On Friday morning, Canadian businessman Robert Herjavec boarded a private flight from Southern California to Toronto. Best known for his role on Shark Tank, the investor was accompanied by his young children, prepared for a few hours of parenting in the air. But rumors were running wild on the ground. After an erroneous report that Shohei Ohtani could be signing that day with the Blue Jays—ending the most anticipated free agency in recent baseball history with a surprise—online sleuths noted that a private flight was going from Orange County to Toronto and, well, the rest is history. Much of the baseball world monitored the flight as it made its way to Canada. The local media came to see it land.
Of course, people quickly realized the flight was not carrying Ohtani, who announced a day later that he would sign with the Dodgers. It was carrying a surprised and confused Herjavec.
SI spoke with him about the experience.
Kay Blake/IMAGO (Herjavec); Kiyoshi Mio/USA TODAY Sports (Ohtani)
Sports Illustrated: Is this the first time you’ve ever been mistaken for a professional athlete?
Robert Herjavec: Yes. Even though I think I have an incredibly athletic build and I’m great at everything, yes, it's the first time. It's hard to believe I got mistaken for a six-foot-two Japanese baseball player, but there you go.
SI: And you had no idea about any of this while you were in the air, correct?
RH: What's funny is normally, I run a pretty big tech business, cybersecurity business, so I'm really well connected. I’m usually online all the time. But this flight was only my 5-and-a-half-year-old twins and me. My wife had a funeral she had to go to Australia, so she left, so it was just me and the babies. And as you can imagine, flying with the twins for four-and-a half hours, you’ve got to be all-in. So I was completely into them, playing games, doing their homework. I had no idea.
SI: What was it like once you landed?
RH: The first part was the customs guys came on. Normally, when you land in Canada, you get cleared automatically—customs rarely comes on. But we land and there's all kinds of customs people, and they come on the plane and they're like, ‘Is he here?’ And I'm like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And then I opened my phone and I realized what’s been going on the whole time. It was pretty crazy. And then when we were leaving … there were cars and reporters and helicopters and all kinds of stuff. It was interesting.
SI: I imagine pretty immediately, then, you’re realizing this wasn’t just an overzealous customs employee who saw something on Twitter—this was an entire nation of baseball fans living and dying with your plane.
RH: The dreams of Canada and our baseball seasons were solely riding on my plane, apparently. But yeah, it was so interesting, and I felt bad, because I would have stopped the story immediately if I knew and if anybody would listen. I have no idea how it happened. But there it was. And what's funny is that all my friends thought it was real. Half my friends thought I was somehow going to buy the Blue Jays, and the other half of my friends thought I was really good friends with Ohtani, and they were mad at me that I didn't tell them that.
SI: What did your phone look like? Did you hear from anyone really unexpected or have any particularly crazy messages? I can only imagine what had been flooding in over those few hours.
RH: Oh my gosh, it was just blowing up, lots and lots of messages and curious [people]. The funny thing is, all my friends know my plane and know I have a house in California. So they were just more mad at me that I didn't tell them I was in the middle of this Ohtani story and negotiating a deal with the Blue Jays.
SI: Had you been following his free agency at all? Are you or your children Blue Jays fans?
RH: Well, my twins are 5 and a half, so they didn't have any concept. We've been in Australia for the last month, so we were just coming back, and I haven't been following it. I didn't realize it was such a big deal. But obviously he's such a big deal, and what an incredible contract he signed, so I figured out pretty quickly what was going on and how big a story it was.
SI: For Jays fans who are disappointed right now, do you have any expert advice on how to move on after missing out on a potential deal?
RH: Well, I would say that the Jays didn't get Ohtani, but they've got me and my son. He's only 5 and a half, but if you give him enough time, he'll do well [laughs]. But no, it's disappointing, I mean, it would have been great for Toronto. Congratulations to the Dodgers, what a great signing. But a little disappointing for Canada and Toronto, obviously.
SI: Did anything else stand out to you about this experience?
RH: I think the one takeaway from all this is fake media is very real. It’s amazing how quickly a story can take on a life of its own. And there I am, living in blissful ignorance of all of it, my poor plane being tracked all over the world.
SI: At one point, it was the No. 1 most tracked flight in the world! Did they tell you that?
RH: Once I landed, yes. We looked it up and there was a stat of it being No. 1 one of all the planes being tracked in the world. Pretty incredible.
