New ESPN podcast dives into Shohei Ohtani-Ippei Mizuhara betting scandal

He stood next to the most famous athlete on the planet for six years, and almost nobody knew a thing about him. The writers who saw Ippei Mizuhara every day didn't know he was married. Now, the reporter who exposed him is asking the question that lingered under baseball's biggest scandal: Who was this guy working for Shohei Ohtani? ESPN's 30 for 30 will launch a six-episode podcast July 28 revisiting the gambling scandal that ended the friendship between Ohtani and his longtime interpreter. It's told by Tisha Thompson, the investigative reporter who broke the story in March 2024. "Everybody wants to know about the money and what was Shohei's role," Thompson told USA TODAY Sports. "But for me, it was: Who is Ippei?" The podcast digs into who Mizuhara was before Ohtani, including his years interpreting in Japan for a career minor league. She interviews the people who grew up with him, worked with him and supported him when everything fell apart. The series also has something no retelling has had: the tape. Listeners will hear, for the first time, the 90-minute interview Mizuhara gave Thompson roughly 16 hours before she broke the story. In it, you hear Mizuhara try to explain his relationship with Ohtani and then slowly start to realize that he might be in trouble. It remains the only interview he has ever given, and within a day of giving it, nearly everything he hsad had been recanted, Ohtani's lawyers were alleging massive theft, and the Dodgers had fired him. "This is probably one of the most challenging and important interviews, if not the most important interview, I've done in my career," Thompson said. The investigators also talk for the first time. The IRS special agent who built the case gives his first interview in a two-decade career, and what he and prosecutors say about Mizuhara's motive may surprise listeners who accepted the simple version of the story: that a gambling addiction spiraled out of control. "I went into those interviews with the feds thinking Ippei had a gambling problem that had gotten out of control," Thompson said. "That felt like the obvious answer. But this is why I love interviewing people. You can't assume things, and for the feds, it was not as simple as gambling addiction. It was more complicated than that." The six episodes trace the full arc, from the tip that reached Thompson before Ohtani ever signed with the Dodgers to the bookmaker, Mathew Boyer, explaining on tape how he found and kept clients, including the night a hotel poker game with Angels players brought him the client of a lifetime. Mizuhara made more than 19,000 bets with an illegal bookmaker between 2021 and 2024 stole nearly $17 million from Ohtani to cover his losses, and is serving a 57-month federal sentence. Ohtani, cleared by federal investigators and MLB, has won two WOrld Series titles since. Two years later, the questions may have faded, but starting July 28 baseball fans can hear the people who lived the scandal try to answer them.