Busan's Last Hope
Baseball Capital, Busan.
A phrase that encapsulated the pride of Busan's fans, whose devotion to baseball was famous for being anything but ordinary.
Lately, though, the mood in the city had turned sour.
Back in March, they'd lived up to their "Springtines" nickname, sitting pretty at second in the standings and riding high. Then a catastrophic twelve-game losing streak sent them tumbling to the bottom of the league.
They'd snapped the skid recently and clawed their way back to a .500 record, sure — but it was also true that fall baseball looked like a distant dream.
And on top of all that, what really had the Marines faithful seething was the betrayal of the allies they'd counted on.
First the Seoul Metros, then the Gwangju Pumas, and now even the Daejeon Hawks had escaped the basement — while the Marines were still stuck in ninth. No wonder the fans felt abandoned.
Day after day, criticism rained down on the club and its players like this. And yet, amid it all, there was one player still basking in the unconditional support of the Marines faithful.
The team bus rolled into our Busan hotel, and for the first time in a while, I headed out of my room.
I had plans to meet Yoon Tae-yang, my old high school classmate.
Whoa. So places like this exist.
Arriving at the meeting spot early, I looked around and found it was one of those tucked-away rooms designed to guarantee a little privacy.
I was watching an MLB game on my phone when Yoon Tae-yang showed up not long after — bundled up in a mask and cap, his face hidden from every angle.
"Why are you wrapped up like that? At that level, you've got a full-blown case of celebrity disease."
"You just don't know Busan. Walk around with your face showing and more people recognize you than you'd think."
"Really?"
Granted, I'd get recognized myself now and then walking around downtown Daejeon, but still. It seemed like overkill to me.
"The senior guys on the Marines actually blame the fans for the bad record, you know."
"Huh? Why?"
"They get so much attention that it weighs on them. If we're talking soccer clubs… it's like Manchester United."
"Man United? Park Ji-sung's club? Ronaldo's old team?"
I had zero interest in any sport besides baseball, but Hyung-joon talked about Ronaldo so endlessly that I'd absorbed a few things by osmosis.
"Is that club really that famous?"
"Yep. They spend a fortune, too. And they're famous for playing like a relegation-bound team."
"Oho."
It was such an unexpected angle that I found it genuinely fascinating — and he blew a raspberry at me for it.
"It's garbage, is what it is. They're bad because they don't train. Blaming the fans is just them looking anywhere but at themselves."
"…You've gotten a lot more cynical since I last saw you."
"Try playing a few days for the Marines yourself. The whole team heads out drinking the second a game ends. Watching it, all you can do is sigh."
"Hmm…"
I'd been through something similar, so I nodded along.
Hadn't our own team been full of veterans who spent their nights out drinking early in the season, too?
The difference was that we had veterans anchoring us — Kim Hyun-woo sunbae in the pitching staff, Park Jin-mo sunbae among the hitters — so the whole roster never got swept up in that current.
These days, everyone was too busy working out after me for those gatherings to happen much at all, anyway.
"Speaking of which, Kang Hyuk, your complexion's gotten better? You look even bigger, too?"
"The Hawks really do have a great clubhouse culture."
On draft day, all I'd wanted was to escape the Hawks any way I could. Now I was genuinely grateful I'd ended up there.
Truly, you never know where life will take you.
After that, the two of us spent a long while trading stories from our high school baseball days.
"It should've been me going to the Hawks, not you…"
"Hard to take you seriously from a second-round pick scrub."
"…Just wait and see."
He glared at me with eyes that were practically smoldering.
"This time it'll go differently than our intrasquad games. I've gotten better since joining the Marines, too."
"Works for me."
Having watched plenty of pitchers who wilted and ran from the league, I had a soft spot for competitors with this kind of fire in them.
"Good evening, baseball fans. It's the first week of June, and the summer heat is building — we're coming to you live from Sajik Stadium in Busan. I'm Jung Yong-geun, your caster for today's game."
"And I'm Song Geon-hwi, on commentary."
"Two teams on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum lately, wouldn't you say?"
"That's right. It's the surging Daejeon Hawks against a Busan Marines squad that barely scraped out of its losing streak. I expect a genuinely entertaining ballgame."
"What should fans keep an eye on today?"
"The first thing that jumps out has to be the pitching matchup. Yoon Tae-yang, making his first career start for the Marines, against Kim Hyun-woo — a veteran already proven at this level. What a duel."
"Kim Hyun-woo has had terrible luck lately, hasn't he?"
"He has. Nine quality starts over his last thirteen appearances, but only four wins to show for it."
"Let's see what he brings today. The visitors' Hawks send their offense up first — play ball!"
And so the game began.
