The Ball That Refuses to Be Caught

Baseball is, at its core, a rollercoaster.

It's a sport where even the best teams struggle to reach a .600 winning percentage, after all.

Grind through a 144-game regular season, and the highs and lows are simply inevitable.

After sweeping the Incheon Vikings, Hawks fans had been shouting that this season was going to be different — but after watching their team drop two straight, their faces told a very different story.

Needless to say, the Hawks' coaching staff had been tearing their hair out over Dustin as well.

"Bench Coach."

"Yes, Manager."

"What exactly is the problem with Dustin?"

"Well, you see……"

The bench coach scratched his nose at the manager's question. With his answer delayed by his obvious bafflement, the pitching coach stepped in on his behalf.

"I think it's mostly an adjustment issue. He's still having trouble with the baseball itself. And he doesn't really have anyone here he's close with, either."

"So it is an adjustment problem."

Manager Eom Tae-hoon sank into thought. It was a common affliction for foreign players in the KBO.

Major League Baseballs are glossy and slick, notoriously difficult to grip, but they don't carry much bounce off the bat. KBO balls, by contrast, have raised seams that are easy to grip — but they're lively.

Pitchers who had spent years adjusting to big-league baseballs were bound to struggle.

Indeed, according to the scouting reports, Dustin's fastball had touched 151 km/h shortly before the Hawks signed him — only to dip to 148 after he arrived in Korea.

"But why does he keep insisting we make Choi Dong-hyuk his personal catcher?"

"He says he needs a catcher who can block well."

"Good grief. Talk about a long list of demands."

As a rule, the KBO asks one thing of a foreign pitcher: ten wins or more. A pitcher who actually delivered could expect a manager to cut him some slack.

But right now, Dustin was about as close to the top of the league-wide release list as it was possible to get. No wonder Eom could only look at him with a sour eye.

His gaze shifted to the hitting coach.

"And what about Choi Dong-hyuk?"

"He just overhauled his swing toward contact — and I think it's done more harm than good. His numbers have dropped even further."

"Out of the frying pan, into the fire."

Judging by performance alone, of course the Hawks' starting catcher should be Kang Hyuk. But the kid was a rookie who had never played a full season, which made the backup role that Choi Dong-hyuk was supposed to fill quietly critical — and right now, he didn't look remotely ready to be used.

"And it's awkward to send Jin-mo back behind the plate."

Park Jin-mo was posting respectable slugging numbers in the DH spot, free of defensive burden. All the manager could do was hope Dong-hyuk would come alive.

"For now — even if it's just practice — tell Dustin to work on his timing with Kang Hyuk."

"The thing is, Dustin seems to dislike that arrangement. No — dislike isn't strong enough. He seems genuinely offended by it……"

"Tsk!"

"Understood."

The bench coach nodded, if reluctantly.

Dustin stood on the mound preparing to throw, a sullen expression plastered across his face.

"Throwing."

"Ready when you are."

He reminded me of a hedgehog — bristling with spikes in every direction, as if to keep the whole world at bay. How bad was it? Even Romero, who spoke his language and was famous for his easy way with people, had trouble striking up a conversation with the man.

Whang―!

As if my receiving displeased him, he kicked at the dirt again and again.

'Honestly, this is already a big improvement……'

I'd admit it: compared to big-league catchers, my framing still left something to be desired. I simply hadn't put in enough practice yet.

But the KBO was a league that had adopted the ABS, the automated ball-strike system — and with that in mind, Dustin's current attitude bordered on pure petulance.

'I should cut him some slack, though.'

There was a stat for everything, after all. On days when the team you rooted for lost, a man's testosterone reportedly dropped by nearly 20 percent. If even the fans suffered that much, what must it be like for the pitcher who actually absorbed the defeat?

It was the composed Kim Hyun-woo sunbae and Romero who were the outliers. Considering that pitchers were creatures who could be thrown off for an entire day by nothing more than the color of their underwear changing, Dustin was hovering right around the league average.

Whang―!

'There's no question the ball comes out of his hand light for its velocity.'

The concept of "stuff" had always been contentious — a tangle of interwoven factors that resisted quantification. But from the catcher's end of the battery, the difference was unmistakable: a pitch with real stuff felt different in the mitt from the very first catch.

And catching Dustin's pitches, there was something indefinably lacking.

Whang―!

We were past the point of trying to build any real rhythm — we were simply repeating the act of throwing and catching when Dustin, silent all this while, finally spoke.

"Hey……"

"Hm?"

"Have you ever caught a knuckleball?"

"A knuckleball?"

"Never mind. Forget it."

He waved a hand as if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to brush the question away. But I'd heard it in full — how was I supposed to ignore it?

"Tell me about it."

"Back in the day……"

And with that, Dustin began unspooling his story.

They say teaching a knuckleball takes ten minutes and learning it takes a lifetime — which is to say, most pitchers know how to throw one. The problem is that producing results with it is another matter entirely.

