We touched down at Narita Airport early in the morning, groggy and unprepared for whatever stupidity Juan had in store. Brenda was already plotting some sort of plushie-related business venture, while Juan stood at the baggage carousel muttering to himself about “honor” and “baseball justice.”
I knew this trip was going to be a disaster before we even got through customs.
“Alright,” Brenda said as we stepped into the Tokyo sunlight. “Time to find our place in this city. I think we should open a
plushie sushi bar.”
I blinked at her. “A what?”
“You heard me,” she said. “Sushi, but plushies.”
“Plushies aren’t
food, Brenda.”
She waved me off. “That’s why it’s genius! The real sushi is for eating, and the plushie sushi is for
collecting! People here love cute stuff. We’ll make a killing.”
Juan barely acknowledged this. His eyes were burning with a singular purpose.
“We have to find Ohtani,” he declared.
Brenda rolled her eyes. “And how do you plan on doing that, genius? Just walk up to the Tokyo Dome and demand a meeting?”
“Yes,” Juan said.
And then, in a move that surprised no one,
he did exactly that.
The Tokyo Dome Incident
Hours later, after an excessive amount of pleading and bribing a security guard with a Babe Woof plushie, we somehow found ourselves inside the stadium.
Juan stood at the pitcher’s mound, gripping a baseball like it was a sacred artifact. He had forced himself into a full baseball uniform he bought at a thrift store, complete with oversized cleats and pants that barely fit.
“I am here to reclaim my honor!” Juan bellowed, raising his plushie glove—yes, he had a
plushie glove—into the air.
The small crowd of stadium workers looked on in confusion. A maintenance guy swept some dust off the infield, unimpressed.
“I demand a one-on-one showdown with
Shohei Ohtani!”
Silence.
Then, after a long pause, a security guard sighed and pulled out his walkie-talkie.
“We got another one.”
Brenda cackled. “Oh, this is about to be good.”
Juan’s Brief, Humiliating Baseball Career
Ohtani never showed up—of course he didn’t. But someone must have pitied Juan, because within minutes, an
actualJapanese minor-league pitcher came jogging onto the field to humor him.
The guy was
barely a professional, but still way out of Juan’s league.
Juan stepped up to the plate, gripping the bat like it was an unfamiliar object. The pitcher wound up, threw a fastball—and Juan
swung so hard that he spun in a full circle and collapsed.
The ball smacked into the catcher’s mitt with a
pop.
Juan groaned from the dirt. “I wasn’t ready.”
“Sure,” Brenda snorted.
They gave him three more pitches. He whiffed all of them. The last one hit him in the stomach.
By the time he crawled off the field, the stadium workers were laughing, the minor-league pitcher was shaking his head, and Brenda was holding back tears of amusement.
Juan wiped dirt from his face and glared at us.
“This was
not a fair fight.”
“You embarrassed yourself in two different languages,” I told him.
Brenda put a hand on his shoulder. “This was a
real barroom banger of a humiliation.”
Juan groaned. “I need food.”
Brenda clapped her hands together. “Great! Time to open the plushie sushi bar!”
And just like that, we were
in business.
