A rumor about Shohei Ohtani’s dog name and his free agency decision led to many jokes

Is Shohei Ohtani’s dog’s name a clue to his free agency decision?

While we wait for Shohei Ohtani to make a decision on where he wants to play starting next year — is it the Los Angeles Dodgers? The Toronto Blue Jays? A MYSTERY TEAM? — X (formerly known as Twitter) has been ablaze with rumors and reports.

Everyone’s followed the flight pattern of a certain plane that’s headed to Toronto on Friday, but then there’s this wild report from Pablo Torre: “The rumor I have heard is that Ohtani’s dog’s name, the reason they’re not saying it, is because the dog’s name is the name of one of the teams he is considering.”

The dog in question was the one we saw when he won his second AL MVP. And of course everyone’s guessing — Dodger? Jay? — at the name as we wait. But there are also a lot of jokes: