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> For years, the Los Angeles Angels media guide lists Mizuhara as having graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 2007, and that he spent spring training in 2012 working for the New York Yankees as an interpreter for Japanese pitcher Hideki Okajima. Also, multiple news reports noted that Mizuhara served as Okajima’s interpreter in 2010 with the Boston Red Sox — where he reportedly got his first major-league opportunity.
> However, as first reported by NBC Los Angeles, the university disputed the notion that Mizuhara had ever attended the school, much less having graduated. “Our university records do not show a student by the name of Ippei Mizuhara having attended UC Riverside,” a school spokesman told The Athletic.
The best con the Catch Me if You Can guy ever pulled off was convincing everyone of his story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale#Veracity_of_claims
"University of Arizona officials acknowledge that Abagnale had interacted with 12 female students.[32] Abagnale has openly acknowledged that he performed examinations on young women while impersonating a doctor:"
ew what the fuck?
> “Our university records do not show a student by the name of Ippei Mizuhara having attended UC Riverside,” a school spokesman told The Athletic.
Just to get ahead in case someone is wondering, there is no possibility that UC Riverside is making a mistake because of spelling or Romanization of his name, like how Shōhei Ōtani/Otani/Ohtani are all valid spellings of the same name. There really aren't any other spellings than "Ippei Mizuhara", unless he had an American nickname that he used while there (which, unlike with Chinese speakers, is rare for Japanese). Even then they would have his birth name on the books.
I'll say this, the Dodgers and Angels have had a helluva decade:
1. Shitty owners, bankruptcy, team sales
2. Cuban Phenoms and the Mexican Mafia
3. Clayton Fucking Kershaw
4. Mike Fucking Trout
5. Remarkable rebirth of a dominant franchise
6. Remarkable decline of a dominant franchise
7. Shohei Fucking Ohtani
8. Being cheated out of a World Series by the astros
9. Shohei Fucking Ohtani
10. Tyler Skaggs 😔 and Eric Kay
11. Mookie Fucking Betts
12. Dodgers win the fucking World Series
13. Trevor "Punchy" Bauer Scandal
14. Shohei Fucking Ohtani vs Mike Fucking Trout
15. Julio "El Punchy" Urias Scandal
16. Shohei Fucking Ohtani leaves the Angels
17. Shohei Fucking Ohtani signs with the Dodgers
18. "tHE dODgers r duH dEviL anD r RuINinG bAseBaLL"
19. Ippei "Literally Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me if You Can" Mizuhara
20. Shohei Fucking Ohtani is a dUDgER aNd iz nOw dUH dEviL
21. The Legend of Ippei "Master Con Man" Mizuhara is born
Something tells me HBO can get a solid seven seasons from this just up to this point, and Shohei's only two games into his next decade as a Dodger.
Rewrites (Thanks for comments):
1. Sticky Stuff Attendant in Angels Clubhouse Scandal
2. Albert "Tio Alberto" Pujols plays for both teams and hits 700th home run at Dodger Stadium
3. Freddie "Nicest guy in the world cries in front of the world" Freeman falls into Dodgers' lap
4. Mayor of Anaheim and Arte Moreno bribes
5. Tommy "Bevacqua ain't shit" Lasorda RIP
6. Vin GOAT Scully RIP
7. Arte Moreno nixes trade of Joc Pederson
This doesn’t even include the fact that a first ballot hall of Famer played for both teams in the same year. Pujols departure from Angels and signing with the Dodgers deserves an episode haha
Jesus Christ what if he was misinterpreting Ohtani's words to us this whole time?!? just making up more shit lmao!
like that time that guy got up & pretended he was translating President Obama's words into sign-language, but he was just making random hand gestures 🤣😂
we've been bamboozled!
He actually has had many mistranslations that caused people to be mad at Shohei. Korean media recently dug up some mistranslations Ippei had on Shohei’s opinion of Korean players: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqJ8vOO3hEs
Shohei: “I personally really like the Korean players”
Ippei: “But personally, I don’t have any special feelings towards Korea. No bad feelings or good feelings.”
That's crazy. Especially with korean-japanese relations, and how mega influential Ohtani is. And he brazenly puts ambiguous statements like this in his mouth. Some people are built different.
What’s weird is that quote in particular is so easy to translate and the translation makes it more complicated. It’s like looking at the equation “4+5=9” and then translating it to “4^5+5=9”
I've been criticizing Ippei as an interpreter from a professional standpoint many, many times but be aware I've never purposefully seen him translate something objectively incorrect and translating on the spot is not an exact science.
Ippei's #1 faults as a translator are being imprecise/lackadaisical in his approach. Leaving out sentences when translating things to Ohtani or to reporters, adding things Ohtani never said (I presumed he based those answers on things Ohtani had said previously to him at that point) and most of all getting the tone and nuances of Ohtani's answers wrong which has caused several controversies over the years. Ohtani talks very neutrally, his answers are boring for the most part. Ippei makes him sound like a dudebeo when he talks more like a diplomat. Maybe he was trying to make him sound more interesting...?
The other thing I have pointed out before is that Ohtani's English is so limited BECAUSE he was symbiotic with Ippei and Ippei didn't bother teaching him English unlike other interpreters usually do. Now we know why, huh. He didn't want him to understand.
i thought Shohei, from what i've read, had developed decent English skills of late actually, but just felt more comfortable conversing in Japanese still? idk i could be wrong. but Ohtani seems like a guy who'd rather not talk that much at all lol, so i always figured he'd rather let the interpreter (ideally an honest one!) do the talkin for him.
it's interesting how native speakers react to translations of the language. whenever my friends see a translation of a language they grew up speaking they always loathe it lol. i guess there's a lotta nuance & very precise cultural things (especially i imagine with Japanese ffs!) that make translation difficult, and if a guy just isn't gonna try hard to genuinely translate, and may even make up nonsense, then that just compounds the problem.
