reports began alleging a connection between Mizuhara and an illegal gambling operation.
"I never bet on baseball or any other sports or never have asked somebody to do it on my behalf and I have never gone through a bookmaker to bet on sports. and was never asked to assist betting payment for anyone else," Ohtani said. "All of this has been a complete lie.
"Ippei obviously basically didn’t tell me about the media inquiry. So Ippei has been telling everyone around that he has been communicating with me on this account to the media and my team and that hasn’t been true."
The IRS and MLB have opened an investigation into Mizuhara and the alleged illegal bookie is under federal investigation as well.
Gambling on baseball either legally or illegally is against MLB rules, and is punishable with a one-year ban from the sport. MLB players and employees are not allowed to illegally gamble on other sports either, but they are allowed to gamble on other sports if it is legal where they placed the bet. The punishment for placing illegal bets on other sports is at the MLB commissioner's discretion.
