Any day now, it could be “Shotime” — as baseball dynamo Shohei Ohtani is known — in Toronto.
The world of major league baseball has lurched to an anxious standstill this week as Ohtani, the 29-year-old Japanese designated hitter and pitcher and currently the sport’s most-desired free agent, will choose where he lands next.
The dramatic Ohtani sweepstakes — which are shrouded in secrecy, much like the player himself — have reportedly included pitches by his incumbent team, the Los Angeles Angels, as well as the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Chicago Cubs and the San Francisco Giants.
But the Toronto Blue Jays have emerged as a serious contender after the athlete reportedly met with the team’s front office on Monday. It’s a seismic development for excited Jays fans during this year’s unusually quiet annual winter meetings in Nashville, when teams convene to conduct business and make off-season trades.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime player,” Julia Kreutz, a reporter with MLB.com, told CBC News. “I don’t think we have ever seen anyone like Shohei Ohtani.”
Ohtani is an unusually skilled player, being both a tremendous hitter and starting pitcher, Kreutz said. He was dubbed the “Babe Ruth of Japan” early in his career, and finished the 2023 season with 44 home runs and a batting average over .300.\
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Toronto’s team is “pretty heavily in the mix” to win Ohtani over, Kreutz said. “The Blue Jays are mentioned in pretty much every report that has Shohei Ohtani’s name in it right now…. It is reason to be optimistic.”
The team, backed by corporate sponsor Rogers, also has the “financial flexibility” to strike a deal, Kreutz added.
That the Jays’ starting pitcher Yusei Kikuchi went to the same high school as Ohtani could be another selling point.
Jays bidding for ‘once in a lifetime’ superstar Shohei Ohtani
The Blue Jays have ‘some fences to mend’ after a dispiriting end to last season, and their efforts to sign star player Shohei Otani is a good place to start, says MLB reporter Julia Kreuz. David Pollard, co-founder of the Ohtani Canada fan club, says landing the free agent would be ‘phenomenal’ for the game and the fans.
“They also have pretty much an entire country to themselves, and that might be appealing for a guy like Ohtani who is looking for opportunities off the field as well as on the field,” Kreutz said.
“It’s going to be the first domino, if you will, in an off-season that is filled with good free agency.”
Tracking flights, Instagram activity for clues
Ohtani was reportedly given a tour of the Blue Jay’s $100 million US training facility in Dunedin, Fla., part of a larger investment by Rogers that includes a $300-million renovation of the Rogers Centre. He’s met with other clubs, too.
But Dodgers manager Dave Roberts broke a sacred rule in revealing to media that the team met with Ohtani — a leak that could take the Dodgers out of the running, per the strict standards set by Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo.
Ohtani bats against the Blue Jays in Toronto in July. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
A deal to snag Ohtani could be historic, somewhere in the ballpark between $500 and $600 million US over a 10- to 12-year period. It would likely eclipse previous megawatt deals signed by players Aaron Judge and Mike Trout.
Both sports media and some enterprising fans have done everything they can to read between the lines.
Josh Kogon, a Jays fan from Bedford, N.S., posted on social media that private flights tracked between Anaheim, Calif., where the Angels play, and Clearwater, Fla., the closest airport to the Blue Jays’ training facility, could be evidence that Ohtani met with the Toronto club.
I got a private jet flight from John Wayne Airport south of Anaheim to Clearwater international airport (closest airport to dunedin) that landed Sunday night at 6:00. <br><br>Same private jet flew back to John Wayne yesterday at 4:00.
“There was only one private jet that left the Anaheim, Orange County, area and went to Dunedin and the timelines matched up perfectly,” Kogon told CBC News.
A lifelong Jays fan, Kogon said “it would blow my mind” if Ohtani went to Toronto.
“This guy’s a unicorn,” he said, referencing the player’s abilities both at bat and as a pitcher. “I’m known to say if baseball fans spent all of their time talking about Shohei Ohtani, he still wouldn’t be talked about enough.”
Still others are speculatingover Ohtani’s Instagram activity (why did he follow Giants pitcher Logan Webb?), and pondering the early week whereabouts of Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins, who mysteriously switched his media availability in Nashville to a last-minute Zoom call from an unknown location.
Post-surgery questions
Ohtani returns to the dugout after being struck out against the Blue Jays in July. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
The free agent, who is expected to make his decision by the end of the week, won’t pitch in 2024 after undergoing elbow surgery for a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL).
“Certainly everybody hopes and expects that he could be the same pitcher that he was before surgery, but it’s an unknown at this point,” said Jeff Fletcher, the author of Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played.
“There’s still not that many players who have had this kind of surgery twice and come back and had long, successful careers, so it remains to be seen how good he’ll be.”
That hasn’t seemed to dim the Blue Jays’ desire to sign Ohtani, who could be a pick-me-up after the team’s unhappy end to the post-season during its wild-card series against the Minnesota Twins in October. They haven’t won a playoff game since October 2016.
