The Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes took the baseball world by storm this offseason. The two-way superstar ultimately signed a record deal with the Dodgers, but there was speculation that Ohtani was on his way to Toronto the day before signing in Los Angeles.
Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes joined Rob Bradford on the Audacy original podcast “Baseball Isn’t Boring” and recalled that wild day of plane tracking as the Los Angeles front office was also unaware of who was on that flight.
“We’re riding the wave with everybody else,” Gomes said (17:20 in player above). “We had no idea really. We were kind of living it with everyone else. That day was pretty wild.”
Jon Morosi reported that Ohtani was en route to Toronto on Friday, December 8th. That report was refuted by Jon Heyman and Bob Nightengale, and ultimately Morosi apologized for his inaccurate report.
Gomes and the Dodgers were on the edge of their seats waiting, just like the rest of the baseball world.
“I think because of how important it was for Shohei to announce it himself, everything that was leading up to that you just don’t really know,” he said. “No matter what is out there the answer’s going to be like ‘hey, we don’t know yet. We haven’t made a decision, Shohei’s going to announce it.’
“No matter what question we asked the answer had to be the same so it was really pointless to dive in too much. So it was just we don’t know. It’s the same as everybody else. It was a wild, wild day and a half.”
As the day unfolded, it became clear that Ohtani was not on the plane from Los Angeles to Toronto, but rather Canadian businessman Robert Herjavec of Shark Tank fame. Gomes was still in the office when that news broke.
“I think I was still at work. We were still in the offices. It was like ‘Oh, it’s Robert (Herjavec) from Shark Tank,’” Gomes said. “But still, it didn’t mean anything. It’s not Shohei but we still don’t have any clarity on where we’re at. It was a rollercoaster of emotions for that entire day and then half of the following day.”
Gomes and the Dodgers ended up landing Ohtani on a 10-year, $700 million deal and added fellow Japanese superstar Yoshinobu Yamamoto a few weeks later.