Keizo Kawashima, a cheerful durable 171-centimeter infielder who played 886 career games over a 15-year career in which he played 100 in a season just three times, is now done with playing but not done with baseball.
His remarkable little career ended in 2022 with the Rakuten Eagles, whom he signed on to coach with in 2023.
After a year coaching in the minors, Kawashima is now one of the Eagles’ major league batting coaches under first-year skipper Toshiaki Imae, who started on the farm last season with Kawashima before a mid-season promotion sent him to Sendai.
Although we have yet to hear the full truth about the illegal gambling that has cost Ippei Mizuhara his job as Shohei Ohtani’s factotum and interpreter, Mizuhara did give a plausible explanation for a novice’s casual drift into gambling addiction hell.
Mizuhara, who claimed he was the one responsible for running up debts to an illegal bookmaker that were paid off by transfer’s from Ohtani’s bank account, said he began betting online through DraftKings, an official MLB gambling partner.