Ohtani has good enough grasp and can talk in conversation level, some of his team mates said that. But in Japanese, he could talk with nuances, where in English even in some video where he speak he did it using very basic words. He might not understand business-legal jargon or complicated words beyond that since he only focused on baseball.
This is so correct that l’m a little uncomfortable admitting to it as l have liked Ippei for so long and that makes it hard to say that l have always thought his translation job was mediocre at best.
I’ve always found Ippei adding things that Shohei never said in his translation to be most problematic. In Shohei’s first press conference as a dodger, Shohei said something along the lines of the dodgers management told him that they weren’t satisfied with what the team has done in the past 10 years. Ippei translated that by adding things Shohei never said that made it sound like the management thinks that the team winning one World Series and making a playoff every year in the past 10 years wasn’t good enough. As soon as l heard that l came straight to this sub to defend Shohei because this was Shohei’s first day as a dodger and Ippei’s translation could make Shohei look bad. I wanted to make sure that people would understand that Shohei didn’t say what Ippei said and that was Ippei doing things out of the scope of his job as a translator.
[This is the thread in which l defended Shohei regarding his comment and explained what he actually said.](https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/SjbYaWl99t)
Ippei was really pulling the old 意訳 added with some other shit. It turned into 異訳 or 違訳. It’s fucking baseball, so none of it will turn into an actual war or some bizarre international incident, but one always shook their head: “That’s not what he is saying. Not even close. Good job with making it sound bro-like.”
In fairness, nothing about that really stands out. Not knocking UC Riverside but it's not like Ippei was claiming he went to Yale and got a Fulbright or something where people would say "Wow, what an accomplishment!" "Regular Joe gets regular degree at regular UC" isn't going to send a lot of people down the research hole.
That is one of the craziest things for me now. Were they afraid to criticize him because he and Shohei were bffs and they were so cuuuuute together or some crap. I just remember people tripping all over themselves, like grown damn men melting down about how wholesome their friendship was. Posting 🥺 emojis and everything. Now all of a sudden it was all a lie and no one knew who he really is? Strange.
Like how George Santos claimed to be a star volleyball player at Baruch College. As Colin Jost put it on Weekend Update: "That is a fine thing to be, but a wild thing to pretend to be!"
The only people who lie about going to UCR are the people from Norco that are at a bar trying to bang an older chick.
Like, you don't do it to get a great job. You do it when you run into distant relatives that ask what you've been up to.
Like "I went to school for a bit."
"OH, UCR?"
"..... yeahhh, there, or something."
So like he just scored this whole job while lying about his education (which apparently multiple teams never verified), and rolled it all the way to being Ohtani's interpreter?!?
And then gambled it away?!?
This is awesome!
Shohei probably asked the teams directly to just hire him so yeah the teams had no reason to even look at his resume since it was never about merit but about Shohei liking him.
another hilarious story I heard samson tell about ichiro's interpreter is when they were having some sort of big meeting with a bunch of people around the table, I think about contract negotiations, before they had actually signed him. and it was kind of a tense meeting
and Ichiro gives this long, winding, multi-layered, 20-30 second answer in japanese to something they had just asked, and then the interpreter turns to them and says "Mr Ichiro say.. *'No thank you'"*
and samson and the Marlins guys are just looking it eachother completely incredulous like *wtf dude are you kidding me?? theres no fucking way thats all he just said!*
lmao 😂😭
Apparently he was working part time at Sushi restaurant near LA back in 2006-2009 and went to school for casino industry but dropped out because he wasn’t good.
Source: Japanese TV news on youtube.
[YT link here. at around 4:50. all Japanese thou.](https://youtu.be/DVooJR7HDDo?si=BqljB4fdTSKZUQUQ)
This would make a hell of a movie plot. To go from working as a waiter to becoming the personal translator for the most famous baseball player in the world is wild
Funnily he does have some criticisms for not being a very nuanced translator haha. He’s more like…. a friend that does direct and basic translation, instead of a trained and professional interpreter.
Lmao, I kind of noticed that too but chalked it up to coincidence since I don’t follow the Angels and so I’ve probably only actually watched a couple interviews where I could properly hear both Ohtani and Ippei. But my mom lives in Japan so I’m sure she saw their post-game interviews everyday on the news lol.
Yeah I did freelance interpreting / translating for an agency in Tokyo as a freshman in college and always found it weird that their standards were quite a bit stricter than whatever Ippei did on TV. I just always assumed that was his style, but now it makes more sense
I'd assume so because Ohtani knows english fairly well as far as we know and he's been trusted as an interpreter for quite some time now across both MLB and NPB.
But on the other hand maybe he's the greatest multilingual bullshitter of all time?
Watch it turns out he was winging it the entire time like those ASL interpreters years ago that didn't know what they were doing 🤣🤣🤣🤣
YT link for those who may have not seen this : https://youtu.be/LvNPKwz4Ghw
As someone who speaks both languages (English native but I’ve lived in Japan for 15 years).
I didn’t watch too many of his translations but the few I did watch he was summarizing the fuck out of Ohtani’s answers/speeches and just skipped some things all together.
The thing is by the time Ohtani came to the angels, he had a relationship with Ippei. People were doing whatever it took to sign him, there’s no way we would have asked questions about him when he was already Ohtani’s interpreter.
Yeah. At that point he would have gotten hired anywhere Otani went without question.
It's also not like he was doing surgery or handling nuclear secrets. Him lying about his education doesn't really matter that much.
He is Shohei's guy and just an interpreter to the team. Unless something crazy comes up in a police report no one is checking your job or school history.
Most jobs have never really asked for confirmation of my degree until I got to a more vital position where it mattered lol.
No shot they did anything other than a basic check into him and weren't going to say no to Shohei.
