OH-OH-OH...OHTANI: BASEBALL CHASES ITS OWN TALE

WITH the ongoing kerfuffle over Shohei Ohtani's interpreter and his strange hold on the smiling but inscrutable unicorn, baseball enters 2024 with an unexpected shadow over it--as if it needed more of them. 

There are so many possible mini-scenarios in the sudden upwelling of the gambling scandal that has put a crimp into Opening Day that it beggars the mind to keep up with them all. The sequence of events seems to best support the idea that the Dodgers recognized or were tipped off about a bad actor in Ippei Mizuhara, confronted the situation (in a clubhouse meeting that seems like a Harold Pinter play on steroids...), and were unable to contain the interpreter from jumping the gun and telling a version of the story that would soften the blow against both Ohtani and himself...at which point, it became clear that there was no choice but to throw the interpreter under the bus.

Those details may eventually surface in enough clarity for us to understand them, but there is a more far-reaching theme related to baseball that is far more significant. What is that theme? It's the perpetuation of baseball-the-business smokescreening itself through an ongoing manipulation of the game's essential innocence. 

What was working for baseball in the past three seasons was the specter of a "great innocent other" in the form of Ohtani, whose two-way skills have proven to be unprecedented. More than any other sport, baseball is obsessed with "otherness" in whatever form it might manifest itself. In a purportedly post-racial age with a strong tinge of backlash emanating from trouble spots all over the world, baseball-the-business can leverage itself into a stable world-wide marketing situation with a foreign mega-superstar like Ohtani, whose grinning inaccessibility permits the masses to identify with him from a multiplicity of angles--none of them complete (and, most likely, most of them inaccurate).

WHICH is why we can see the desperate wheels in motion as they've been revved up in the wake of this bombshell incident. The effort to whitewash Ohtani is in full swing, because salvaging some semblance of that perceived "innocent otherness" is of paramount importance to baseball-the-business and for the folks supporting it/supported by it: they know that there is a point where too much tarnish on the golden goose will turn him into a disposable tin god.

And that point is flashing at us, and the game, right now. Perpetuating that illusion is paramount, along with the Dodgers gaining some form of control over what might well be an actual gambling problem on the part of Ohtani, something that evolved during his days in Orange County, one of baseball's most star-crossed locations where little ever seems to go right.

CONTRAST this again with Trevor Bauer, whose situation we covered earlier in the month. There are no practical limits for "otherness" in how it creates and perpetuates mystique (which sells tickets and merchandise and media rights), but there is a Draconian limit on "extremity," which is one of the reasons why Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire have been so heavily scapegoated. Too much extremity, whether in excess of achievement or behavior, will result in the individuals being shunned, cast out, "disappeared."

Bauer's extremity also happens to push so strongly against baseball-the-business' desire to cast its spell of "innocence" over the public that they have become autocratically adamant about denying him a chance to redeem himself. For Bonds and McGwire, baseball will mete out a punishment that will allow them into the Hall of Fame only after they are both dead, so that while they will eventually be "redeemed," they will not be granted that benefit in a way that they can personally enjoy. 

For Bauer, the punishment is at its most Puritan in nature (befitting a nation that has a frighteningly large segment of its populace attempting to make The Handmaid's Tale into a living, fire-and-brimstone-breathing reality): he will simply be erased from view by whatever means necessary. (That began, but will not end, with Internet entities such as Reddit banning any and all discussion of him, in clear violation of First Amendment rights.)

Bauer continues to demonstrate that he can be a useful pitcher for a major league team whenever he can actually find an opportunity to pitch in North America, but the same impulse underlying the American spirit that caused them to slaughter the indigenous population will almost certainly make sure that there will never be another statistical line in his record from a team in organized baseball operating on North American soil.

AND all that will occur as baseball-the-business salvages its over-investment in its unicorn of otherness, who will from now on carry some level of dark undercurrent that the powers-that-be are working mightily even as these words are being typed to make unutterable. Here's hoping that Ohtani's dedication to baseball (which is unquestionable) will see him through to a successful weathering of this dark moment--and far beyond it, so that he will wind up with a career of sufficient achievement to warrant the devil's bargain that is in the process of being made. 

For if he should crash and burn after this, it would be among the greatest catastrophes that baseball-the-game and baseball-the-business could possibly experience. For the more one chases one's own tale, the more dependent one becomes on it remaining a credible version of "the truth"--and thus the pressure on Ohtani to win over public opinion through another 4-5 seasons of unique brilliance is, in fact, greater than it's ever been before. Stay tuned...