Fifty Thousand Blocks
“…So this is where I end up.”
The fan-shaped expanse of white space, shaped like nothing so much as a baseball stadium, stretched out before me. I stared at it for a long moment, then let out a bitter laugh.
Never thought I'd be walking in here under my own power.
Given that I'd arrived the instant I fell asleep after a single sip of beer, my theory about alcohol being the trigger seemed to hold up fairly well.
I was gazing blankly at the colorless void when a dizzy spell washed over me, and I hurriedly turned my attention to the wall of the dugout.
Tutorial complete. Select your training.
‒ Hitting
‒ Blocking
‒ Caught Stealing
‒ Framing
‒ Core Training
‒ Rehabilitation
“I'll choose Blocking training.”
The moment I made my selection, the letters on the wall began to shift.
Put on your catcher's gear and proceed to home plate.
Heart pounding, I strapped on the equipment and made my way to home plate.
Please, let it be a reasonable number…!
Was it my hope that reached it? A number appeared on the wall—neither absurdly large nor impossibly small.
Perform blocking.
(0 / 500,000)
“Five hundred thousand?”
Blocking drills were typically done in sets of thirty, strung across multiple rounds. By that measure, this was by no means a small number.
And yet compared to the ten million swings the tutorial had demanded, it looked positively merciful.
Last time with the caught-stealing training too. Is this their way of cutting me some slack now that the tutorial's over?
Unlike my previous sessions, no wireframe animation appeared to demonstrate the proper form—as if to say that blocking had no single correct answer.
Soon enough, without so much as a warning, the pitching machine began spitting out baseballs.
“Yikes!”
As always, the pitches came fast and varied—their movement and velocity all over the map. Fastballs skimming between my knees, curveballs that bounced unpredictably, sliders and cutters sweeping away to either side.
I threw my entire body into the count, blocking everything that came.
Still easier than hitting or caught stealing, though.
Granted, the pitching machine fired at random, which meant I had to read each trajectory on the fly.
But blocking demanded so little preparation time that the reps stacked up quickly by nature.
“Hm?”
I occasionally managed to smother a ball only to watch the counter refuse to budge, and it didn't take long to understand the point of the drill.
“So this is the key.”
Even if the ball didn't trickle behind me, if it ricocheted off my body and bounced too far away, the number didn't go up. What mattered, apparently, was controlling where the deflected ball went—using angles and parts of my body to dictate the rebound.
“…This is more doable than I expected.”
It wasn't easy at first.
But as I accumulated experience and the trajectories started registering in my eyes, the knack came little by little. Maybe Senior Jin-mo had been right all along—when it came to blocking, sheer repetition was the answer.
And honestly, the pitching machine here is something special.
Ordinarily, blocking practice meant a coach standing right in front of you tossing short-hopped balls from a few steps away.
That helped, to be fair, but it was a far cry from a real pitch.
Which was why Senior Jin-mo would sometimes call pitchers over for more realistic blocking drills—but pitchers' arms were a limited resource, so there was always a cap on the number of reps.
This machine was different. Unlike any ordinary pitching machine, it varied its pitches and velocities endlessly, without limit.
Maybe I'll push myself a little harder, then.
With previous trainings, I'd set my daily quota at five thousand and rested. But with blocking, the numbers came easily enough that I set my sights on ten thousand a day.
And so my days settled into a rhythm of lifting and blocking, one after the other.
It was during that stretch that I noticed something new.
The suffocating feeling is gone.
There had always been a heavy, gnawing dread sitting in the pit of my chest whenever I was in the White Room—something close to PTSD from that first tutorial.
But now, whether because I'd stopped setting brutal quotas, or simply because I'd grown accustomed to this place… I could exist here without feeling claustrophobic at all.
If I can keep training like this, I can use this place for the long haul.
And so, when the count finally ticked past five hundred thousand, the same irresistible drowsiness as always swept over me.
Spring camp was nearly halfway through.
Seated around the conference table, the Hawks' coaching staff moved photos of players back and forth across the board.
“Kim Chan-gyu should go down to Seosan. His velocity's fine, but his command keeps sailing.”
“Kim Hyeong-jun's been underwhelming too, given the expectations…”
“Let's give that one a little more time. He's already proven himself in the Futures League.”
With Opening Day fast approaching, the coaches used spring camp performance to sort the roster—starters on one side, players bound for the second team on the other.
