All Ball Sports: Loyola’s Kelly crushes Mira Costa at home — his home; Dodgers Korean catastrophe
by Paul Teetor
Hometown player crushes home town team
The Mira Costa boys volleyball team, ranked first in the country, ran into a roadblock Friday night in the form of Loyola and its star outside hitter Sean Kelly.
Ironically, Kelly, the top ranked player in the nations, is from Manhattan Beach.
Kelly’s 30th and final kill finished off its arch-rival Costa in four sets 25-23, 23-25, 25-16, 25-17.
Loyola, ranked third in the country, won a nonleague matchup between two of the top three teams in the country and the CIF Southern Section Division rankings.
“Well, Sean Kelly’s the best player in the country for a reason,” Mustangs coach Greg Snyder said. “The only thing you can do is try to serve their team and get him out of system and make the sets not as good as he likes them, but even with that he’s still an incredible player.”
Mira Costa captin Victor Loiola finds a gap in Loyola’s defense. Photo by Ray Vidal
Kelly’s performance not only stopped Mira Costa (22-2) from extending its 12-match win streak, but his seven kills in the opening frame immediately put an end to the Mustangs’ string of 19 consecutive sets won entering the contest. Mira Costa rebounded by pulling out a second set that neither team led by more than two points.
Tied at a set apiece, Loyola (15-1) then took control of the match for good midway through the third set. Kelly sparked a 6-1 run to push the Cubs’ advantage to 19-12 and the Mustangs never threatened again.
The Mira Costa cheer team rallies their school’s boy’s volleyball team in last Friday’s home court, losing match to Loyola. Photo by Ray Vidal
Sad day for Dodgers Shohei
The Dodgers Opening Day trip to Seoul, South Korea was supposed to be a working holiday, a chance to enjoy their shiny new toys and see exotic new sights while proving their status as a super team.
Instead, it turned into a very bad, no good, horrible series of events that put their whole season, once so promising, in serious jeopardy.
That’s because their newest superstar, the $700 million man, Shohei Ohtani, was suddenly engulfed in a betting scandal that we are only beginning to understand. Its resolution could determine if Ohtani plays the rest of this season or is suspended for a year or more.
Shocking but true: his future with the Dodgers – after playing just two games — is endangered, at least for the moment.
But before that stunning story broke over the weekend, there was the opening day 5-2 win over the San Diego Padres – a win that would have been a loss if the Padres first baseman hadn’t let a ball slip right through a hole in his glove. It was a hole that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. In Little League ball, maybe, but MLB – no way.
Then came Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s complete and utter meltdown in the second game Thursday night. The $325 million man lasted exactly one inning, and it took him an incredible 43 pitches to get out of the inning after giving up four runs on five hits. The Dodgers rallied back with their atomic powered lineup — three former MVPs at the top of the order in Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Ohtani — but in the end they fell by a score of 15-11.
Yamamoto’s first official big-league outing was so ominous precisely because it followed so logically from all the bad signs that appeared during his spring training appearances. A mere five-foot-ten and 175 pounds in a league of bulked-up plus six footers, the Dodgers had acknowledged from the start that he didn’t have the 100-mph fastball needed to simply blow away major league hitters in the modern homer-or-bust batting culture.
But he was dominant in the Japanese major league, and the Dodgers insisted he would be the same here. His secret weapon, team officials argued, was his incredible command of all four of his pitches – fastball, curve ball, splitter and 4-seam cutter. His ability to mix them up and keep hitters off-balance, Manager Dave Roberts argued, justified his 12-year, $325 million contract.
But when it came time to prove their hypothesis against real big-league hitters, it couldn’t have gone worse.
The first batter he faced, Xander Bogarts, ripped his very first pitch for a deep single that wasn’t a double only because the ball was hit so hard Bogarts didn’t have time to reach second base.
His second pitch hit Fernando Tatis Jr. to put runners on first and second.
The next batter, Jake Cronenworth, tripled into the right field corner to drive in two runs. And still there were no outs.
When Yamamoto walked former Dodger Manny Machado, Dodger pitching coach Mark Prior decided it was time for a trip to the mound to see what his major malfunction was all about.
He came back to the dugout with zero answers except the obvious: Yamamoto was having an off-day.
When the inning was finally over, the most expensive pitcher in MLB history had thrown 43 pitches, allowed four runs on five hits, one walk, one hit batter and one wild pitch. He was done after one inning.
But that was just a one-day disaster. In baseball, you win some days and you lose some days – preferably not as many as you win.
Yamamoto and the Dodgers have 12 years to live down his disastrous debut outing. If they can’t, his signing a huge deal before facing a single major league hitter will go down in history as the single worst contract of all time.
That one-day disaster was soon followed by news that could rock the Dodgers for years to come. We’re talking, of course, about the Shohei Ohtani gambling “scandal,” although what exactly the scandal is is not exactly clear yet.
What is clear are a couple of facts: the Dodgers fired his interpreter and close friend, Ippei Mizuhara, shortly before ESPN and the LA Times published stories that said he had been involved with illegal gambling on a massive scale.
That’s when the story began to get weird.
ESPN said Mizuhara told the outlet Tuesday that Ohtani had paid his gambling debts – which totaled well over $1 million – at Mizuhara’s request.
But once that story came out, Ohtani’s attorneys issued a statement saying that the player was a victim of “massive theft.”
ESPN says Mizuhara then changed his story Wednesday and claimed that Ohtani had no knowledge of the gambling debts and had not transferred any money to bookmakers. He had done it all himself, he confessed.
“I’m terrible (at gambling). Never going to do it again. Never won any money,” Mizuhara said. “I mean, I dug myself a hole and it kept on getting bigger, and it meant I had to bet bigger to get out of it and just kept on losing. It’s like a snowball effect.”
So far, the one thing that is clear is that Mizuhara – the 39-year-old interpreter who is as close as anyone to Ohtani – racked up massive gambling debts. It’s also pretty clear that he doesn’t have the kind of money it would take to pay off those debts – only Ohtani would.
The question at the core of the bizarre story is this: was Mizuhara placing the bets at Ohtani’s request, thus obligating Ohtani to pay them off? Or did Ohtani truly know nothing about any of this and was he, indeed, the victim of a “massive theft” by Mizuhara — who was desperate to pay them off and avoid having his kneecaps broken?
Already it’s the biggest gambling scandal for baseball since Pete Rose agreed to a lifetime ban in 1989 after an investigation found Rose placed numerous bets on the Cincinnati Reds to win from 1985-87 while playing for and managing the team.
If it turns out that Ohtani was involved in placing bets on baseball – directly or indirectly – it will instantly become the biggest baseball scandal Rose’s troubles.
So far there are no allegations that Ohtani himself was betting on any sport, let alone baseball – which MLB specifically prohibits.
The Dodgers management and Ohtani all went silent on the scandal until Ohtani finally read a prepared statement Monday afternoon. He categorically denied any involvement – directly or indirectly — in gambling, any knowledge that his close companion was betting millions on sports, and any awareness that he was out $4 million to $5 million of his own money that had been used to pay off Mizuhara’s debts.
Conveniently, that is exactly the position the Dodgers and MLB desperately want to be true.
Friday night the office of Commissioner Rob Manfred announced it has launched an investigation. So we will have to wait for the results of that investigation to determine who is lying – Ohtani or his interpreter, or both — and who is telling the truth.
Either way, the entire sordid story is just a confirmation of what All Ball has been warning about for several years now: big time sports has sold its soul and its integrity for the lure of easy gambling money, and more betting scandals like this are sure to follow.
Stay tuned.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. ER