Freddie Freeman is always happy to return to Toronto, even if Blue Jays fans might not give him a warm reception.
Freeman is a dual Canadian-American citizen who has represented Canada in the World Baseball Classic.
However, he’s also one of the stars of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Blue Jays opponents in the World Series.
Toronto’s Rogers Centre will host Games 1 and 2 of the World Series on Friday and Saturday.
Freeman’s father is from Windsor, Ont., and his mother is from Peterborough, Ont., but he was raised in Southern California after his parents moved to the United States for work.
The nine-time all-star hit .295 for L.A. this past season with 24 home runs and 90 runs batted in.
Meanwhile, while Canadian fans of fellow Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani may feel divided, many of them say they will still cheer for the home team.
The Blue Jays were strong contenders to sign the two-way superstar in free agency before he agreed to a record 10-year, US$700-million contract with the Dodgers in 2023. Speculation that Ohtani was about to sign with the Jays hit feverish levels in December of that year amid reports that he was on a Toronto-bound private jet, which social media users tracked for hours, only to realize that it was not true.
Lise Hawkins, a member of Ohtani’s Canadian fan club, has been a lifelong supporter of the Blue Jays and said she became a fan of Ohtani when the team made its first attempt to recruit him in 2017.
“The Ohtani fan club started at that time as a way of courting him to let him know, ‘Look, there’s all this love of you in the city of Toronto,”‘ she said, adding that Ohtani’s fans in Toronto were “hugely disappointed” knowing he chose another team over the Jays for a second time in 2023.
“Not anger at him, not resentment, nothing like that at all, just sheer disappointment,” she said.
The Toronto Blue Jays are returning to the World Series for the first time since 1993 after defeating the Seattle Mariners 4-3 in the American League Championship Series.
Hawkins said she and other members of the fan club may not be able to attend the World Series games at the Rogers Centre because tickets are too expensive, but they will likely visit the stadium before Game 1 starts just to interact with other baseball fans.
“I am a Toronto Blue Jays fan, but I am an Ohtani fan — I’m not a Dodgers fan,” she said. “But in terms of my loyal following for a baseball team, I would still be aligned with the Toronto Blue Jays.”
Christine Takasaki, a program co-ordinator at the Japanese Canadian Culture Centre in Toronto, said she has respect for what Ohtani has achieved as a player, but she has been a Blue Jays fan almost her entire life — and that’s not going to change.
Takasaki said while the Jays have all the talent they need to defeat the Dodgers and win the World Series, having Ohtani in the lineup would have made it easier to win the title.
“If Ohtani had come here, it would have been, you know, a completely different team but it would have been an absolute amazing boon for the Toronto,” she said.
“He is a great player. He is fantastic…What he’s doing is unprecedented, you know, to be able to pitch at the level that he’s pitching and to be able to play and be a hitter at the [level].”
Dodgers announce starting pitchers
L.A. manager manager Dave Roberts also revealed his starting pitchers for the first two games of the World Series. Blake Snell will start Game 1 on Friday and Yoshinobu Yamamoto will follow in Game 2.
It’s a repeat of the pitching order the Dodgers used for the first two games of their four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series.
Snell had 10 strikeouts over eight scoreless innings in Game 1 on Oct. 13. He became the first Dodgers pitcher to complete eight innings while allowing one hit or fewer in a post-season game.
Yamamoto pitched a three-hitter in Game 2 with the first Dodgers post-season complete game since 2004.
Roberts said the team hasn’t decided on starters for Games 3 and 4, which will be back at Dodger Stadium, but indicated Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani could follow in that order.
“I think we’re going to run the same rotation back, I think for sure for the first two,” he said.
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