It was December of 2023, and the city of Toronto was holding its breath. Snow dusted the streets, the CN Tower glowed faintly in the night, and somewhere behind locked doors in Dunedin, Florida, the Blue Jays were pitching the impossible dream — Shohei Ohtani in blue and white. They matched the money. They crafted the vision. They even filled a locker with his gear and stocked the fridge with his favorite drinks. Every detail was perfect. And for a moment, it seemed destiny might wear a maple leaf. But baseball, like life, rarely writes its stories in straight lines. Ohtani chose Los Angeles.

Two years later, that same figure — the man who could change a franchise with one swing or one pitch — stands on the opposite side of the diamond. The Blue Jays’ pursuit of him has become legend, told in hushed tones across Ontario coffee shops and in the corners of dugouts. It wasn’t just a near miss; it was a love story that never quite got its final chapter. They say he left town with a Blue Jays hat and a Canadian dog jacket for Decoy. He also left behind a fan base that’s spent two years wondering how different the world might look if that black SUV had turned left instead of right.

Now, baseball’s grandest stage has written a poetic epilogue. The Dodgers, the powerhouse that has everything, meet the Blue Jays, the club that almost had the one thing no one else could get. Ohtani’s face, so often smiling in highlight reels, now casts a shadow across Toronto’s October skyline. Yet this isn’t about regret anymore. John Schneider’s team has grown into its own identity — younger, freer, scarred but wiser. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has matured from promise into presence, and Bo Bichette’s return gives the lineup a pulse that beats with belief rather than what-ifs.

The irony is thick. In 2023, the Blue Jays couldn’t land Ohtani because they didn’t yet know who they were. In 2025, they face him because they finally do. Their clubhouse no longer orbits the gravitational pull of one player. It thrives on the sum of its parts — 26 men who have learned that October doesn’t always belong to the richest roster, but to the hungriest one. Across the field, Ohtani remains the sport’s most transcendent talent, capable of deciding a series all by himself. But Toronto’s redemption arc is built on something the Dodgers can’t buy: the ache of almost, and the courage to try again.

In every great baseball tale, there’s a ghost that lingers — a swing, a trade, a moment that might have changed everything. For the Blue Jays, Shohei Ohtani has always been that ghost. Now he’s flesh and blood again, waiting in the batter’s box, staring back from the mound, forcing Toronto to face the past they never quite outran. Baseball, in its endless symmetry, has given them another meeting — this time not across a negotiation table, but across the chalk lines of a World Series.

​​Somewhere, in the din of Rogers Centre, as Ohtani steps in to face the team that nearly signed him, the air will hang thick with déjà vu. Toronto will remember the winter that almost was, and the game that still is. The Blue Jays don’t need to sign Ohtani now. They just need to beat him — and in that, there’s a kind of closure no contract could ever buy.