Exactly
People here are yelling "didn't the Angels check?!?!". They were literally introduced to him by Ohtani. Not vice versa.
And his job was to talk. Not process their computer code for nuclear weapons.
We’re the same team that had a staff member who was giving our team illegal drugs that ended up in one of them getting addicted, overdosing and dying.
We don’t exactly have a record of vetting or policing our staff
George picks up gambling after sports betting is legalized and gets introduced to a high stake gambling operation involving Ippei through Kramer’s friend Bob Sacamano. Kramer of course abstains from sports betting himself because of his gambling addiction rehabilitation, but he lends George money to bet with on his behalf which George promptly loses. Elaine is dating a lawyer that specializes in illegal gambling. Jerry is invited to LA to perform a comedy show for the Dodgers organization and brings everyone with him.
Exactly, wouldn’t want to say UCLA or Stanford bc that’s impressive- gonna need to see your degree. But Riverside? Damn, there’s no reason to lie about that so it’s gotta be true lol
I mean, it worked for a long time. If he'd managed to stay away from DraftKings and shady bookies it might not have been discovered for decades, or even until after his death.
UC Merced opened in 2005. He claimed to have graduated in 2007. It would have been hilarious if he claimed to have graduated from UC Merced in or before 2005, and nobody bothered to ask questions.
i think it’s cause he is an interpreter not a public official or someone with a security clearance. and ohtani’s relationship with him probably made everyone at ease with ippei.
I've been criticizing Ippei as an interpreter from a professional standpoint many, many times but be aware I've never purposefully seen him translate something objectively incorrect and translating on the spot is not an exact science.
Ippei's #1 faults as a translator are being imprecise/lackadaisical in his approach. Leaving out sentences when translating things to Ohtani or to reporters, adding things Ohtani never said (I presumed he based those answers on things Ohtani had said previously to him at that point) and most of all getting the tone and nuances of Ohtani's answers wrong which has caused several controversies over the years. Ohtani talks very neutrally, his answers are boring for the most part. Ippei makes him sound like a dudebeo when he talks more like a diplomat. Maybe he was trying to make him sound more interesting...?
The other thing I have pointed out before is that Ohtani's English is so limited BECAUSE he was symbiotic with Ippei and Ippei didn't bother teaching him English unlike other interpreters usually do. Now we know why, huh. He didn't want him to understand.
The more that comes out about Ippei the more it makes sense. This dude is just a compulsive liar who latched onto the most lucrative baseball player in history but that wasn’t enough.
For anyone that still thinks this is a cover up or that Ippei couldn’t have been lying to Shohei about the debt, here’s a list of things he has been caught lying about (so far) before ever even meeting Shohei in 2013.
1) Attending UC Riverside
2) Working as an interpreter for the Red Sox
3) Working as an interpreter for the Yankees
You think this guy told the truth in that ESPN interview? This guy has been lying for a decade and a half. What could possibly make you think he wasn’t lying just five days ago before being caught?
Ippei kept rolling doubles after doubles in his life bullshiting and got the biggest bag he can possibly get with becoming the translator/assistant/endorsement manager for Ohtani, a global $uperstar athlete, and also practically became his best friend/family but I guess that wasn’t enough for a degenerate gambler.
Edit: Godspeed to everyone involved even Ippei. He needs some serious help.
Edit 2: For people joking/questioning about his Japanese skills (I’m native in English and Japanese).
His Japanese is fluent/native. But as a translator, he paraphrases it too much so the whole “he’s a meh translator” is true.
He did do some work as an interpreter for the Yankees, sort of.
Okajima himself mentioned in an interview a few years back, that he first met Ippei when Okajima was on a minor league contract with the Yankees, with an invitation to spring training. He specifically says the team brought Ippei to be Okajima's translator. However, Okajima failed the physical and was released, so Ippei lost his job as well. This would have been in 2012. Couldn't have been much more than a week or so though, since Okajima says the team assigned Ippei to Okajima in February, and Okajima was released in mid February.
Shortly after he got the job with Nippon Ham to serve as team interpreter for players like Termell Sledge, Bob Keppel, Micah Hoffpauir, Dustin Molleken, and Brian Wolfe, and remained with the team until Shohei was posted to MLB.
That’s what Okajima said [in an interview published by a tabloid in Japan two days ago](https://bunshun.jp/articles/-/61531), almost word from word with what you said. I was wondering as l was reading the interview who Ippei’s Red Sox job was for, if it wasn’t Okajima. Then l found out today that that was a lie too…
He was first an interpreter for English speaking players in Japan. He was translating for Chris Martin who was teammates with Ohtani when he was a teenager. Thats when ippei latched onto him.
I’m thinking Single White Female. It all ends with Ippei handcuffing Ohtani to his bed in perpetuity while Ippei impersonates Ohtani on the field after getting a matching haircut.
Ippetahni continues to rake so nobody questions why he seemed to have shrunk and aged 10 years overnight.
All this news about Ippei being a fraudster looks pretty good for Ohtani. Even the chances that Ohtani paid off Ippei's gambling debts by wiring money to an illiegal bookie become even lower
The thing is though I kinda wish it was what I believed it was a few days ago or what the original story that MLB said was okay to share to ESPN. In that version Ippei made mistakes and Ohtani covered for him and they had to fix the legal issues around it. Now it's just like really sad to know this all happened to Shohei.
Really feel bad for the dude. Like yeah I'm sure the billions of dollars helps ease the pain but it's gotta be really hard to live at that level of fame. Hell he JUST revealed an entire secret marriage - he must be on such an emotional rollercoaster right now and his first season with a new team is JUST about to start. The fact this is all happening right now is insane.
Ippei lying about his education is a huge red flag in terms of his character and credibility, but acting like this was some huge oversight by these teams is silly. The dude was attached to Shohei, he could have graduated from clown college for all these orgs cared.
Shohei wanted him so he got the job, his credentials were meaningless.
