Column: The circus surrounding the Shohei Ohtani courtship was one for the books

Shohei Ohtani wound up where almost everyone expected from the start Saturday when he agreed to a record 10-year, $700 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

It is the biggest contract in North American team sports, and its reverberations will be felt in baseball for years after surpassing the next-highest MLB deal, Mike Trout’s 12-year, $427 million contract signed in 2019, by $273 million.

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But the story of the Ohtani courtship was a long and twisting road that had baseball fans engrossed for weeks, especially in the 24 hours before the deal was agreed upon, when an errant report and social media speculation had the entire country of Canada on edge over an alleged trip Ohtani took to Toronto on a private jet.

As it turned out, tracking Ohtani’s phantom flight to Toronto on Friday afternoon to find out whether baseball’s unicorn would shock the world and sign with the Blue Jays was a colossal time-waster for fans with social media accounts and plenty of time to waste.

The rest of us were able to fast-forward to the finish, where the big reveal, from USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, was that Ohtani had never left California in the first place. Plenty of sizzle, but no steak.

That piece of news led to a retraction and apology from MLB Network’s Jon Morosi for reporting “inaccurate information” that Ohtani was traveling to Toronto. Morosi’s tweet on X, formerly Twitter, turbocharged the original rumor that began with someone charting a private jet’s path from John Wayne Airport to Toronto and speculating the superstar was a passenger.

“I regret the mistake and apologize to baseball fans everywhere,” Morosi wrote Friday night. “I am deeply sorry for letting you down.”

Woah, Canada. What looked like a slam dunk for Toronto, Canada’s only MLB team, clanked off the rim, supposedly leaving every other pursuing club, including the Chicago Cubs, with a puncher’s chance of reeling in Ohtani. That brief window of optimism was squashed by Saturday afternoon.

Angels slugger Shohei Ohtani celebrates as he rounds first after hitting a two-run home run against the Yankees on July 17, 2023, in Anaheim, Calif. (Mark J. Terrill/AP)

MLB’s embarrassment over the erroneous report by its own network was noticeably absent. A story on the crazy Ohtani pursuit on mlb.com conveniently left out the fact that the league-owned network was partly responsible for the wild speculation, because it got a major fact wrong that led everyone to believe Toronto was getting the biggest star in baseball.

The Cubs already had been counted out by USA Today’s Nightengale during the winter meetings in Nashville, Tenn., but President Jed Hoyer refused to shut the door, suggesting they still had a shot while not commenting on their courtship.

That report turned out to be correct. But only Ohtani and his people really knew what was going on, and he had been under a perpetual cone of silence since early August.

In the end, the Cubs received a ton of media attention for pursuing a superstar whose contract turned out to be well beyond the owners’ wildest dreams and would thus be moving on to Plan B, whatever that is. At least most Cubs fans with a deep knowledge of the Ricketts family’s spending habits knew that signing Ohtani was a long shot in the first place, even as some betting sites moved the Cubs up to second favorite behind the Dodgers as his destination.

As for the Blue Jays and their fans across Canada, a mixture of disappointment and anger figures to settle in after getting their hopes up that the private jet was on its way and Ohtani soon would be wearing a Toronto uniform. What would have been a franchise-changing moment turned out to be a mirage.

Angels starter Shohei Ohtani delivers against the Athletics on April 27, 2023, in Anaheim, Calif. (Meg Oliphant/Getty Images North America/TNS)

In a relatively humdrum hot stove league season, Ohtani’s flight to nowhere surely will be remembered fondly in a future documentary on the supersecretive courtship of the superstar. It also reminded me of an actual flight of a superstar that was tracked by a few reporters with our own eyes during spring training of 1995 in Sarasota, Fla.

It happened when minor-league outfielder Michael Jordan bolted from White Sox camp, which was then populated by minor-leaguers and scabs during the players strike. Jordan flew back to Chicago to begin his comeback with the Bulls, though no one knew of his plans at the time.

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On a private jet leaving Sarasota, Jordan’s pilot flew the plane low over the Sox complex for one last goodbye as his Sox teammates and colleagues waved at it from the fields below. A few Sox beat writers watched it in real time, then confirmed with some players that it was Jordan’s plane. It was just a small fact in the larger story of “What will Michael Jordan do next?”

Of course, we never got the tracking number of the flight, and no one saw Jordan depart in Chicago to prove he was actually on that jet the players waved at. And social media didn’t exist to fuel any conspiracy theories.

But Jordan never disputed the story, and he went on to win three more titles with the Bulls to add to his legend.

Ohtani’s legend continues to grow, though his decision to play in Los Angeles means much of the country will be fast asleep when Dodgers games started on the West Coast, just like when he was with the Angels.

The Angels’ Shohei Ohtani hits a groundout against the Athletics on April 26, 2023, in Anaheim, Calif. (Meg Oliphant/Getty Images North America/TNS)

As for Ohtani, his reputation as the one of the all-time best in sports history was perhaps authenticated by the record deal, and he’ll now play for a team that contends on an annual basis, so he likely won’t be invisible come October.

Ohtani might indeed be the greatest baseball player of all time and deserving of every cent he makes. But he could use some of Jordan’s showmanship to become the total package. Instead of avoiding the media and shunning attention, he might want to help the game with a simple change of philosophy:

Be like Mike.