TORONTO — Shohei Ohtani was on a flight to Toronto this week. Unlike a frenzied December day nearly two years ago, the baseball world wasn’t scrambling to figure out why he was heading there.
In December 2023, speculation ran wild that Ohtani was about to sign with the Blue Jays, with reports circulating that he was flying to Toronto to put pen to paper. But he was not in fact heading north of the border, and he ultimately chose to sign with the Dodgers on a then-record 10-year, $700 million contract.
Flash forward, and his Dodgers are four wins away from becoming the first Major League team in a quarter century to win back-to-back World Series championships. The team that stands in their way is the one Ohtani spurned in free agency.
It still stings a tad for the Blue Jays, who felt good about their chances of signing the two-way superstar in the 2023-24 offseason after he left a meeting at the team’s spring complex in Dunedin, Fla., with a Blue Jays hat. His beloved dog, Decoy, was even wearing a dog jacket that was a present from the team.
Toronto has done just fine without Ohtani, given that the team has returned to the Fall Classic for the first time since 1993. But that image of Ohtani with team gear has stayed with the Blue Jays, and on the eve of Friday’s Game 1, manager John Schneider couldn’t resist getting a crack in.
“The Blue Jays hat that he took from us in our meeting, I hope he brought it back finally — and the jacket for Decoy,” Schneider said with a smile. “It’s like, give us our stuff back already. But he’s a great player.”
For his part, Ohtani sees no reason to return the gear.
“I plan to keep it because it was something that was a gift,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton.
Perhaps Ohtani repaid the favor in his own way. He left some presents of his own at Rogers Centre during Thursday night’s team workout, depositing balls in the outfield seats as he took batting practice on the field.
Ohtani typically prefers cage work over hitting on the field, but he took batting practice two days before his slump-busting three-homer game in Game 4 of the NL Championship Series — a jaw-dropping performance in which he also struck out 10 across six scoreless innings on the mound.
With a six-day layoff between the end of the NLCS and the start of the World Series, Ohtani is hopeful that he can keep his bat going with the change in routine. He declined to go into detail about how hitting on the field helps him. He wasn’t going to just give away every piece of information to the media — or perhaps, to any Blue Jays who may be searching for a competitive advantage.
“That’s a secret,” he said.
After all, once things are freely given, they can’t be taken back.