EDMONTON – The Edmonton Oilers signed defenceman Travis Dermott to a professional tryout on Friday.
Dermott, a 27-year-old from Newmarket, Ont., produced two goals, five assists and 26 penalty minutes in 50 games with the Arizona Coyotes last season.
The six-foot, 202-pound blueliner has also played for the Vancouver Canucks and Toronto Maple Leafs.
Toronto drafted him in the second round, 34th overall, of the 2015 NHL draft.
Over seven NHL seasons, Dermott has 16 goals and 46 assists in 329 games while averaging 16:03 in ice time.
Before the NHL, Dermott played two seasons with Oilers captain Connor McDavid for the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters. The team was coached by current Edmonton head coach Kris Knoblauch.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — Maria Sharapova, a five-time Grand Slam singles champion, led the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan vote her first year on the ballot — an important part to possible selection to the hall’s next class.
The organization released the voting results on Friday. American doubles team Bob and Mike Bryan finished second with Canada’s Daniel Nestor third.
The Hall of Fame said tens of thousands of fans from 120 countries cast ballots. Fan voting is one of two steps in the hall’s selection process. The second is an official group of journalists, historians, and Hall of Famers from the sport who vote on the ballot for the hall’s class of 2025.
“I am incredibly grateful to the fans all around the world who supported me during the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan votes,” Sharapova said in a statement. “It is a tremendous honor to be considered for the Hall of Fame, and having the fans’ support makes it all the more special.”
Sharapova became the first Russian woman to reach No. 1 in the world. She won Wimbledon in 2004, the U.S. Open in 2006 and the Australian Open in 2008. She also won the French Open twice, in 2012 and 2014.
Sharapova was also part of Russia’s championship Fed Cup team in 2008 and won a silver medal at the London Olympics in 2012.
To make the hall, candidates must receive 75% or higher on combined results of the official voting group and additional percentage from the fan vote. Sharapova will have an additional three percentage points from winning the fan vote.
The Bryans, who won 16 Grand Slam doubles titles, will have two additional percentage points and Nestor, who won eight Grand Slam doubles titles, will get one extra percentage point.
The hall’s next class will be announced late next month.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The driver charged with killing NHL hockey player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew as they bicycled on a rural road had a blood-alcohol level of .087, above the .08 legal limit in New Jersey, a prosecutor said Friday.
Gaudreau, 31, and brother Matthew, 29, were killed in Carneys Point, New Jersey, on Aug. 29, the evening before they were set to serve as groomsmen at their sister Katie’s wedding.
The driver, 43-year-old Sean M. Higgins of nearby Woodstown, New Jersey, is charged with two counts of death by auto, along with reckless driving, possession of an open container and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle. At a virtual court hearing Friday, a judge ordered that he be held for trial after prosecutors described a history of alleged road rage and aggressive driving.
“’You were probably driving like a nut like I always tell you you do. And you don’t listen to me, instead you just yell at me,’” his wife told Higgins when he called her from jail after his arrest, according to First Assistant Prosecutor Jonathan Flynn of Salem County.
The defense described Higgins as a married father and law-abiding citizen before the crash.
“He’s an empathetic individual and he’s a loving father of two daughters,” said defense lawyer Matthew Portella. “He’s a good person and he made a horrible decision that night.”
Higgins told police he had five or six beers that day and admitted to consuming alcohol while driving, according to the criminal complaint. He also failed a field sobriety test, the complaint said. A prosecutor on Friday said he had been drinking at home after finishing a work call at about 3 p.m., and having an upsetting conversation with his mother about a family matter.
He then had a two-hour phone call with a friend while he drove around in his Jeep with an open container, Flynn said. He had been driving aggressively behind a sedan going just above the 50 mph speed limit, sometimes tailgating, the female driver told police.
When she and the vehicle ahead of her slowed down and veered left to go around the cyclists, Higgins sped up and veered right, striking the Gaudreas, the two other drivers told police.
“He indicated he didn’t even see them,” said Superior Court Judge Michael J. Silvanio, who said Higgins’ admitted “impatience” caused two deaths.
Higgins faces up to 20 years, a sentence that the judge said made him a flight risk.
Higgins has a master’s degree, works in finance for an addiction treatment company, and served in combat in Iraq, his lawyers said. However, his wife said he had been drinking regularly since working from home, Flynn said.
Johnny Gaudreau, known as “Johnny Hockey,” played 10 full seasons in the league and was set to enter his third with the Columbus Blue Jackets after signing a seven-year, $68 million deal in 2022. He played his first eight seasons with the Calgary Flames, a tenure that included becoming one of the sport’s top players and a fan favorite across North America.
Widows Meredith and Madeline Gaudreau described their husbands as attached at the hip throughout their lives. Both women are expecting, and both gave moving eulogies at the double funeral on Monday.