Dustin hadn't always thrown the knuckleball. Back in his minor league days, he'd tossed one as a lark, found it surprisingly effective, and started mixing it in now and then.

The trouble began in Triple-A. Unlike Double-A, that club had no catcher capable of handling the pitch. Major League Baseball ran on cold market ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠logic — nobody was going to set up a dedicated catcher for a man who wasn't even a full-time knuckleballer.

"……Look, I was of the school that said you don't need a knuckleball. But after getting hammered here too, I keep thinking about it."

"Hmm."

The diagnosis came to me in an instant.

'It's kind of like E-Phus — the "you can do it too" pitch.'

It put no strain on the shoulder and made stealing a hitter's timing easy, so throwing it probably just felt psychologically comfortable.

I nodded and rapped my fist against the mitt.

"Why don't you throw one for me?"

"Without a knuckleball mitt?"

"Yes."

Dustin shrugged, as if to say I had to be kidding.

"You're the one who told me to throw it."

I paid the price for taking the knuckleball lightly.

Whish―

Did it even reach 120 km/h? It was clearly no speed demon, yet it came in tracing an utterly unpredictable arc. The ball drifted toward my chest, then plummeted sharply down and to the left.

"Whoa—!"

"Hmph."

The ball squirted out behind me, and Dustin snorted — as if he'd known it all along — and shook his head.

"That's enough. Just catch the other pitches."

"No, please. One more."

Stubbornness flared in me, and I thrust the mitt back out.

Whish―!

This one came in even slower — 90 km/h at most — with almost no spin at all. Forget catching it with the mitt; I barely managed to smother it against my chest.

After that, Dustin kept throwing knuckleballs, and I kept failing to catch a single one cleanly with the mitt. He shook his head again — but perhaps my persistence moved him a little, because his expression had softened considerably.

"Nah. That was me asking too much. Just catch the other stuff."

"……Tomorrow will be different."

"Huh?"

When he looked at me, puzzled, I met his eyes with a gaze burning with competitive fire.

"Throw it for me one more time tomorrow. Please."

"Uhh……"

Perhaps cowed by my intensity, he could only respond with a dazed expression. As I caught the rest of Dustin's repertoire, the trajectory of that knuckleball kept replaying in my head.

That evening.

After quietly pilfering one of my father's cans of beer, I opened my eyes inside the white expanse.

"……Maybe I shouldn't have bothered."

All the drive that had burned ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠through me right up until I fell asleep sank like a stone the moment I actually faced the white space. Dustin wasn't a knuckleballer — strictly speaking, the pitch was a secondary weapon for him. Was it really worth coming all this way just to catch it? Doubt gnawed at me.

"No. Think of it as a form of blocking practice."

The knuckleball was a pitch neither the pitcher throwing it nor the catcher receiving it could predict. There was no better pitch in existence for practicing blocking.

"Wait — was there even a course for learning the knuckleball here?"

I'd barreled in on pure stubbornness, but come to think of it, the pitching machine had never once thrown me a knuckleball.

I scanned the dugout wall carefully.

As expected, nothing related to the knuckleball. I opened my mouth on the off chance.

"……By any chance — within blocking, can I train only against knuckleballs?"

The text on the wall changed.

'It works!'

I couldn't hold back a cry of delight. The white space was, unmistakably, a training ground built just for me — and not only for the programs listed on the wall, either.

The white that usually felt so stifling and formless now seemed almost bright.

As I gathered the gear from the dugout, something unusual caught my eye: an oversized mitt.

"So this is the knuckleball mitt."

I'd only ever heard about them. This was my first time actually wearing one.

Once I was fully equipped and took my position at home plate, the text on the wall changed again.

"A hundred thousand? That's fine by me."

No animation this time either, apparently. So there really was no single "right answer" to blocking.

At that moment, the pitching machine coughed out its first ball.

Whish―!

I lunged and smothered it.

"Ugh."

I'd felt it catching Dustin's pitches too, but the trajectory of a knuckleball was genuinely beyond prediction. A bigger mitt didn't make it any easier.

"So in the end, I have to learn it with my whole body."

The machine spat out its pitches at random — high-velocity knuckleballs exceeding 110 km/h one moment, slow, dancing 70 km/h flutterballs the next.

Thud―!

Whish―!

At first I couldn't catch them with the mitt — I could barely even keep them off my body. But as I kept watching, I could feel my eyes gradually adjusting.

'Don't try to catch it perfectly. Just get it down in front of me — that's all blocking is.'

As the repetitions piled up, the numbers climbed faster and faster. And because the pitch moved so wildly, I could feel my blocking itself sharpening along with it.

'Just wait, Dustin.'

Sweating buckets in the white room, all for the pleasure of watching Dustin's face a day(?) from now, Kang Hyuk's eyes sparkled with anticipation.