Continuing our stunningly comprehensive series, we are proud to welcome award-winning hipster-bait Japanese author Haruki Murakami. His novels include Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Kafka on the Shore; he has also published non-fiction and about one million short stories in The New Yorker. He checks in from the Cubs spring training facility in Mesa, Arizona.

I wake up in the middle of the night. Actually, it is not the middle of the night — it is 3:28 a.m. That’s not really the middle of the night, is it? Somewhat more like three-quarters of the way through the night. I mean, depending on when you get up. Personally, I’m an early riser. Always have been. Why sleep late?

I am in a hotel room in Arizona. I usually live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but I am here to write about the Chicago Cubs baseball team. This is because a famous Japanese baseball player, Kosuke Fukudome, is now playing for the Cubs. Fukudome was a pretty big deal when he played for the Chunichi Dragons, a real star player. A lot of his Japanese fans were sad when he jumped to the Cubs, but I didn’t care. Why should I? If he wants to go to the U.S. and make millions of dollars, why shouldn’t he?

Because I can’t sleep, I go into the other room and turn on the hotel television. I keep it low so as not to disturb the other guests. I put on ESPN, but I don’t really watch it very carefully. It’s just the same old thing, over and over; this team beat that team, this pundit says this other team should have beaten a fourth team. Someone named Buster has very strong opinions about something or another. I don’t know any of the teams, really, and it seems pretty pointless. In fact, I end up putting the sound on mute and putting on some music. First, some Mozart, but that doesn’t really seem to suit the occasion. Then I play my favorite Beatles album, Rubber Soul. I play “Norwegian Wood” over and over, ten or twelve times. I love that song.

I don’t really know much about the Cubs, or the Dragons either as long as we’re talking about it. In fact, I don’t really understand baseball much. I know the basic rules, of course, and I’ve been to some games. But I just never got into it. But someone’s gotta shovel all that cultural snow, and I was the guy who answered the phone when Ward York called. Everybody knows that when Ward York tells you to do something, you bow quickly and do that thing.

Many people think Fukudome will be the most crucial part of the Cubs roster this year. The team hasn’t really changed at all from last year, when they won the NL Central and then got killed in the playoffs. The only new additions are Fukudome and a young catcher named Geovany Soto. And, since virtually every expert is picking the Cubs to go to the playoffs again, a lot is riding on these two players. Will they do well? Will they disappoint?

I have no idea, and by now it is 4 a.m. and I am hungry. So I decide to make some spaghetti. I like spaghetti; it is an easy meal to fix, and it tastes good. What could be wrong with that? I am just about ready to boil the water and slice the garlic when I realize that I am in a hotel room in Arizona instead of my cozy apartment in Cambridge. No spaghetti for me. I go back to sleep.

When I awake, the sun is blazing into my room. Time to go shovel that snow. I throw on my Levis and a Hawaiian shirt, and take my flat plastic hotel room key with me. On the way to the elevator, I walk past a man wearing a shabby sheep costume. At first, it seems like this guy I knew in Kyoto once upon a time, a guy who wasn’t really alive. Then I realize that this other guy is just an insane Cubs fan wearing a shabby sheep costume. Apparently this happens all the time.

I get to HoHoKam park and show my credentials. I am escorted onto the field by a beautiful young woman who says her name is Arabella. She has the most exquisite ears I have ever seen. I want to talk to her about her ears but instead I start thinking about Lou Piniella. He is the manager of the Cubs. What does a manager do? Tells his players to play well, I imagine, and yells at the umpire when he is convinced there has been a bad call. Other than that, I don’t know. Piniella looks like he’d be really good at yelling at umpires, or his players, or his cat. I bet if his cat peed near the windowseat, for example, Lou would give that cat the most blistering tongue-lashing it had ever received.

When I get done with this reverie, the girl with the perfect ears is gone. I look up and there is Kosuke Fukudome. He is swinging two bats at the same time, a neat trick that he must have learned here in Arizona. I am about to go up and talk with him but suddenly he is up at the plate, now holding only one bat. I blink and rub my eyes and suddenly Fukudome is on second base. Everyone is clapping and laughing except for the pitcher; he throws his hat on the ground and stomps off in a huff. His uniform reads “Lilly.” When I look back at second base, Fukudome isn’t there. Maybe he is just that fast; maybe he is a ghost; maybe he does not really exist. In any case, it is clear I won’t be interviewing him today.

I hear a curious “Woo Woo!” sound behind me and turn to see the Sheep Man again. I ask him what we should be looking for this year from the Cubs, and he replies in a very curious manner.

“Nobodyknowsifthiswholethingisgonnawork. SureRamirezandLeeandSorianoaredangeroushitters. ButTheriotandDeRosaandPiemakeforaprettyweakhittingmiddle. Zambrano’sarmmightfalloffandafterthatit’sasdeadlyassaringasonthesubway. RichHillisjustaguynamedRichHill. Soyeahthereareholesallovertheplace. StillweareintheComedyCentralsothereisalwaysagoodchance. UnlessyouareSt.Louis.”

Just as soon as he hissed these strange words, the Sheep Man was gone. Later, I came to realize that the Sheep Man doesn’t really exist, except on some other plane of reality that only I can access. Yet he lives on, in a way, in the form of all the tourists from Iowa who come to see their beloved Cubbies once or twice a summer, no matter what the team’s record is. With a revenue stream like that, and a guaranteed monster crowd showing up for every home game so they can see Jeremy Piven or Billy Corgan or Chaka Khan singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch, these Sheep Fans are helping ensure that the powers that be will do just fine, even if the Cubs end up in last place every year forever.

Then I polished some animal skulls and met another girl that doesn’t really exist and spent a week in a big hole and heard an old soldier talk about skinning a man to death and heard the story of a wrinkled lady who made out with a teenage girl and then I had sex with the wrinkled lady. Then I lost my cat and girlfriend and looked for them both, met a runaway named Kafka who went back in time to help write the song that he was named for, spurned the love of an alien, held up a fast food place, met some psychic twins, and trafficked in some more Western pop culture references. Cubs will win 84 games and finish in second place.