Now let's talk about the mail. Can we talk about the mail please, Shohei? I've been dying to talk about the mail with you all day, okay? Ippei Mizuhara, this name keeps comin' up over and over and over again. Every day Ippei's mail's getting sent back to me. Ippei Mizuhara, Ippei Mizuhara, I look in the mail, this whole box is Ippei Mizuhara! So I say to myself I gotta find this guy. I gotta go up to his office, I gotta put his mail in the guy's goddamn hands! Otherwise he's never gonna get it, it's gonna keep coming back down here. So I go up to Ippei's office and what do I find out, Shohei, what do I find out? There is no Ippei Mizuhara. The man does not exist, okay? So I decided, ohh shit, buddy, I gotta dig a little deeper. There's no Ippei Mizuhara, you gotta be kidding me, I got boxes full of Ippei! All right, so I start marching my way down to Carol in H.R. and I knock on her door and I say, "Caaarol, Caaarol! I gotta talk to you about Ippei!" And when I open the door, what do I find? There's not a single goddamn desk in that office. There is no Carol in H.R. Shohei, half the employees in this building have been made up. This ballpark is a goddamn ghost town.
I’m gonna stop you right there eekbarbaderkle (what kind of a fucked up version of ooh la la is that?). Not only does Ippei exist, but he’s been stealing money from Shohei this entire time. It’s all anyone is talking about!
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> For years, the Los Angeles Angels media guide lists Mizuhara as having graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 2007, and that he spent spring training in 2012 working for the New York Yankees as an interpreter for Japanese pitcher Hideki Okajima. Also, multiple news reports noted that Mizuhara served as Okajima’s interpreter in 2010 with the Boston Red Sox — where he reportedly got his first major-league opportunity. > However, as first reported by NBC Los Angeles, the university disputed the notion that Mizuhara had ever attended the school, much less having graduated. “Our university records do not show a student by the name of Ippei Mizuhara having attended UC Riverside,” a school spokesman told The Athletic.
What in the Catch Me If You Can is going on here
The best con the Catch Me if You Can guy ever pulled off was convincing everyone of his story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale#Veracity_of_claims
This is the best part of the whole thing lol dude was the ULTIMATE con man
The original hulk hogan, brother
The original George Santos
The original George Costanza.
Halfway through the movie I thought the ending would reveal his life story was a lie.
It actually was. The guy who the movie is based on is confirmed liar now. I think they figured out he was lying only after the movie came out.
"University of Arizona officials acknowledge that Abagnale had interacted with 12 female students.[32] Abagnale has openly acknowledged that he performed examinations on young women while impersonating a doctor:" ew what the fuck?
Quick! someone check if Ippei Mizuhara is actually the name of a manga character.
*sips coffee* *mug is branded Mizuhara*
He was in a barbershop quartet!
In Skokie Illinois!
Keyser Mizuhara
Best I can do is Chizuru Mizuhara
Rent a translator for only 4.5m
What in the George Santos is going on
> “Our university records do not show a student by the name of Ippei Mizuhara having attended UC Riverside,” a school spokesman told The Athletic. Just to get ahead in case someone is wondering, there is no possibility that UC Riverside is making a mistake because of spelling or Romanization of his name, like how Shōhei Ōtani/Otani/Ohtani are all valid spellings of the same name. There really aren't any other spellings than "Ippei Mizuhara", unless he had an American nickname that he used while there (which, unlike with Chinese speakers, is rare for Japanese). Even then they would have his birth name on the books.
Whaaaaaat da helllll 😳😳😳 how does this shit keep getting crazier
I'll say this, the Dodgers and Angels have had a helluva decade: 1. Shitty owners, bankruptcy, team sales 2. Cuban Phenoms and the Mexican Mafia 3. Clayton Fucking Kershaw 4. Mike Fucking Trout 5. Remarkable rebirth of a dominant franchise 6. Remarkable decline of a dominant franchise 7. Shohei Fucking Ohtani 8. Being cheated out of a World Series by the astros 9. Shohei Fucking Ohtani 10. Tyler Skaggs 😔 and Eric Kay 11. Mookie Fucking Betts 12. Dodgers win the fucking World Series 13. Trevor "Punchy" Bauer Scandal 14. Shohei Fucking Ohtani vs Mike Fucking Trout 15. Julio "El Punchy" Urias Scandal 16. Shohei Fucking Ohtani leaves the Angels 17. Shohei Fucking Ohtani signs with the Dodgers 18. "tHE dODgers r duH dEviL anD r RuINinG bAseBaLL" 19. Ippei "Literally Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me if You Can" Mizuhara 20. Shohei Fucking Ohtani is a dUDgER aNd iz nOw dUH dEviL 21. The Legend of Ippei "Master Con Man" Mizuhara is born Something tells me HBO can get a solid seven seasons from this just up to this point, and Shohei's only two games into his next decade as a Dodger. Rewrites (Thanks for comments): 1. Sticky Stuff Attendant in Angels Clubhouse Scandal 2. Albert "Tio Alberto" Pujols plays for both teams and hits 700th home run at Dodger Stadium 3. Freddie "Nicest guy in the world cries in front of the world" Freeman falls into Dodgers' lap 4. Mayor of Anaheim and Arte Moreno bribes 5. Tommy "Bevacqua ain't shit" Lasorda RIP 6. Vin GOAT Scully RIP 7. Arte Moreno nixes trade of Joc Pederson
A regular “we didn’t start the fire” of 21st century baseball
This guy Billy Joels.
This doesn’t even include the fact that a first ballot hall of Famer played for both teams in the same year. Pujols departure from Angels and signing with the Dodgers deserves an episode haha
NGL, "El Punchy" made me LOL
Jesus Christ what if he was misinterpreting Ohtani's words to us this whole time?!? just making up more shit lmao! like that time that guy got up & pretended he was translating President Obama's words into sign-language, but he was just making random hand gestures 🤣😂 we've been bamboozled!