Even with the team slumping, the home stands held a healthy crowd of Marines faithful.
I was taking swings in the dugout when Lee Won-taek sunbae — retired on a groundout in the first — sidled up with a look of mock agony.
"They say today's pitcher went to the same high school as you, Kang Hyuk?"
"Yes, sir."
"Whew. No wonder your school won it all."
At first I figured he was just making a fuss. But once I actually stepped into the box and squared off against him, I realized Yoon Tae-yang's stuff had changed.
In high school, he'd thrown blazing fastballs that were little more than a glorified four-seamer. Somewhere between then and the pros, he'd clearly put in serious refinement work.
The ball had real movement on it now — a genuinely filthy finish.
Which is why, in the top of the first, our table-setters — myself included — went down in order with nothing to show for it.
Meanwhile, Kim Hyun-woo sunbae was issuing free passes from the very first inning.
"Ball. Ball four."
Maybe it was still early in the game, but the pitch he'd wanted inside came off the hand and drifted out over the plate, drawing the walk.
I flashed him a sign: forget the runner, attack the hitter.
Their runners do steal a lot… but nobody's going to run on Kim Hyun-woo sunbae.
He was a lefty with MLB experience — a stolen base attempt against him seemed unthinkable.
The runner on first, however, blew right past my expectations.
Glove on, he started stretching his lead — and bigger, and bigger.
Since lefty Kim Hyun-woo sunbae had his eyes fixed on first, the runner kept rotating his upper body toward second, going through the full motions of a stolen-base attempt.
Shoosh— Shoo-shook—
And yet his lower body never moved an inch. It was the most maddeningly irritating motion I'd ever seen.
Kim Hyun-woo sunbae stared at the runner's antics with utter disbelief — until the umpire finally called him for a pitch-clock violation.
I called time and walked out to the mound.
"You okay, sunbae?"
"Oh, I'm fine. Maybe it's just from playing this game so long, but I've never seen anything that filthy."
"That runner's attempted a lot of steals, but he's not actually that fast. We can gun him down."
"So no pitchout?"
"No, sir. Leave it to me."
He nodded and gave my shoulder a slap.
The next at-bat unfolded.
"Ball four! And the runner takes off!?"
"The jump itself was good, though!"
Whoong—
The batter swung for the fences as hard as he could, doing everything in his power to screen my view for the steal.
It was a play squarely within the range I'd anticipated. Without panicking, I rose calmly and fired to second.
Wheee—
"The catcher fires to second! And the call is… OUT!"
"That throw was simply beautiful. It arrived right on the tag-side of the bag, exactly where the tag could be made naturally."
"You can feel Kang Hyuk's will in that play — no runner is touching second base on his watch!"
"And we've got the pop time up now. From the moment Kang Hyuk caught the ball to the moment the throw reached second… just 1.81 seconds."
"Absolutely remarkable."
"Three innings in the books, and the two teams are still locked in a tense 0-0 standoff."
"You could say the real game starts now. The lineups have turned over, which means both teams' top of the order is coming back around."
Top of the fourth.
Seo Ji-hoon sunbae, leading off, went down swinging and trudged back to the dugout with a look of pure frustration.
He was still struggling to time his new leg-kick, apparently.
Tae-yang's stuff really is good, though.
One out, nobody on. A spot where the pitcher could throw with a clear mind.
Yoon Tae-yang's arsenal: a four-seamer, a slider, and the occasional two-seamer.
I stepped into the box expecting him to come after the first pitch, hunting for a called strike.
"The pitcher fires his first pitch—"
Wheee—
Whoong!
"Strike one!"
I waved through it, walked out of the box, and glanced up at the scoreboard.
"157? Did you see that?"
"Hahaha. Yoon Tae-yang just unleashed the fastest pitch of today's game."
"Which tells you exactly how much respect he's paying to Kang Hyuk, doesn't it?"
"Ha."
I'd read the pitch perfectly — and still couldn't touch it.
Yoon Tae-yang really knew how to throw. The best pitcher of a golden generation that people were calling the finest since the Beijing Olympics era.
I readjusted my helmet and collected my thoughts.
Slider? Two-seamer?
My mind was getting tangled, so I shook my head.
Don't overthink it.
When had I ever picked pitches in the White Room and merely reacted to them?
There was only one thing to do — trust my swing and let it fly. Even if the man on the mound was being called the greatest talent since Kim Hyun-woo.
My body had been forged in the White Room, too.
Baseball is a game of the mind. You cannot beat an opponent you've already cowered before.
Yoon Tae-yang seemed to be thinking much the same thing — he was glaring at me with eyes that looked ready to devour me whole.
The second pitch came.
Four-seam fastball.
Exactly as I always had, I swung the bat with everything I had.