Indians keep asking rookie to eat stuff

CLEVELAND, OH — At first, new Cleveland Indians reliever Masahide Kobayashi just thought his new teammates were being nice, that they were just trying to get acclimated to a new culture. But the 33-year-old rookie, who spent the past 10 years playing in the Nippon Professional Baseball league for the Chiba Lotte Marines, soon realized he was a victim of mistaken identities.

“My second day of spring training, the guys brought me 50 hot dogs,” Kobayashi told SSNN, through an interpreter. “It was a little weird that they wanted to watch me eat them – all of them.”

Kobayashi quickly discovered that his new teammates had him confused with competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi. Initially he was offended by the mix-up.

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“It hurts that they didn’t know who I am,” Kobayashi said. “They do have the internet in Cleveland, right? I was a pretty big deal in Japan – it’d be like me not knowing who Trevor Hoffman or Mariano Rivera is. Stupid Americans.”

Worse yet, Kobayashi has struggled this spring due to massive weight gain. He said it took his teammates a couple of days to realize he wasn’t the competitive eater, but by that time he had already put on 30 pounds.

Center fielder Grady Sizemore told SSNN that the rest of the Indians were pretty embarrassed about the mistake.

“Oh we felt awful,” Sizemore said. “We wanted to make it up to him and take him out to eat, but given the circumstances we decided that might not be the best idea.”

Needless to say, Kobayashi is already questioning whether signing with Cleveland was the best thing for him.

“Seriously, the fact that no one knew Kobayashi is a common Japanese name is kind of offensive,” he said. “It’s amazing to me that a team called the ‘Indians’ can be so racially insensitive.”