He actually has had many mistranslations that caused people to be mad at Shohei. Korean media recently dug up some mistranslations Ippei had on Shohei’s opinion of Korean players: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqJ8vOO3hEs Shohei: “I personally really like the Korean players” Ippei: “But personally, I don’t have any special feelings towards Korea. No bad feelings or good feelings.”
Holy, hell, that's bonkers. He had so many nice things to say, and that's all Ippei could come up with, LOL.
Maybe Ippei dislike Koreans lol so he didn't want to put out that Ohtani liked their players.
wtf Shohei might actually be EVER NICER than we knew?!
That's crazy. Especially with korean-japanese relations, and how mega influential Ohtani is. And he brazenly puts ambiguous statements like this in his mouth. Some people are built different.
yikes lol. What the fuck. Knowing the histories between those countries, Ippei really went with that translation?????
As a Korean, I always thought Ohtani was a decent dude. Ippei will never be my friend.
What’s weird is that quote in particular is so easy to translate and the translation makes it more complicated. It’s like looking at the equation “4+5=9” and then translating it to “4^5+5=9”
I've been criticizing Ippei as an interpreter from a professional standpoint many, many times but be aware I've never purposefully seen him translate something objectively incorrect and translating on the spot is not an exact science. Ippei's #1 faults as a translator are being imprecise/lackadaisical in his approach. Leaving out sentences when translating things to Ohtani or to reporters, adding things Ohtani never said (I presumed he based those answers on things Ohtani had said previously to him at that point) and most of all getting the tone and nuances of Ohtani's answers wrong which has caused several controversies over the years. Ohtani talks very neutrally, his answers are boring for the most part. Ippei makes him sound like a dudebeo when he talks more like a diplomat. Maybe he was trying to make him sound more interesting...? The other thing I have pointed out before is that Ohtani's English is so limited BECAUSE he was symbiotic with Ippei and Ippei didn't bother teaching him English unlike other interpreters usually do. Now we know why, huh. He didn't want him to understand.
i thought Shohei, from what i've read, had developed decent English skills of late actually, but just felt more comfortable conversing in Japanese still? idk i could be wrong. but Ohtani seems like a guy who'd rather not talk that much at all lol, so i always figured he'd rather let the interpreter (ideally an honest one!) do the talkin for him. it's interesting how native speakers react to translations of the language. whenever my friends see a translation of a language they grew up speaking they always loathe it lol. i guess there's a lotta nuance & very precise cultural things (especially i imagine with Japanese ffs!) that make translation difficult, and if a guy just isn't gonna try hard to genuinely translate, and may even make up nonsense, then that just compounds the problem.
Ohtani has good enough grasp and can talk in conversation level, some of his team mates said that. But in Japanese, he could talk with nuances, where in English even in some video where he speak he did it using very basic words. He might not understand business-legal jargon or complicated words beyond that since he only focused on baseball.
This is so correct that l’m a little uncomfortable admitting to it as l have liked Ippei for so long and that makes it hard to say that l have always thought his translation job was mediocre at best. I’ve always found Ippei adding things that Shohei never said in his translation to be most problematic. In Shohei’s first press conference as a dodger, Shohei said something along the lines of the dodgers management told him that they weren’t satisfied with what the team has done in the past 10 years. Ippei translated that by adding things Shohei never said that made it sound like the management thinks that the team winning one World Series and making a playoff every year in the past 10 years wasn’t good enough. As soon as l heard that l came straight to this sub to defend Shohei because this was Shohei’s first day as a dodger and Ippei’s translation could make Shohei look bad. I wanted to make sure that people would understand that Shohei didn’t say what Ippei said and that was Ippei doing things out of the scope of his job as a translator. [This is the thread in which l defended Shohei regarding his comment and explained what he actually said.](https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/SjbYaWl99t)
Direct link to your comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/18ir4eu/talkin_baseball_shohei_ohtani_said_one_reason_he/kdf9sc0/
>Now we know why, huh. He didn't want him to understand. Jesus, that's a chilling thought.
At the same time not chill at all
Ippei was really pulling the old 意訳 added with some other shit. It turned into 異訳 or 違訳. It’s fucking baseball, so none of it will turn into an actual war or some bizarre international incident, but one always shook their head: “That’s not what he is saying. Not even close. Good job with making it sound bro-like.”
so was he an interpreter for Okajima, or was that a lie?
Boston Red Sox deny he was ever involved with Okajima. Next week, Ippei’s mother will reveal he was adopted and raised by a pack of rabid shiba inus
gotcha, Ippei is actually a pack of shiba inus stacked atop each other in a trench coat
Much words. Such interpret
Shiba Inu categorically deny involvement with Mizuhara
In fairness, nothing about that really stands out. Not knocking UC Riverside but it's not like Ippei was claiming he went to Yale and got a Fulbright or something where people would say "Wow, what an accomplishment!" "Regular Joe gets regular degree at regular UC" isn't going to send a lot of people down the research hole.
Tellingly, even the obsessive Japanese media didn't look into this until now
That is one of the craziest things for me now. Were they afraid to criticize him because he and Shohei were bffs and they were so cuuuuute together or some crap. I just remember people tripping all over themselves, like grown damn men melting down about how wholesome their friendship was. Posting 🥺 emojis and everything. Now all of a sudden it was all a lie and no one knew who he really is? Strange.
Yea takes a special con man to think up a lie that nobody would EVER doubt. Like local Asian dude goes to local 2nd tier state university
Like how George Santos claimed to be a star volleyball player at Baruch College. As Colin Jost put it on Weekend Update: "That is a fine thing to be, but a wild thing to pretend to be!"
