Mukbang and Mayhem
The broadcast camera caught Kim Hyeong-jun in the middle of his celebration.
“Eheheh. You can really feel it, can't you? The ballpark atmosphere just isn't what it used to be.”
“Even the foreign fans who came to watch have said they were blown away. Thanks to the supporter culture cheering with such passion, and players who put on such a variety of shows.”
“Baseball may have been born in America, but I think localizing it to fit each region is a healthy direction too.”
Crack—!
“The number six hitter, Yoon Jun-seo, rips one straight at the shortstop. Out! The Dragons close out the inning.”
“It was a sudden blow, to be sure, but there's plenty of baseball left to play. They'll need to chip away at the lead, patiently.”
“The score stands at a three-run gap. The Daejeon Hawks move in front early, thanks to Kang Hyuk's three-run homer!”
Unlike the cheerful Hawks dugout, the mood in the Incheon Dragons' dugout had settled into a heavy, joyless quiet.
The Dragons, after all, had dropped their own series just before this one, and they needed a win every bit as urgently.
The Dragons' manager stared up at the scoreboard reading 3–0 and clicked his tongue.
Maybe I should have avoided going head-to-head with them after all.
Warnings to watch out for a player named Kang Hyuk had been circulating since spring camp. Of course, now that the season was actually underway, no manager in the league believed a rookie's momentum would simply carry on forever. But there was also no sense in squaring off against a hitter whose swing had caught fire.
The original plan had been simple: don't give him anything easy to hit. Yet when runners kept reaching base ahead of him, the manager had reversed course and ordered his pitcher to challenge him.
This isn't good...
If they lost today's game on top of everything else, they would fall to 1–3 and sink toward the bottom of the standings. Public calls for his dismissal had already been loud enough at the end of last season, and the Dragons' manager could hardly afford to ignore them.
And then it happened.
He caught sight of Kim Hyeong-jun's celebration replayed on the stadium screen.
“Choi Chi-hoon!”
“Yes, Manager.”
He called over the team's veteran hitter and jerked his chin toward Kim Hyeong-jun in the opposing dugout.
“Do you think that's acceptable behavior on a sacred baseball field? And from a rookie who just barely got called up to the first team, no less, strutting around like he owns the place.”
“...”
“Someone needs to teach him a lesson, don't you think?”
It was, in essence, an order to break the opposing team's momentum. The veteran hitter, famous around the league for his introverted nature, hesitated.
“I do feel the same way, but... fans these days tend to be pretty forgiving about celebrations.”
“Then who's going to uphold the traditions and customs of baseball?”
When the manager raised his voice, unable to contain his frustration, the players in the dugout stole uneasy glances his way.
“Find some excuse—any excuse—and force a bench-clearing! We cannot let the momentum keep slipping away from us like this.”
“...Understood.”
Trouble erupted in the top of the fourth.
The moment Choi Chi-hoon was sent back to the bench on strikes, ending the inning, he spotted Kim Hyeong-jun trotting back toward the dugout from the outfield—and beckoned to him.
“Hey! You. Get over here.”
“Sorry?”
“I said get over here.”
Sensing that something was off, players from both teams who had already begun filing into their dugouts came pouring back out onto the field.
“Choi Chi-hoon is calling Kim Hyeong-jun aside...”
“Hmm. It seems that celebration in the dugout earlier was quietly eating at him.”
“Players from both benches are pouring out onto the field!”
“There are quite a few young baseball fans in the stands today, you know. The players would do well to keep that in mind.”
I had been unlatching my catcher's gear, and I scrambled out onto the field as fast as my legs would carry me.
So this is a KBO bench-clearing...!
Back in high school, I'd had a certain romantic notion about bench-clearing brawls. Watch enough MLB games and you'd regularly see hulking macho men bumping shoulders until punches and tackles started flying.
But according to the veterans, KBO bench-clearings were a different animal. Setting aside the genuinely angry party and the few guys holding them back, everyone else treated it as a social mixer—catching up with acquaintances, debating what to order for dinner.
Still, this sort of thing falls to the rookie.
Since I didn't know a single face on the opposing team anyway, I charged straight toward the cluster of bodies, determined to help break things up.
Apparently, the players saw my charge very differently.
The moment Park Jin-mo spotted Kang Hyuk sprinting in with fire in his eyes, he bellowed.
“Hey, hey! Somebody grab Kang Hyuk!”
“Sorry?”
“The second you get involved, this stops being WWE and becomes UFC!”
“No, wait, I'm just trying to break it up—”
“I don't care about anyone else, but the moment you throw a single punch, we're on the nine o'clock news. Hold it in. Hold it in.”
Five Hawks players piled onto me.
“Calm down, Hyuk. Chi-hoon isn't doing this because he wants to.”
“Hyun-woo hyung already talked it all out with him. Just bear with it a little, okay?”
“Whoa—?! He's dragging us with him! Why is this kid so strong?!”
And yet, as if nothing at all were happening, I kept moving forward with five grown men hanging off my body.
“Look. I seriously am only trying to break this up—”
“Yeah, yeah, we believe you! Stop moving!”
Choi Chi-hoon and the Dragons players watching the scene unfold were visibly rattled.
