Fourteen Pitches of Patience
By the time Kang Hyuk had been run to two strikes, the livestream chat window was already on fire.
[Pitch 5. Foul.]
[Pitch 6. Ball declared.]
[Pitch 7. Foul once again.]
But from the third pitch on, as Kang Hyuk kept spoiling pitches with one cut after another, the mood in the chat flipped in an instant.
[Pitch 10. The pitcher delivers! The ball is declared foul yet again.]
"Huhehe. That is truly remarkable."
"With the ABS system in place, it's been a long while since we've seen anything like this, hasn't it?"
"Well, it makes sense — the strike zone doesn't waver anymore. And cutting is far harder than it looks. The moment you square up a pitch, the ball dies into the infield, so a hitter needs the rare ability to deliberately graze it off."
"So when a battle stretches out like this, what exactly does the hitter stand to gain?"
"Pressure, pure and simple. This is Suwon Knights starter Kyle, remember — a man who's already thrown a mountain of pitches. He'll be desperate to put this hitter away. Kang Hyuk, on the other hand, will simply wait until the ball comes exactly where he wants it."
"And here's the delivery — pitch thirteen! Cut again by Kang Hyuk! Kyle of the Suwon Knights shakes his head. He knows this won't be easy."
"The runner at first must be cursing him too, honestly. He's had to keep holding and re-breaking his lead this whole time."
"Pitch fourteen — here it comes!"
Taaang―!
At last, Kang Hyuk lashed a single that grazed the third-base foul line and dashed safely to first. Kyle could only watch him with hollow, defeated eyes as the rookie cupped his hands into the shape of a riding whip and gave them a little mock flourish.
"A fourteen-pitch war, and Kang Hyuk comes out of it with a base hit! He records a hit in his very first career at-bat!"
"Incredible stuff. The way he stayed locked in to the very last pitch — you can feel that stubborn tenacity only rookies have."
"For the fans, it's impossible not to fall in love. For Kyle, on the other hand, this has to be soul-crushing."
"It couldn't be otherwise. His pitch count has ballooned, and in the end he's staring down first and second with nobody out."
The next at-bats kept the rally alive. Park Jin-mo moved the runners over, and Yoon Jun-seo split the left-center gap with a clean single — and Kang Hyuk stomped across home plate.
Kyle, having burned through more than thirty pitches in the second inning alone, shook his head slowly and wearily, baptized in the harshest possible welcome to the league.
Personally, I've always considered myself someone far removed from the word genius.
Without the white space, I very likely wouldn't be sitting in this seat at all.
And yet the Knights had a man who was everything I was not — the very player striding to the plate at this moment, Kang Tae-oh.
"Bottom of the second. Batting cleanup for the Suwon Knights — Kang Tae-oh steps into the box."
"His numbers last season were poor, but this is a man who proved himself year after year. A rebound this season is entirely possible."
There was a time he'd been hailed as one of the great talents in KBO history — and perversely, it was precisely because he had so much talent that he never quite shone.
He simply carried too many tools. Whenever the Knights' manager needed a hole plugged, he plugged it with Kang Tae-oh: catcher, infielder, even outfielder, and on occasion pitcher.
With his defensive position changing constantly, mistakes were inevitable — and those mistakes bled into his hitting as well.
"Pitch four — Kang Tae-oh swings! And this one is... handled as a fly ball."
Watching him trudge back to the dugout with that bitter look on his face, I sank into thought.
I was nothing like a genius such as Kang Tae-oh. But there was exactly one field in which I allowed myself a measure of pride.
Patience.
It was what had carried me through my life in the White Room, for one thing.
And back in spring camp, the curious souls who'd admired my numbers and tried copying my training regimen and my diet had all burned out and dropped away within weeks.
Chasing other people's gifts is a fool's errand. Better to make the most of the ones I have.
So I reminded myself of that resolve — and the game rolled on without either side scoring.
The Hawks' table-setters failed to live up to their billing and never set the table, and the Suwon Knights fared no better.
Perhaps my little performance had left an impression. The Knights' leadoff hitter, Oh Hyun-gyu, tried his hand at cutting too — and went down on a groundout after just six pitches.
And so came the top of the fourth.
Leading off once more, I dug in and went to work hunting out pitches with the same patience as before.
Tick―
"Foul."
"Kang Hyuk cuts it off yet again!"
"He is relentless. Kyle has to keep his composure here."
"Fuck!"
The pitcher spat the curse loud enough to reach me at the plate, then wound up with everything he had.
"Hm?"
I'd been cutting every off-speed pitch on fastball timing all day — so a straight fastball arriving right on that timing was a gift.
Taaang―!
"Pitch eight — and Kang Hyuk's drive is... over the wall!"
"Good grief, the raw power. He turned on the fastball in perfect timing and pulled it fair."
"A solo shot for Kang Hyuk, and the Hawks add to their lead!"
...The opposing battery, it seemed, was short on patience.
The Hawks had knocked the Knights' starter out of the game after five innings and seized the high ground. They tacked on another run in the sixth, and when Romero held the line through seven having surrendered just one, the Hawks faithful sang their fight songs at full voice, already tasting the win.
Trouble arrived in the top of the eighth — after Romero had come down off the mound.
The score stood 4–1 in our favor. Unlike our rotation, the Hawks' bullpen had no clear dividing line between the sure-win corps and the garbage-time crew, because everyone's spring numbers had been equally middling.