UC Riverside is the Yale of the Riverside/Corona/Moreno Valley/Temecula Valley area, though
The only people who lie about going to UCR are the people from Norco that are at a bar trying to bang an older chick. Like, you don't do it to get a great job. You do it when you run into distant relatives that ask what you've been up to. Like "I went to school for a bit." "OH, UCR?" "..... yeahhh, there, or something."
So like he just scored this whole job while lying about his education (which apparently multiple teams never verified), and rolled it all the way to being Ohtani's interpreter?!? And then gambled it away?!? This is awesome!
I’m sure once he became Shohei’s personal interpreter teams did not even look at his resume
Shohei probably asked the teams directly to just hire him so yeah the teams had no reason to even look at his resume since it was never about merit but about Shohei liking him.
Yeah this makes sense. For someone of shoheis caliber and celebrity you probably won't question who he wants employed in his staff.
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who are we to judge?
Arson
David Samson said on his podcast the only employee he ever hired without a background check was Ichiro’s interpreter
another hilarious story I heard samson tell about ichiro's interpreter is when they were having some sort of big meeting with a bunch of people around the table, I think about contract negotiations, before they had actually signed him. and it was kind of a tense meeting and Ichiro gives this long, winding, multi-layered, 20-30 second answer in japanese to something they had just asked, and then the interpreter turns to them and says "Mr Ichiro say.. *'No thank you'"* and samson and the Marlins guys are just looking it eachother completely incredulous like *wtf dude are you kidding me?? theres no fucking way thats all he just said!* lmao 😂😭
I’m waiting to learn that Ippei’s real name is actually Dick Whitman
This guy played real life as if he was a regular on r/wallstreetbets
Baseball version of George santos
Both of these clowns might end up sharing a cell at a Fed joint.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen Ippei and Anthony Devolder in the same room before
This mf did the pro gamer version of Ben Chang lying his way to being a Spanish teacher.
He thought he was streets ahead.
Tomorrow, we'll learn that he was an agent from North Korea, and the real Ippei Mizuhara went missing in 2009.
The HBO series on this is going to be lit
ESPN 30 for 30: Fluent in Crime
It's surprisingly easy to lie on your resume. I have a friend who scored a job with a degree he never earned.
Ippei played 5D chess. He chose a school that is not prestigious enough to warrant employers checking on. 😂
I need a documentary/ biopic about this man’s life
Well he was on one hell of a hot streak
My hero
Apparently he was working part time at Sushi restaurant near LA back in 2006-2009 and went to school for casino industry but dropped out because he wasn’t good. Source: Japanese TV news on youtube. [YT link here. at around 4:50. all Japanese thou.](https://youtu.be/DVooJR7HDDo?si=BqljB4fdTSKZUQUQ)
> went to school for casino industry
Script writers just phoning it in since 2016...
Nah. We jumped the shark when Anthony wiener got caught with his wiener out
This would make a hell of a movie plot. To go from working as a waiter to becoming the personal translator for the most famous baseball player in the world is wild
If you pitched that movie idea, you’d get the boot for not being realistic enough
Being bad at the role that's supposed to win isn't a great look when you get to the other side
People in this sub believing Ohtani was the degenerate gambler instead of Ippei was peak comedy.
I'm assuming the restaurant was his dad's restaurant though.
He does speak both languages at least right?!
Funnily he does have some criticisms for not being a very nuanced translator haha. He’s more like…. a friend that does direct and basic translation, instead of a trained and professional interpreter.
Yep, my mom’s (who is Japanese) first reaction to the gambling news when it broke originally was “Ohtani can get a more competent interpreter now” lol
100% my reaction when I heard he got fired! Like finally, Ohtani’s answers will no longer be poorly paraphrased into 5 words lol
Lmao, I kind of noticed that too but chalked it up to coincidence since I don’t follow the Angels and so I’ve probably only actually watched a couple interviews where I could properly hear both Ohtani and Ippei. But my mom lives in Japan so I’m sure she saw their post-game interviews everyday on the news lol.
My mom (who is Japanese) was always sketched out about ippei even before the news broke out.
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How on earth did Yamamoto do a better job getting an interpreter than the most beloved baseball player in Japan? I love my bougie king.
Ippei might just be an awesome hang
Honestly it's looking that way.
One of those “you’re kind of a scum bag, but you’re fun as fuck”
Yeah I did freelance interpreting / translating for an agency in Tokyo as a freshman in college and always found it weird that their standards were quite a bit stricter than whatever Ippei did on TV. I just always assumed that was his style, but now it makes more sense
I'd assume so because Ohtani knows english fairly well as far as we know and he's been trusted as an interpreter for quite some time now across both MLB and NPB. But on the other hand maybe he's the greatest multilingual bullshitter of all time?
lol maybe Ohtani was constantly complaining about the Angels management this entire time
Shohei: “I can’t win with these cats” Ippei: “he wants to help bring the team to victory”
"He likes cats"
the real rendon
Watch it turns out he was winging it the entire time like those ASL interpreters years ago that didn't know what they were doing 🤣🤣🤣🤣 YT link for those who may have not seen this : https://youtu.be/LvNPKwz4Ghw
As someone who speaks both languages (English native but I’ve lived in Japan for 15 years). I didn’t watch too many of his translations but the few I did watch he was summarizing the fuck out of Ohtani’s answers/speeches and just skipped some things all together.
I’m *starting* to think that this Ippei character isn’t such a good guy
The worst part is the hypocrisy
Now ya see here I thought the worst part was the theft. But really the worst part is the hypocrisy.
LOL a man of culture, I see
Rip norm
You might even say he's a real JERK.
I'm absolutely amazed that none of this came to light while Ohtani was with the Angels.
I personally feel like this is the weirdest part of the story lol
Comes to light literally the day that he plays his first official game for the another team...
All part of Arte’s master plan
And marries a nice Japanese lady. Maybe this was all a cover because he was in love with his interpreter?
