{"id":236346,"date":"2025-10-24T07:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T07:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/236346\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T07:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T07:05:11","slug":"blue-jays-manager-to-shohei-ohtani-we-want-our-hat-back-and-your-dogs-jacket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/236346\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays manager to Shohei Ohtani: We want our hat back \u2014 and your dog’s jacket"},"content":{"rendered":"

TORONTO (AP) \u2014 While most of baseball is saying hats off to Shohei Ohtani, Toronto manager John Schneider wants a cap back from the two-way star.<\/p>\n

Before signing a $700 million, 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a>, the two-way star met with Blue Jays officials on Dec. 4, 2023, at the team\u2019s spring training complex in Dunedin, Florida.<\/p>\n

Ohtani will be the opening batter of the World Series, leading off for the defending champion Dodgers against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on Friday night after his unprecedented performance in the NL Championship Series.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope he brought his hat, the Blue Jay hat that he took from us in our meeting. I hope he brought it back, finally,\u201d Schneider said Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the jacket for Decoy,\u201d he added, a reference to Ohtani\u2019s dog<\/a>, a Nederlanse kooikerhondje<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s like, give us our stuff back already.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ohtani smiled when asked about the headgear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in my garage,\u201d he said through a translator.<\/p>\n

Ohtani helped lead the Dodgers to last year\u2019s title, hitting .310 with 54 homers, 130 RBIs and 59 stolen bases.<\/p>\n

Back to pitching in a limited role this season as he returned from elbow surgery, he batted .282 with 55 homers, 102 RBIs and 20 steals while going 1-1 with a 2.87 ERA in 14 starts, striking out 62 in 47 innings.<\/p>\n

Last Friday, he homered three times while pitching six shutout innings and striking 10 against Milwaukee as the Dodgers completed a four-game sweep of the NL Championship Series.<\/p>\n

Absent Ohtani, the Blue Jays had the finances to give first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. a $500 million, 14-year contract that starts next year<\/a>, and he helped Toronto reach the World Series for the first time since 1993.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a great player,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cBut that aside, I think that we have a great team and just an unbelievable cast of characters and players. I think things worked out the way they\u2019re meant to work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schneider isn\u2019t sure how close the Blue Jays came to signing Ohtani.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we met with him, you felt good about it, and you felt good about the feedback he was giving about our organization and opportunity here,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you never really know what a player\u2019s feeling in free agency, and there\u2019s a lot of things that have to line up for them personally, too, so you can\u2019t really think about what if. You think about the 26 (players) that we have.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ohtani praised the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an unfortunate reality as a free agent that you get to really pick one team,\u201d he said. \u201cThe decision had to be made, but again, this organization has been superb. They have a lot of awesome people.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/MLB<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO (AP) \u2014 While most of baseball is saying hats off to Shohei Ohtani, Toronto manager John Schneider…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[3307,49,3335,48,26794,487,462,4310,61787,482,82,34799,507,502],"class_list":["post-236346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-canada","tag-john-schneider","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-mlb-world-series","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-sports","tag-sports-transactions","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-vladimir-guerrero-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}