The waiting is indeed the hardest part.

It wasn’t explicitly suggested in song by the late Tom Petty, but Shohei Ohtani’s ongoing delay in completing his record-setting deal is creating complications across the rest of baseball. 

What had been expected to be a busy Winter Meetings is wrapping up Wednesday with a marked dearth in player signings and trades, and there’s a clear reason why: Ohtani is holding up the market, even if unintentionally.

The two-way phenom is likely to sign a deal worth at least $500 million and set a new player-contract record for U.S. team sports. But until he makes a decision on where he’s going, essentially every team is somewhat frozen in how they’re conducting their roster development and budgeting. 

Even if a particular team hasn’t actively courted Ohtani, whether or not the superstar ends up in that club’s division will carry some impact on its own baseball operations.

“It would be the best theory why this seems to be a slower-developing Winter Meetings,” said Orioles GM Mike Elias. “When you’ve got a generational — that’s probably not the right word, it’s like a century — Babe Ruth talent, it’s a pretty big deal. There are some really big teams that seem like they’re focused almost entirely on him right now, and that’s by nature going to clog things up.”

Meeting Reports

For much of his free agency, Ohtani and his agent, CAA’s Nez Balelo, have demanded secrecy among suitors, to the point where they will hold it against teams that leak their meetings. 

That demand has been largely in keeping with Ohtani’s more reserved nature, even if it has been viewed as something of a missed marketing opportunity for the sport. But on Tuesday, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged his team has met with Ohtani.

“Yeah, we met with Shohei, we talked,” Roberts said, calling signing Ohtani the team’s “top priority.” 

“I think it went well. But at the end of the day, he’s his own man. And he’s going to do what’s best for himself, where he feels most comfortable.”

The Dodgers, Blue Jays, Giants, Cubs, and Angels are seen as the leading candidates to land Ohtani.

Just weeks after the announcement of lacrosse’s inclusion in the 2028 Summer Olympics in L.A., the sport’s leaders are pushing for a significant modification to the competition – one that honors lacrosse’s origins.

The Haudenosaunee, a group of six Indigenous nations formerly known as the Iroquois, is petitioning the IOC to compete as its own team, solely in this sport. Among those backing the push: the U.S. White House, the international governing body World Lacrosse, the LA28 organizing committee, and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. 

President Joe Biden announced his support of the request Wednesday afternoon during the White House Tribal Nations Summit.

“Their ancestors invented the game. They perfected it for a millennium,” Biden said. “Their circumstances are unique and they should be granted an exception to field their own team at the Olympics.”

The move looks to reflect lacrosse’s creation by Indigenous people in what is now the U.S. and Canada, as well as the competitive status of the Haudenosaunee. An Indigenous team has been competing internationally in lacrosse since 1990. The men’s squad currently ranks third in the world, behind the U.S. and Canada, and the women’s squad is ranked eighth.

The IOC typically permits teams playing only as part of an official national Olympic committee such as the USOPC, and the request for Haudenosaunee inclusion is being framed as a “narrowly scoped exception” to those rules.

“I can’t think of a more worthy candidate for inclusion than a confederation that literally invented the sport and has some of the most elite men and women in the sport in their nation,” Tom Perez, White House senior advisor and director of intergovernmental affairs, told the Associated Press.

Fast-Moving Development

The Haudenosaunee effort represents a major acceleration of typical timetables for efforts within the Olympic movement. Lacrosse’s general inclusion in the Games required nearly two decades of active lobbying. But the Indigenous movement has developed largely in a matter of weeks, and advocates are pressing for an answer from the IOC well in advance of finalizing the lacrosse qualifying process in early 2025. 

“I know it’s a bit of a challenge,” said Leo Nolan, executive director of the Haudenosaunee national team. “We want to make sure that [the IOC] understands the importance of lacrosse to our communities and to the world.”

Even a move to play in MLB stadiums isn’t nearly enough to satisfy fans’ intense demand for Savannah Bananas tickets.

The independent barnstorming baseball team said it received more than 2 million lottery entries for tickets to its 2024 Banana Ball World Tour. That tour will include six stops at MLB stadiums, including in Houston, Boston, Washington, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Miami. That’s a quantum leap, given its history of playing solely in minor-league and college ballparks.

In several instances, the Bananas received more than 100,000 lottery entrants for tickets to games at stadiums that seat less than half that many people.

Houston, for example, saw 158,255 entries, whereas Minute Maid Park seats 41,000; and Boston received 145,080 entries for a game at the 37,755-seat Fenway Park.

The 2024 Banana World Tour starts Feb. 8 in Tampa and runs until October.

Cultural Phenomenon

Loosely described as baseball’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters, the Bananas became a cultural force in 2023, drawing more than 550,000 fans to games, building a ticket waiting list beyond 1 million names, and boosting its TikTok following past 7.8 million, surpassing even MLB’s official feed.

“Now the real hard work begins,” team owner Jesse Cole said in an Instagram post. “While over 1 million people will not be able to experience a show, we still will have 1 million fans and many first-timers … We have to deliver on that experience.”