SHOHEI OHTANI left Anaheim for Los Angeles for a seven-year, $100 million contract with the Dodgers. Any regrets? (Angels photo).

There’s a scene in the TV series “Justified” in which Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylin Givens – at gunpoint – asks a bad guy to tell him what he knows about a certain shady situation.

“I don’t know,” said the bad guy, with apparent sincerity. “How can I tell you what I don’t know?”

Precisely.

The whole baseball-loving world is scratching its collective head after Monday’s totally non-illuminating “press conference” about the gambling scandal that’s ensnared Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter Ippei Mizhura and which threatens to engulf a man who’s been called the greatest baseball player since Babe Ruth hung up his hot dogs and glove.

Let’s assume that Shohei is telling the truth about never gambling on baseball.   

There are some who have doubts about that, but OK, let’s set that aside for a bit.

What we still don’t know is how his interpreter was able to get access to Shohei’s bank account. 

We still don’t know how or why Shohei didn’t have a business manager or accountant to ride herd on his finances. 

We don’t know why “Showtime” didn’t bother to check his bank balance for a mere missing $4.5 million.

(One theory is that he’s sho rich that he didn’t miss it. Like the story about Bill Gates about not bothering to pick up a dropped $100 bill because in the time it took to retrieve it his wealth had already grown by $1000).

And why, exactly, Ohtani still needed to pay an interpreter a reported $400,000 a year after six years in American baseball?   

Especially as he comes from a nation in which English is taught from the early ages on up?

Four hundred thousand dollars? I took French when I was 13 to 15 years old and with some refreshing could probably be serviceable as a translator for $40 an hour and all the Dodger Dogs I could eat. It doesn’t take that long to learn key baseball phrases like “thattaboy,” “waytohustle” “whatwereyouthnking” and “blankety-blank-blank.” 

Of course, maybe I’m approaching this wrong. Maybe the things we don’t yet know are things we may not want to know.