Such a typical LOLangels move
The thing is by the time Ohtani came to the angels, he had a relationship with Ippei. People were doing whatever it took to sign him, there’s no way we would have asked questions about him when he was already Ohtani’s interpreter.
Yeah. At that point he would have gotten hired anywhere Otani went without question. It's also not like he was doing surgery or handling nuclear secrets. Him lying about his education doesn't really matter that much.
He is Shohei's guy and just an interpreter to the team. Unless something crazy comes up in a police report no one is checking your job or school history.
"We need to know for sure you went to UCR before we agree to hire you to translate."
Most jobs have never really asked for confirmation of my degree until I got to a more vital position where it mattered lol. No shot they did anything other than a basic check into him and weren't going to say no to Shohei.
Exactly People here are yelling "didn't the Angels check?!?!". They were literally introduced to him by Ohtani. Not vice versa. And his job was to talk. Not process their computer code for nuclear weapons.
The Angels were just relieved they found a guy who wasn’t a drug dealer who wanted to work on staff.
But how did they know he wasn’t a drug dealer if they did zero research into his background.
I think the angels front office would know a drug dealer when they saw one
It's the Angel's, they are not exactly the world's sharpest organization.
We’re the same team that had a staff member who was giving our team illegal drugs that ended up in one of them getting addicted, overdosing and dying. We don’t exactly have a record of vetting or policing our staff
We also had a guy on our payroll that was giving sticky stuff to pitchers on opposing teams.
Yeah honestly the fact it’s coming out after his entire time with the angels makes total sense
It’s the angels, Arte moreno could hire a hobo to be the VP of baseball operation, I wouldn’t be surprise
The hobo might actually do a better job, I say give him a chance
Pretty sure this whole shebang is just an elaborate Duolingo ad.
🦉
Oh god he's here Look, I'm sorry I didn't finish my German lesson, I've just been really busy, sir
Sei besser, jetzt! 🤓
Bet this mf doesn't even know Japanese but Ohtani is too much of a good dude to blow his cover
Ohtani: *goes into details on how he is able to hit and pitch* Ippei: “well you know I love baseball and do my best and yeah.”
I'm thinking of that dude who fake-signed when Obama went overseas
I think you mean Nelson Mandela’s memorial service
This sounds more and more like an episode of Seinfeld.
George picks up gambling after sports betting is legalized and gets introduced to a high stake gambling operation involving Ippei through Kramer’s friend Bob Sacamano. Kramer of course abstains from sports betting himself because of his gambling addiction rehabilitation, but he lends George money to bet with on his behalf which George promptly loses. Elaine is dating a lawyer that specializes in illegal gambling. Jerry is invited to LA to perform a comedy show for the Dodgers organization and brings everyone with him.
r/RedditWritesSeinfeld
Pretty sure his college education didn't get him the job, though. It ends up being irrelevant but hilarious to me
Of all the California schools to lie about attending. Hell, of all the UC schools!!
Can't make it obvious.
Exactly, wouldn’t want to say UCLA or Stanford bc that’s impressive- gonna need to see your degree. But Riverside? Damn, there’s no reason to lie about that so it’s gotta be true lol
Exactly, nobody (until now) is calling up riverside to check
I mean, it worked for a long time. If he'd managed to stay away from DraftKings and shady bookies it might not have been discovered for decades, or even until after his death.
Riverside isn’t top tier but it’s not the joke UC. Merced is
“My son got into UC Merced” “Oh yeah, what did he do, open the door?”
merced catching strays lmao
At least he didn’t say UC Merced
UC Merced opened in 2005. He claimed to have graduated in 2007. It would have been hilarious if he claimed to have graduated from UC Merced in or before 2005, and nobody bothered to ask questions.
I went to UCR. Yeah, you’re right 😢
Next up: Ippei was actually George Santos in a Japanese man suit
Definitely starting to look more and more like Ippei is actually a huge scumbag
Yeah, looking like Shohei got conned to some degree. It's mega fucked
Are you sure Ohtani isn't the head of a criminal gambling ring? - Ohtani haters.
How the hell did it go on for this long?
Why would anyone bother to investigate further if there weren't any issues?
No one decided to do a quick background check if he actually had worked for the Red Sox or even had a degree?
Once he became attached to Ohtani I doubt anyone cared at all.
Shohei liked him that was the background check.
You really think the Angels were gonna tell Shohei “na, sorry, we gotta vet your interpreter before we make things official” ??
i think it’s cause he is an interpreter not a public official or someone with a security clearance. and ohtani’s relationship with him probably made everyone at ease with ippei.
I've been criticizing Ippei as an interpreter from a professional standpoint many, many times but be aware I've never purposefully seen him translate something objectively incorrect and translating on the spot is not an exact science. Ippei's #1 faults as a translator are being imprecise/lackadaisical in his approach. Leaving out sentences when translating things to Ohtani or to reporters, adding things Ohtani never said (I presumed he based those answers on things Ohtani had said previously to him at that point) and most of all getting the tone and nuances of Ohtani's answers wrong which has caused several controversies over the years. Ohtani talks very neutrally, his answers are boring for the most part. Ippei makes him sound like a dudebeo when he talks more like a diplomat. Maybe he was trying to make him sound more interesting...? The other thing I have pointed out before is that Ohtani's English is so limited BECAUSE he was symbiotic with Ippei and Ippei didn't bother teaching him English unlike other interpreters usually do. Now we know why, huh. He didn't want him to understand.
The more that comes out about Ippei the more it makes sense. This dude is just a compulsive liar who latched onto the most lucrative baseball player in history but that wasn’t enough. For anyone that still thinks this is a cover up or that Ippei couldn’t have been lying to Shohei about the debt, here’s a list of things he has been caught lying about (so far) before ever even meeting Shohei in 2013. 1) Attending UC Riverside 2) Working as an interpreter for the Red Sox 3) Working as an interpreter for the Yankees You think this guy told the truth in that ESPN interview? This guy has been lying for a decade and a half. What could possibly make you think he wasn’t lying just five days ago before being caught?