Senior Cha Woo-jin, who owned the lowest ERA among them, took the mound in middle relief. He picked up the first out cleanly — then got nicked by a hit-by-pitch, and promptly gave up a double.
One out. Runners on second and third.
The pitching coach climbed the mound, ball in hand.
"Woo-jin. Good work. Come on down."
"...Yes, sir."
And before I knew it, I'd butted into the conversation.
"Coach. Could you give my senior one more chance?"
"What are you talking about, kid? This isn't an exhibition game — it's Opening Day. Do you have any idea how much this one counts?"
"The truth is... I was so nervous I misread the PitchCom signal. That's why my senior gave up the hit. So really, it's..."
"What? Aigoo. All this praise, praise, praise, and then the kid botches it in a game that matters."
"It's my fault, so... is there any way?"
"No means no. This is exactly the moment you have to cut the momentum off clean."
The coach shook his head, firm and final. And in that instant, Senior Cha Woo-jin, who had been listening in silence, finally opened his mouth.
"Give me one chance. Please."
"Hm? Hmmm..."
A senior with years of service had spoken up, and now the coach weighed it carefully.
"And how exactly do you plan to get it done?"
"I'll load the bases and force a double play."
"You do realize this is the pivot point of the whole game, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"...I trust you."
With that, the pitching coach headed back down off the mound. Senior Woo-jin turned and looked at me.
"...Why did you do that?"
"Sorry?"
"You didn't misread any PitchCom signal."
"Ah, that... well..."
Frankly, what I'd just done was overstepping. A rookie catcher who'd only just cracked the starting lineup lecturing the coaching staff on pitcher management was flat-out absurd.
Still...
It wasn't as if I'd opened my mouth on a complete whim, either.
Being a catcher meant I was always peeking at our own pitchers' numbers, and somewhere in that pile of statistics I'd spotted an anomaly in Cha Woo-jin's line.
His opponents' batting average is this high — so how is his ERA that low?
I'd carried that question around for a while, and found the answer in a spring training game.
Ordinarily, Senior Cha Woo-jin was the proud owner of the haziest, most unfocused pupils you'd ever seen.
He pitched that way too. With nobody on base, he'd fire the ball wearing the exact same glazed-over face.
But strangely, the moment the bases loaded, his eyes snapped into razor focus.
What should I even compare it to... Chris Davis, maybe?
Chris Davis — a man who once reigned as the most fearsome hitter in Major League Baseball. But when the medication for his adult ADHD was reclassified as a banned substance, he collapsed into one of the most catastrophic contract disasters the league had ever seen.
I wasn't saying Senior Woo-jin had ADHD...
But that he was a freak for loaded bases? On that, I was absolutely certain.
Senior Jin-mo had read the situation the same way, too.
Either way, the water's already spilled.
Runners were already standing on second and third. In my personal opinion, letting the senior finish the mess himself beat yanking him and rolling the dice on a cold arm from the bullpen.
Besides, Woo-jin's entire repertoire was built to generate ground balls.
But I couldn't just come out and say all that.
"Your stuff's just too good, Senior. Getting pulled over one hit seemed like a waste."
"Whew. Fine. Let's do it."
Just as planned, we issued the intentional walk.
"The Hawks put the runner aboard with an intentional walk."
"So they're loading the bases to hunt for the double play. And from the hitter's side of things, the ground ball will be weighing on his mind now."
The senior and I waged the battle carefully. But with the bases jammed, the Knights' hitter was dialed in as well.
"He's swallowing it all! The Suwon Knights' hitter sits through the pickoff attempts and grinds the count all the way full!"
"Hehe. This next pitch is the one that matters."
This is the crossroads.
The bench called for a low two-seamer — but the senior shook his head.
A high fastball?
Since the hitter would surely be guarding against the grounder, the senior was apparently aiming to slip one past him where he least expected it.
I set my mitt exactly where he wanted it.
Fweee―
Whuum―!
The ball skimmed just over the top of the batter's swing.
"Swing! Out!"
"He conquers the pressure! Cha Woo-jin freezes the runners where they stand!"
"This is huge. The bases are still loaded, of course — but now a fly ball gets the job done too."
The hitter who stepped in next fared no better.
"The batter swings, and the ball is... snared in Adam's glove. Bases loaded. The Knights built themselves a golden chance — and come away with nothing."
"Beautiful rhythm between that battery. The coaches put their faith in their pitcher, and trust-based baseball pays off for the Hawks!"
"Yes-s-s!"
Fists clenched, Senior Woo-jin sprang straight up off the mound. Those usually dull, murky eyes of his were flooding with pure euphoria.
The moment he stepped into the dugout, he started posturing for the other players.
"Did you see that? Did you just see that?"
"You lunatic. Can't you just get outs the boring way like everyone else?"
"Engineering one's own crisis and then overcoming it to deliver catharsis to the assembled crowd — that, my friends, is the sacred duty of the professional athlete."
"If you'd given up a hit there, Romero was going to fold you in half at the waist."
"But I didn't, did I?"
Still bantering, Senior Woo-jin dropped onto the bench — and shot me a wink on his way down.
This Season Is Different — Daejeon Hawks Open the Year with a Win and a Fresh Start.
Romero Fires Seven Innings, One Run — Named Opening Day Player of the Game.
Kang Hyuk Goes 2-for-4 with a Home Run and a Walk in Five Plate Appearances, Announcing the Arrival of a Monster Rookie.