大谷翔平選手、賭博疑惑の最新意見：海外の反応はどっち？

2024年4月13日、大谷翔平選手の銀行口座から大金を盗み、銀行詐欺の疑いで訴追された元通訳・水原一平容疑者が裁判所に初出廷したと報道されました。実は大谷選手が賭博をしていた張本人で、水原元通訳は身代わりにさせられた説を強く主張している人もまだまだ大勢います。

この記事は、ある有名なアメリカのスポーツコメンテーターの最新動画の全文を紹介し、彼が大谷選手についてどのようなスタンスをとっているのか理解できるか試していただくためのものです。

英語に限らず、人は前提とか自分が持っている偏見で情報を判断してしまうことがあります。
今回も、大谷選手が絶対にそんなことをするはずはない、という見方の人と、正反対の人と真っ二つに割れました。日本でも、根拠のない憶測で大谷選手を疑った論破系の有名人が批判を浴びています。

なんの事前情報もなしに、情報を正しく読み取ることができるのか。
自動翻訳などのツールを使ってもよし。自力で読んでもよし。ぜひ、自分の理解力を試してみてください。

この記事を選んだ理由は、日本でほとんど取り上げられておらず、英語表現にネイティブライクで、直訳だとどちらとも取れるものがいくつかあってトリッキーだったので、正しい判断の練習にちょうど良かったからです。

キーワードも何も出さないので、ぜひ自力で読み解いてみてください。
読みながら、どの英文や表現がネイティブライクで判断に迷ったのか、リストアップしてみると勉強になります。別記事で答えを後日出しますので、とりあえずは自分で考えてモヤモヤしてみてください。

そのほうが記憶に残ります。長いですが、8分程度の動画を全てスクリプトにしました。

大谷翔平選手に関するアメリカの有名スポーツ記者の見解
海外ニュースにアクセスして理解する英語力をつける方法
水原一平違法賭博関連の英語に関する記事
大谷翔平選手の英語に関する記事

大谷翔平選手に関するアメリカの有名スポーツ記者の見解

タイトル：Gambling and Shohei Ohtani! What’s up?

I want to get started right now on a story that’s been making waves throughout the sports world over the last couple of days. It involves gambling tied to baseball, specifically a former interpreter of Los Angeles Dodgers star player—pitcher and hitter Sho Otani, the highest-paid professional athlete in North American history. The interpreter, named Epe Mizuhara, was fired Wednesday after it came to light that at least $1 million in wire transfers were sent from Otani’s bank account to a bookmaking operation. Multiple sources have told ESPN that Mizuhara, the longtime friend and interpreter for Otani, incurred gambling debts to a Southern California bookmaker who was under federal investigation at the time.

Initially, a spokesman for Otani told ESPN that he had transferred the funds to cover Mizuhara’s gambling debts. The spokesman presented Mizuhara to ESPN reporter Tisha Thompson for a 90-minute interview. During that conversation, Mizuhara explained his side of the story, stating that he asked Otani last year to pay off his gambling debt, which eventually ballooned to at least $4.5 million. He also said he’d previously placed bets and assumed they were legal. Mizuhara assured Tisha Thompson that Shohei Otani had no involvement whatsoever, does not gamble, and that the funds were used to cover his own losses. He stated, ‘Obviously he wasn’t happy about it and said he would help me out to make sure I never do this again. He decided to pay it off for me. I want everyone to know Shohei Otani had zero involvement in betting. I want people to know I did not know this was illegal. I learned my lesson the hard way. I will never do sports betting ever again. I never bet on baseball; that’s 100%. I knew that rule; we have a meeting about that in spring training.’

However, as ESPN prepared to publish the story on Wednesday, the same Otani spokesman disavowed Mizuhara’s account and said Otani’s lawyers have issued the following statement: ‘In the course of responding to a recent media inquiry, we discovered that Shohei has been the victim of a massive theft, and we are turning the matter over to the authorities.’

Mizuhara told ESPN that Otani had no knowledge of his gambling debts and that Otani had not transferred money to the bookmaker’s associate.This brings us back to the big question: What are we to believe here? This is about whether or not Shohei Otani bet on baseball. Let’s cut the BS. We don’t give a damn about the interpreter. The interpreter no longer works for the Los Angeles Dodgers—who cares? That ain’t what this is about. This is about whether or not Shohei Otani was really helping his friend out, or was his friend providing cover for Sho? We don’t know the facts; we have to research it. Nobody is casting aspersions on Shohei Otani this way. As far as I’m concerned, innocent until proven guilty—that’s the American way. I don’t believe in guilt until proven innocent like folks try to do to you in a court of public opinion. But I will acknowledge this: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it ain’t a damn mongoose. In this particular case, all that means is that there is legitimate cause for suspicion because we’re talking baseball, and you know when we’re talking gambling and we’re talking baseball, you know exactly where I’m going. Pete Rose, 1989. Bart Giamatti bans Pete Rose from baseball for life for gambling on the sport as a manager for the Cincinnati Reds. I have been on the record for years: Pete Rose should be forgiven. There are murderers that have been let go from prison sooner than Pete Rose has been forgiven.

You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve said that many times, but baseball is hard and strong on that rule—there is no gambling in the sport. You got two $500,000 wire transfers that occurred last September and October. We ultimately learned that $4.5 million was compromised from Otani’s account—that was his boy, that was somebody he trusted. I get that an interpreter that’s been with you since you arrived in America to play in the Major League Baseball. I get that all I’m going to say is this: I got a bunch of boys, very very tight. I love them. I’m around them all the time. None of them have access to my bank account. In fairness to Sho, he’s not an American citizen, even though he can speak English. He has an interpreter for a reason. Maybe Mizuhara is the one that was going to the bank communicating on his behalf, or what I don’t know. All I know is this: it’s legitimate to ask questions. It’s legitimate for Tisha Thompson, it’s legitimate for Jeff Passan, it’s legitimate for everybaseball reporter, every investigative reporter, anybody covering the world of sports, specifically Major League Baseball, to probe deeper. It’s also necessary for Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball to investigate this even further with the level of depth and adroitness it requires because this is a story you’ve got to get to the bottom of. It wouldn’t be that necessary if you had shown more leniency to Pete Rose, but since you didn’t, since you want to be so rigid and hardcore and unforgiving, well then your stance is your stance, your standard is your standard.

Now, Mizuhara says he never bet on baseball. He’s got a gambling issue; he confessed it to the guys in the locker room for the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were like, ‘Alright, we feel bad for you. You’re a gambling addict, so what? What that got to do with us?’ Then he had to confess. Well, you know what? It sort of implicates Otani because I asked him to help pay off my debt, but now eyebrows are raised because we’ve recognized the position of Major League Baseball. And again, since you want to be so rigid and hardcore, now you have to be consistent. Get to the bottom of it. Find out what happened. I know it ain’t popular considering the money they just invested in Sho Otani—10 years, $700 million, although 97% of it was deferred, it’s still $700 million they’ve got to owe that man, and he’s the biggest star in baseball globally, not just nationally. I understand what this means, and there is no evidence whatsoever, no indication whatsoever that he is guilty of such a thing as gambling, period, let alone gambling on the sport of baseball. But the fact of the matter is, we don’t know; we don’t have all the evidence, and until we do, we have to probe and scratch and claw and search because this is the most taboo thing to ever be associated with baseball—gambling. Ain’t that what we’ve been told? I believe it’s what we’ve been told. Just saying.