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Ohtani Watch: Recapping a wild day of Blue Jays rumours

Ian Hunter
Ian Hunter
|
Dec 9 2023, 3:10 am
Ohtani Watch: Recapping a wild day of Blue Jays rumours
Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports

If you thought Game 2 of the 2022 and 2023 American League Wild Card series were stress inducing, then you clearly didn’t witness one of the wildest days in Toronto Blue Jays history. And it all surrounded the whereabouts of free agent superstar Shohei Ohtani.

With Blue Jays fans and all of baseball on pins and needles, it was a roller coaster of emotions, not unlike a Blue Jays playoff elimination game the last two years.

This entire week, Toronto was believed to be in the running for Ohtani, but that spiralled into overdrive on Friday due to a confluence of “he said – he saw – he heard – he’s pretty sure – he is wrong” reports throughout the day.

This kind of bedlam related to the Blue Jays hasn’t happened since the David Price trade materialized at the 2015 MLB trade deadline. And even though this was a false alarm regarding Ohtani, it easily eclipsed the madness that took over social media eight years ago.

It all started innocently enough, with some intrepid fans discovering that a private plane was travelling from Anaheim, California to Toronto.

Later in the morning, completely out of left field, there was an opera singer, Clarence Frazer, claiming he heard that Blue Jays pitcher Yusei Kikuchi booked out a Toronto restaurant for a large party. Seems totally normal to do something like that unless you’re going to have a visitor from out of town, right?

Then came the first official report about the Blue Jays signing Ohtani, courtesy of J.P. Hoornstra of Dodgers Nation. Hoornstra is an accredited member of the BBWAA and not just a random Twitter egg, so there may have been smoke there.

And while many curiously logged on and followed the flight path of an unknown private jet that appeared to be heading towards Toronto, things went into overdrive when MLB Network’s Jon Morosi sent out this tweet.

And that’s when things went from a five on the Ohtani Watch scale to an 11. Why else would Ohtani be on the way to Toronto unless it was to finalize the biggest contract in MLB history? That’s when social media absolutely lost it.

For 60 minutes, people were sure that Ohtani to Toronto was a done deal. Placing him on a plane from California to Canada was all the convincing anyone needed that this was happening.

But with the highest of highs, come the lowest of lows. After one of the most chaotic hours in Blue Jays Twitter history, it all came crashing down when Bob Nightengale of USA Today broke the news that Ohtani was nowhere close to Toronto.

How could this be? Morosi said Ohtani was on the plane, but then Nightengale said the exact opposite. But shortly after, other reporters corroborated Nightengale’s report that Ohtani hadn’t left California.

And just like that, what seemed like a slam dunk for the Blue Jays suddenly put them back to where when they started the day: as a finalist for one of the most talented baseball players in the planet’s services. No closer, no further away, but it was one hell of a journey to end up back where they started.

So if Ohtani wasn’t on the plane, who was the mysterious figure whom thousands tracked from California all the way to Pearson Airport? It was Robert Herjavec from Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank. It was his private jet that landed in Canada, not Ohtani’s.

At least Herjavec had a good sense of humour about it after the dust settled from Ohtani Watch.

By all accounts, it sounds like the Blue Jays are still one of the final suitors for Ohtani. If we’re led to believe what was reported, he never flew to Toronto, and he still has yet to decide where he wants to sign his next contract.

When this is all said and done, one fan base is going to be ecstatic to sign a generational player like Ohtani, and the other is going to be devastated because they ended up as a bride’s maid.

At least for the Blue Jays and their fans, they took their devotees on one of the most dramatic rides of their lives for a few hours.

Ian HunterIan Hunter
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