And in the middle of all this evaluation, one player became the fault line between the manager and the bench coach.
“Aren't you playing favorites with this Kang Hyuk kid?”
“Excuse me? Favorites?”
“Look, I'm not saying his performance has been bad. But he's still just a high school rookie, no matter how you slice it.”
The manager's brow twitched at the bench coach's words. He didn't raise his voice. He answered in a calm, measured tone.
Park Jin-mo and Romero both signed off on him, and the numbers have been good. What exactly is the problem?”
“A catcher with shaky defense is a long-term headache for any pitching coach trying to manage a staff. Say what you will about framing being obsolete, defense comes first for a catcher. We even have a term for it—pitcher management, don't we?”
“Pitcher management can't be an objective metric. Even the sabermetrics crowd gave up on quantifying it.”
“Then what about Yadier Molina and the other defense-first catchers? Everyone knows the ERAs of pitchers who worked with them dropped dramatically.”
“And so—do we have anyone who could actually replace Kang Hyuk?”
“There's Park Jin-mo. There's Choi Dong-hyuk. And a roster with too many rookies on it is a problem in itself.”
At the bench coach's final remark, the pitching coach—who usually sided with him—scowled.
The squabbling over Kang Hyuk's photo on the board went on for a while. And then—
Thud—
The bench coach, gesturing wildly, accidentally clipped the manager on the shoulder.
And with that, the manager's sunglasses clattered to the floor.
He wore them during practice, and rumor had it he even slept in them. The moment they hit the ground, the manager's eyes were bared.
He was built like a bear and radiated charisma the way most men radiated sweat. But the eyes the sunglasses revealed were, impossibly, clear as a mountain stream—and the sheer dissonance of it was deeply unsettling.
Those newly revealed, limpid eyes stared at the bench coach in silence for a long while.
The bench coach took an involuntary step backward.
“Bench Coach.”
“…Yes, Manager.”
The manager normally addressed his coaches with honorifics. This time was different.
“Setting the starting lineup is the manager's exclusive authority. No matter how senior you are, encroaching on it can only be seen as overreach.”
“……”
“I'm not saying I'll start Kang Hyuk unconditionally. A team needs at least two catchers anyway, and since Jin-mo's knees flare up constantly, I was planning to give Choi Dong-hyuk his chances too. But opposition for the sake of opposition helps this team not at all.”
“…Understood.”
And so, with the bench coach's tail firmly between his legs, the meeting came to an end.
Left alone in the room, the bench coach could no longer contain his fury and drove his fist into the desk.
BANG—
“Damn it.”
He, not anyone else, had been the clear frontrunner for the next managerial job.
A Daejeon native, a former Hawks player, nearly a decade on the coaching staff—who else was going to manage the Hawks?
Then the new general manager had arrived, and out of nowhere, the job had been snatched away and handed to some up-and-comer from another club he'd never even heard of.
He was still pounding the desk, choked with rage, when the phone in his pocket rang.
He checked the caller's name and answered with exaggerated deference.
“Ah, Director! Hello.”
“Bench Coach. How did things go with what we discussed last time?”
“Well, you see…”
The Director had ordered him, some time ago, to gather the players unhappy with the current situation and form a faction within the clubhouse.
The directive: stir up enough internal noise that the fans themselves started voicing dissatisfaction with the front office's stance.
“I've been working at it, believe me. But Kim Hyun-woo has the pitching staff locked down tight, and Park Jin-mo's got the hitters on his side, so…”
“Coach. I guess you don't want to be manager after all.”
“That's not it at all. I just need time—”
“Coach.”
“Yes.”
“The only reason you still have that bench coach seat is me. Do we understand each other?”
“…I understand.”
“Public opinion around the picks our new GM keeps pushing is already improving. If I get pushed out because of your stalling? Then you're out of a job too.”
“……”
“I expect better news next time.”
And with that, the Director hung up without waiting for a reply.
The hand staring down at the phone was trembling.
Three days had passed since my return from the White Room.
In the exhibition game against the Changwon Pirates, I started the day on the bench.
Being left off the starting lineup didn't bother me, particularly. Last time had been the exception—veterans on bigger salaries getting the bulk of the opportunities was simply how spring ball worked.
But I couldn't quite shake this restless, pent-up feeling.