I really wasn't planning on fighting anyone...
Kang Hyuk's aggrieved heart went entirely unnoticed by everyone around him.
The game resumed amid the commotion.
What everyone assumed had been nothing more than a passing incident reignited in the bottom of the fourth.
Whish—
“Argh!”
The Dragons' pitcher had plunked Kim Hyeong-jun with a pitch.
Maybe—maybe—if it had been a breaking ball. But this was a fastball, the easiest pitch in the world to command, and the man it hit was Hyeong-jun hyung. The intent behind it could not have been more obvious.
“You're ejected!”
The home plate umpire, who had issued only a verbal warning during the earlier bench-clearing, ordered the pitcher off the field immediately—but he could not douse the players' fury.
“Those sons of—!?”
“Are we really swallowing this one too?”
“That's crossing the line, even for them!”
Players surged toward the dugout steps, ready to charge.
I readied myself to lead the way. I was the one who had told Hyeong-jun hyung to go ahead and celebrate however he liked, so I felt responsible for this, at least in part.
But the Hawks players stopped in their tracks.
Because Kim Hyeong-jun was waving them off with his hand.
“I'm fine.”
His face was twisted with pain from where the ball had struck him, yet he walked slowly and steadily toward first base all the same.
Watching him, Manager Eom Tae-hoon finally spoke.
“Just because the other side rolls in the mud doesn't mean you roll in it with them. Do that, and you're exactly the same kind of animal.”
He adjusted his sunglasses and spoke in an even, measured tone, but beneath it you could see him choking down a boiling rage.
“Frustrated? Then prove it on the field. Pound their pitchers until they've dragged every last one of them off the mound. Make sure they can't even look our hitters in the eye for the rest of this series.”
“Go show the fans, plain as day, exactly which team wins today's ballgame.”
The players listened to their manager with unwavering resolve.
In that instant, the fire in my chest cooled to ice, and I calmly took stock of the situation.
Two outs. A runner standing on first.
If Won-taek hyung can just reach base...
We'd be looking at a two-out scoring opportunity with runners in position. I trusted that he would get it done, closed my eyes, and let my thoughts settle.
Back in the days when I spent every night training in the White Room, on evenings when the numbers came slowly, I used to meditate like this. Hitting flowed better from a calm mind than from anger or tension—that was how the count climbed highest.
Crack—!
“Woooaaah!”
At the sound of the bat, my eyes snapped open—and there were the fans, on their feet and roaring.
“The batter lines one over the shortstop's outstretched glove for a base hit! Two outs, runners on first and second! Didn't we see this exact situation earlier in today's game?”
“The pitcher has every reason to feel the pressure here. Kang Hyuk has been hitting .625 with runners in scoring position lately.”
“Ah—and the Dragons are making a pitching change.”
“It looks like they'll bring in a one-inning specialist specifically to face Kang Hyuk.”
I stared across the diamond at the opposing bullpen, where the alarm bells were clearly ringing.
If you were going to do that, you shouldn't have thrown at him in the first place.
Presumably their plan had been to retire Won-taek hyung, end the inning, and escape the jam—and I had just wrecked it. The unfortunate part was that I knew next to nothing about the reliever now taking the mound. He wasn't a guy who'd been stapled to the big-league roster.
Facing a pitcher for the first time is always a headache...
Granted, most of the pitchers in this league were facing me for the first time too, but I'd already studied this starter's pitch trajectories from my earlier at-bats—a difference of heaven and earth.
Then there's only one option: trust my feel.
I decided to attack the new pitcher's very first pitch. With no information to work from, swinging early beat shadow-boxing against an unknown breaking ball. That much, at least, felt like the higher-percentage play.
Don't get greedy. Keep it simple.
“The pitcher readies himself.”
“He'd love to get ahead with a first-pitch strike, of course—but Kang Hyuk is, fundamentally, closer to a bad-ball hitter, you see? He really ought to take a more careful approach—”
Crack—!
“He swung at the first pitch! A line drive, rocketing down the line!”
“Down the foul line and—it's in! The outfielder needs to get to that ball NOW!”
“While the fielders scramble after the ball caroming off the wall, the runner from first rounds third and—he's coming home! He scores! A bases-clearing double for Kang Hyuk! That makes five RBIs in today's game alone!”
“Hoho. Absolutely remarkable!”
As I settled safely onto second base, I called out to Kim Hyeong-jun hyung, who had just crossed the plate.
“Hyung-jun hyung!”
Normally I favored team celebrations over personal ones, but this time was different. I caught my hyung's eye and brought two fingers up to my mouth, the way you'd eat a bowl of jajangmyeon.
You could fairly call it an RBI mukbang ceremony.
“And Kang Hyuk is celebrating, bold as brass! Though that pose is...”
“Haha. As the opposing team, I imagine that's positively infuriating to watch.”
“And this after he shrugged off both the hit-by-pitch and the bench-clearing without so much as blinking.”
“Of course, old-school fans and veteran players may find it grating—but this kind of free-spirited atmosphere has done a great deal for pro baseball's box office lately. Professional sports run on the fans' attention, after all. We could all stand to look at it through a slightly more open lens.”
And that day, naturally, we won. Decisively.