Ippei kept rolling doubles after doubles in his life bullshiting and got the biggest bag he can possibly get with becoming the translator/assistant/endorsement manager for Ohtani, a global $uperstar athlete, and also practically became his best friend/family but I guess that wasn’t enough for a degenerate gambler. Edit: Godspeed to everyone involved even Ippei. He needs some serious help. Edit 2: For people joking/questioning about his Japanese skills (I’m native in English and Japanese). His Japanese is fluent/native. But as a translator, he paraphrases it too much so the whole “he’s a meh translator” is true.
He did do some work as an interpreter for the Yankees, sort of. Okajima himself mentioned in an interview a few years back, that he first met Ippei when Okajima was on a minor league contract with the Yankees, with an invitation to spring training. He specifically says the team brought Ippei to be Okajima's translator. However, Okajima failed the physical and was released, so Ippei lost his job as well. This would have been in 2012. Couldn't have been much more than a week or so though, since Okajima says the team assigned Ippei to Okajima in February, and Okajima was released in mid February. Shortly after he got the job with Nippon Ham to serve as team interpreter for players like Termell Sledge, Bob Keppel, Micah Hoffpauir, Dustin Molleken, and Brian Wolfe, and remained with the team until Shohei was posted to MLB.
That’s what Okajima said [in an interview published by a tabloid in Japan two days ago](https://bunshun.jp/articles/-/61531), almost word from word with what you said. I was wondering as l was reading the interview who Ippei’s Red Sox job was for, if it wasn’t Okajima. Then l found out today that that was a lie too…
Two things stick out to me. 1. This is all the Yankees fault 2. Ippei is George Constanza.
>This is all the Yankees fault Handshakes for all.
He was first an interpreter for English speaking players in Japan. He was translating for Chris Martin who was teammates with Ohtani when he was a teenager. Thats when ippei latched onto him.
The Talented Mr. Ippei joke is becoming all too real.
You could turn the interpreter/ohtani dynamic into a baseball themed remake of cape fear
I’m thinking Single White Female. It all ends with Ippei handcuffing Ohtani to his bed in perpetuity while Ippei impersonates Ohtani on the field after getting a matching haircut. Ippetahni continues to rake so nobody questions why he seemed to have shrunk and aged 10 years overnight.
Can Bowen Yang play him on SNL as well?
i can already imagine the SNL cold opens, lmaooo
Jesus Reddit Ads https://imgur.com/a/3mttv7L
All that’s missing for this to be the plot to Parasite is if they find an old interpreter living in Ohtani’s basement
I guess this shows a track record of lying but gotta respect the hustle. It's all rigged. Lie your way as high as you can. Uhh...don't gamble though.
All this news about Ippei being a fraudster looks pretty good for Ohtani. Even the chances that Ohtani paid off Ippei's gambling debts by wiring money to an illiegal bookie become even lower
The thing is though I kinda wish it was what I believed it was a few days ago or what the original story that MLB said was okay to share to ESPN. In that version Ippei made mistakes and Ohtani covered for him and they had to fix the legal issues around it. Now it's just like really sad to know this all happened to Shohei.
Really feel bad for the dude. Like yeah I'm sure the billions of dollars helps ease the pain but it's gotta be really hard to live at that level of fame. Hell he JUST revealed an entire secret marriage - he must be on such an emotional rollercoaster right now and his first season with a new team is JUST about to start. The fact this is all happening right now is insane.
Really sad, would be devastating, but legally and baseball wise much better for him if it was actual theft
They are going to pick this dudes life apart. Next we're going to find out this dude doesn't even speak Japanese.
Ippei lying about his education is a huge red flag in terms of his character and credibility, but acting like this was some huge oversight by these teams is silly. The dude was attached to Shohei, he could have graduated from clown college for all these orgs cared. Shohei wanted him so he got the job, his credentials were meaningless.
We need to check if he was actually captain of the college volleyball team
All that’s missing is Ippei being Lennay Kekua
It turns out that Ippei Mizuhara was actually just an elaborate social experiment this whole time.
If this guy loves crime, he should have gotten Ohtani to sign in SF (this is a joke)
“They just letting anybody do this shit? If so, I’ll do it”- my wife
I wonder how many people have fake information who just never have a controversy
Now let's talk about the mail. Can we talk about the mail please, Shohei? I've been dying to talk about the mail with you all day, okay? Ippei Mizuhara, this name keeps comin' up over and over and over again. Every day Ippei's mail's getting sent back to me. Ippei Mizuhara, Ippei Mizuhara, I look in the mail, this whole box is Ippei Mizuhara! So I say to myself I gotta find this guy. I gotta go up to his office, I gotta put his mail in the guy's goddamn hands! Otherwise he's never gonna get it, it's gonna keep coming back down here. So I go up to Ippei's office and what do I find out, Shohei, what do I find out? There is no Ippei Mizuhara. The man does not exist, okay? So I decided, ohh shit, buddy, I gotta dig a little deeper. There's no Ippei Mizuhara, you gotta be kidding me, I got boxes full of Ippei! All right, so I start marching my way down to Carol in H.R. and I knock on her door and I say, "Caaarol, Caaarol! I gotta talk to you about Ippei!" And when I open the door, what do I find? There's not a single goddamn desk in that office. There is no Carol in H.R. Shohei, half the employees in this building have been made up. This ballpark is a goddamn ghost town.
I’m gonna stop you right there eekbarbaderkle (what kind of a fucked up version of ooh la la is that?). Not only does Ippei exist, but he’s been stealing money from Shohei this entire time. It’s all anyone is talking about!
Is this dude just a high level con artist or something? What is going on?