Shohei Ohtani Caught Placing Bets On Penn State Baseball
The face of Major League Baseball, Shohei Ohtani, was found guilty of gambling on baseball late Sunday night.
The statement released by the league named all of the teams Ohtani had placed bets on, featuring Penn State baseball. Sources say money was also gambled on the Dodgers, Yankees, and Pittsburgh Panthers, a longtime foe of Penn State. The news comes just one week after Ohtani’s interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was said to have stolen $4.5 million from the pitcher’s bank account.
Penn State Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Pat Kraft announced that an investigation is underway to see if Ohtani was involved in tampering with any games. He mentioned how “if true, this would be an utter disgrace to gamesmanship and the integrity of college athletics.” The Big Ten, ACC, and NCAA have also launched investigations of their own.
Speculation has said that Ohtani may have been behind Penn State’s back-to-back dropped pop-ups early in the game against Pitt last Tuesday. An unnamed sportsbook said that it received a two million dollar wager for over 25.5 total runs, hits, and errors — the combined number wound up being 26 in the game.
MLB also learned that Ohtani was scheduled to fly into State College on April 22, 2023, when the Nittany Lions were slated to play the Buckeyes of Ohio State. The flight was delayed due to “White Out conditions,” so he remained in Anaheim for his matchup against the Royals.
Since the news of Ohtani’s involvement with collegiate baseball broke, the star has publicly noted that he will be deferring any punishments to 2043, meaning that so long as he retires before the 2038 season, accusations will not be taken into account for Hall of Fame consideration.
We’ll update this post with more information as it becomes available.
Editor’s note: This story is part of Onward State’s April Fools’ Day series. It is satirical, meant for entertainment, and not to be taken literally. Any quotes were made up for the purpose of this post.
