Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning you’ll get a fresh, topical column to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
Simeon Woods Richardson returned from Tokyo with a silver medal and a new habit: “I’ve caught myself bowing to a couple of people,” he says with a laugh. Joe Ryan has let slip the occasional arigato gozaimasu—Japanese for thank you. For a few days, neither of them were totally sure what time it was or even where they lived.
You can’t really blame them: It’s been two and a half weeks since the members of the United States baseball team boarded their flights home from the Olympics.