TORONTO — Shohei Ohtani was on a flight to Toronto this week. In contrast to a frenzied December day practically two years in the past, the baseball world wasn’t scrambling to determine why he was heading there.
In December 2023, hypothesis ran wild that Ohtani was about to signal with the Blue Jays, with reviews circulating that he was flying to Toronto to place pen to paper. However he was not actually heading north of the border, and he finally selected to signal with the Dodgers on a then-record 10-year, $700 million contract.
Flash ahead, and his Dodgers are 4 wins away from turning into the primary Main League group in 1 / 4 century to win back-to-back World Collection championships. The group that stands of their means is the one Ohtani spurned in free company.
It nonetheless stings a tad for the Blue Jays, who felt good about their probabilities of signing the two-way famous person within the 2023-24 offseason after he left a gathering on the group’s spring advanced in Dunedin, Fla., with a Blue Jays hat. His beloved canine, Decoy, was even carrying a canine jacket that was a gift from the group.
Toronto has achieved simply superb with out Ohtani, provided that the group has returned to the Fall Basic for the primary time since 1993. However that picture of Ohtani with group gear has stayed with the Blue Jays, and on the eve of Friday’s Recreation 1, supervisor John Schneider could not resist getting a crack in.
“The Blue Jays hat that he took from us in our assembly, I hope he introduced it again lastly — and the jacket for Decoy,” Schneider mentioned with a smile. “It is like, give us our stuff again already. However he is an excellent participant.”
For his half, Ohtani sees no motive to return the gear.
“I plan to maintain it as a result of it was one thing that was a present,” Ohtani mentioned by means of interpreter Will Ireton.
Maybe Ohtani repaid the favor in his personal means. He left some presents of his personal at Rogers Centre throughout Thursday night time’s group exercise, depositing balls within the outfield seats as he took batting apply on the sphere.
Ohtani sometimes prefers cage work over hitting on the sphere, however he took batting apply two days earlier than his slump-busting three-homer recreation in Recreation 4 of the NL Championship Collection — a jaw-dropping efficiency by which he additionally struck out 10 throughout six scoreless innings on the mound.
With a six-day layoff between the tip of the NLCS and the beginning of the World Collection, Ohtani is hopeful that he can hold his bat going with the change in routine. He declined to enter element about how hitting on the sphere helps him. He wasn’t going to only give away each piece of knowledge to the media — or maybe, to any Blue Jays who could also be looking for a aggressive benefit.
“That is a secret,” he mentioned.
In any case, as soon as issues are freely given, they cannot be taken again.