It stings, honestly…
If you lined up my defense against Senior Choi Dong-hyuk's, his edge was undeniable. Caught stealing aside, when it came to handling pitchers and blocking, his years of experience simply counted for more.
Hitting, though, was a different story.
I felt odd saying it myself, but without me in the lineup, the bottom of the Hawks' order was barely more than a row of scarecrows.
You're not supposed to swing it like that…
Nobody hits every time up. In this league, a .300 average made you one of the elite—such was the reality of baseball.
But it seemed to weigh on Senior Dong-hyuk that he'd gone down on a flyout in his first at-bat. In his second, he never got his swing fully started.
No swing executed from a cowed, shrinking posture was ever going to carry real force. This trip to the plate, too, ended on a routine groundout.
The words slipped out of me before I knew it.
“We've got to win this one…”
Spring camp or not, losing every single game would poison the fans' mood for the whole season ahead. Last game had at least come with an excuse—we'd faced an NPB team, a tier above most of the league. But if we dropped this one to the Pirates too, we'd be walking into the season under a cloud.
Just as that frustration was settling in—
CRACK—!
Kim Hyun-woo, who'd held the Pirates scoreless through five innings, surrendered a two-run homer.
“……”
Senior Dong-hyuk stared blankly after the ball. The look on his face was genuinely grim—or maybe that was just my imagination.
“Now, now. Excessive player-bashing earns you a temporary timeout.”
Min-jun, tidying up the comment section, caught himself feeling completely unbothered by his team losing—and it startled him.
Probably because public opinion toward his son was so warm.
He could at least come in as a sub, couldn't he?
At first he'd wondered if he was just biased because it was his own kid. But the chat reactions told a different story—everyone seemed to feel the same way.
His defense was solid, everything about him was solid—but down two runs as they were, they needed to score something, didn't they?
“What is their pitcher, a major leaguer? Why can't anyone touch him?”
Min-jun was still venting his frustration at the constipated Hawks offense when, in the top of the eighth, the opportunity finally arrived.
“That's it!”
A base hit, a walk, and a lucky blooper that fell in just fair—suddenly the Daejeon Hawks had the bases loaded with one out.
The manager didn't hesitate. He reached straight for the pinch hitter.
“Oh? I think that's Kang Hyuk coming out!”
Min-jun spotted his son taking practice swings in the on-deck circle. He stole a glance at the comment section—electric with anticipation—then settled in to cheer for his son's at-bat.
“No pressure. Just do what you always do.”
I nodded at the hitting coach and kept taking my practice swings.
One out, bases loaded. Still, I made a conscious effort to set the weight of it down.
Just watch the ball. Slow and steady.
This was my first time facing this pitcher, so I approached the at-bat with care.
Pitch one came busting in on my hands.
“Strike!”
I tilted my head at the call.
It wasn't that I doubted the umpire.
Why does the ball look… clearer somehow?
Was I imagining it, or had the blocking drills in the White Room done this?
Normally, blocking meant catching the pitcher's signs—you had a good idea what was coming. But I'd trained against a machine I couldn't communicate with, which meant the only option was to read the ball's trajectory out of the air and predict from there.
Maybe that was why—call it pitch recognition, call it whatever—every trajectory seemed to register just a little more sharply than before.
Changeup?
“Ball.”
My read was right. The changeup drifted just off the outside corner of the zone.
I took it as a good sign and stayed patient, hunting for my pitch.
Pitch three was a two-seamer tailing away. Pitch four was a high fastball that grazed the zone.
After that, I cut at everything that touched the border, fouling pitches off one by one.
Seven pitches deep into the duel, I'd fought my way to a full count.
With the pressure bearing down, my thoughts started to scatter—so I shook my head clear.
Trust the work. Sit fastball, adjust to the breaking stuff.
I wasn't the only one struggling. The pitcher was shaking his head constantly too, wrestling with what to throw next.
And then, pitch eight.
Fastball!
After all those cuts, his fastball's path was burned into my eyes.
I swung with everything I had.
CRAAACK—!
The instant it left the bat, I knew.
This one was gone.
Still, a rookie ought to hustle—I ran out the play with all the theatrics I could manage.
By the time I touched first, the opposing infielders' voices were already carrying across the diamond.
“How much higher are you planning to go?”
Kang Hyuk's first career grand slam sailed over the wall for a home run.
And the comment section simply exploded.