The entire baseball community is sitting and waiting to see what Shohei Ohtani is going to end up doing. Ohtani, the best baseball player in the world and the incredibly rare player who is exceptional as both a hitter and a pitcher, hit the open market this winter, and there’s no word on what he’s going to end up doing as he’s placed a priority on secrecy throughout this process.
A few teams have been mentioned as potential landing spots for the two-time AL MVP, one of whom is the Toronto Blue Jays. Things looked like they were escalating on Friday, as reports indicated that a private plane was going from southern California to Toronto. It led to rampant speculation that Ohtani was on that plane and going to announce that he would become the biggest free agent signing in Jays history.
Sources: Shohei Ohtani is en route to Toronto today.
A representative of his agency, CAA, would not comment when asked about Ohtani’s travel plans.
At this hour, Ohtani does not have a signed agreement with any @MLB team. @MLBNetwork
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) December 8, 2023
Who knows if this is anything related to Shohei Ohtani but credit "X" users who have identified a private Jet scheduled this morning to fly from Anaheim to Toronto & even if it is…is it a visit to Toronto since he went to Dunedin last Monday? Or is he going to sign? Who knows pic.twitter.com/sMgsUk4Yjs
— Jim Bowden⚾️🏈 (@JimBowdenGM) December 8, 2023
The private jet travelling from John Wayne airport in Santa Ana, California to Toronto that may or may not contain Shohei Ohtani has seen its departure time delayed from 9 am PT to 9:45 am PT.
Do with that what you will. pic.twitter.com/JgVjPqFTWM
— Adam Laskaris (@adam_la2karis) December 8, 2023
Ok fine.
I’ll join in this flight tracking party. Private jet from Santa Ana, California expected to arrive in Toronto at 4:22pm ET. Who knows who’s actually in that jet. But here we are.
3,300 others tracking it right now too. #OhtaniWatch pic.twitter.com/NQyNneFTYS
— Devin Heroux (@Devin_Heroux) December 8, 2023
The plane landed and, as it turns out, Ohtani was not on it. Instead, it was reported that the plane held Robert Herjavec, who you may know from the show Shark Tank.
Our CBC photographer Evan Mitsui is messaging me from Pearson Airport right now.
He confirms new reports that Ohtani was NOT on the private jet.
It was in fact carrying Canadian businessman Robert Herjavec and his family.
— Devin Heroux (@Devin_Heroux) December 8, 2023
This is all extremely funny, and fortunately, Herjavec decided to have a sense of humor about the whole thing. Over on Twitter, he hit the RT button on this tweet by Rich Eisen.
To everyone hoping to spot Ohtani. https://t.co/TzhN5dVhO6 pic.twitter.com/STsgK0wp1a
— Rich Eisen (@richeisen) December 8, 2023
And then, he went onto Instagram and posted the following photo.
“I’d like to thank the @bluejays organization for signing me today !” Herjavec wrote in the caption. “All joking aside – I’m not @shoheiohtani and he was not on my plane today ! Not sure how it all started but I’m calling the jays and seeing if they’ll sign my 5 year old for 600 mil ( he WAS on the plane and throws a mean pitch )”
Kudos to Herjavec for having fun with this, and hopefully, Ohtani got to see it all unfold and laugh.
