Proof Enough
As the pitcher kept firing away, Assistant Manager Kim of the Hawks' scouting team, watching from the stands, replayed the footage of Kang Hyuk's home run on his camera.
"Wow……"
The exclamations poured out of him, one after another.
"Team Leader, look at this! Is this kid really a high schooler?"
"What are you getting so worked up over one at-bat for?"
The team leader's reply was curt, but he was every bit as stunned.
When did he rework his swing?
At the Bonghwang National Tournament, the most recent competition, hadn't Kang Hyuk been swinging with an extreme uppercut? It was a hitting mechanism that KBO coaches loathed, and among scouts the consensus had been that no matter which team drafted him, his swing would need a complete overhaul.
But the Kang Hyuk captured on camera now was a different player entirely.
It was, quite literally, a textbook-perfect level swing.
"Are you seriously telling me you can watch this and still say that?"
Leaping to his feet, Assistant Manager Kim paused the footage again and again as he walked through just how extraordinary that home run had been.
"Look, his elbow stays glued to his body even with the backside wide open! And have you noticed his bat speed? That's no joke either. Of course, I'll admit the sample size is small, but his future potential is undeniable—"
"Weren't you the one frothing at the mouth just days ago, insisting we had to draft Yoon Taeyang?"
"Well… he wasn't doing this before, was he?"
With an awkward expression, Assistant Manager Kim quietly took his seat. The team leader shook his head at the sight, then narrowed his eyes.
"That's not what's strange, though."
"What is, then?"
"Kang Hyuk. Wasn't he supposed to have outstanding defensive fundamentals?"
"That's what the reports said."
"And yet something looks off about him. Like he hasn't caught a ball in months."
It wasn't as if he'd dropped a popup or made any glaring error. He was, in fact, handling every pitch the pitcher threw. It was more a matter of stability—or the lack of it.
Generally speaking, blocking instruction for catchers emphasizes lower-body mechanics: sliding the knee down to the dirt in anticipation of the ball's movement, sealing off any gap for the ball to escape through. That was the essence of blocking.
Kang Hyuk, however, was moving like an amateur—upper body leading first.
"And yet, strangely enough, he's hauling in every wild pitch."
"…He is, isn't he?"
The pitcher's command was falling apart, and ball after ball was skittering wide of the zone—yet Kang Hyuk kept pulling off spectacular stops, keeping the game from careening out of control.
"How do I put this… it's like he hasn't played defense in a while, but he's compensating with pure animal reflexes?"
"I get that feeling too."
So did that make him look bad?
Not remotely.
When scouts evaluated prospects, the most important factor was never present skill—it was potential. Catching technique could be taught after the fact, but an eye for the ball and raw reflexes were gifts you were born with.
Did he skip his catching practice for a while to fix his swing?
The team leader, having stumbled onto the right answer by sheer instinct, soon let out a sigh.
"Hmm……"
"What's wrong?"
"I want to see whether he can manage a game—call pitches, work with the pitcher. But looking at this pitcher's state, I don't think we'll get the chance."
They called the catcher the field general, but steadying a pitcher whose mechanics were that badly out of sync was no easy feat.
Just as he was lamenting that he'd never get a look at the kid's game-calling, the atmosphere of the game changed—it was right after Kang Hyuk paid a visit to the mound.
"Oh?"
Gone were the absurd waste pitches from before; now the balls were forming near the strike zone.
Another question to ask the manager, then.
The kid seemed to have decent interpersonal skills, too—he'd apparently succeeded in settling the pitcher down.
Scrawling notes in his notebook, the team leader caught himself muttering aloud.
"His catching was always solid, so a little practice will fix that right up. And if he hits like he just did……"
The team leader found himself thinking that perhaps the new general manager's eye for talent was better than his own.
With runners already on base, the Blue Team barely escaped the inning having allowed two runs.
Kang Hyuk, who had put on a composed front in front of his junior, let out a long breath of relief.
I've really been neglecting my catching drills.
It made sense—where would he have found the time for defense training in the White Room? He was lucky just to escape that place, too busy swinging the bat to think of anything else.
Still, neglecting his catching even after returning to reality was a mistake, no way around it.
Special training. Later. Definitely.
Chiding himself, he turned his attention to the Blue Team's at-bats.
Yoon Taeyang, who had seemed rattled in the aftermath of the home run, had regained his footing. True to form for a pitcher whose weapon had always been overpowering velocity rather than pinpoint command, he was simply burying hitters under overwhelming stuff.
Barely minutes after the sides switched, Kang Hyuk found himself strapping the catcher's gear back on.
The one silver lining was that Woo-cheol had pulled himself together. Both teams closed out the second inning without further damage.
And so the top of the third arrived.
The nine-hole hitter grounded out, and the leadoff man drew a walk. As Kang Hyuk stepped into the box, Yoon Taeyang's gaze met his head-on.
Not a trace of intimidation in those eyes—not after surrendering a home run just moments ago. The sheer audacity of youth wrenched a laugh out of him before he knew it.
Good for you.
Unlike Kang Hyuk, who'd spent so long agonizing over why he even played this game, that kid was giving everything he had, right here, right now.
Evidently taking the smile for mockery, Yoon Taeyang adjusted his glasses and glared at him.
So Kang Hyuk decided to answer with everything he had, too.
Whoosh—
"Ball."
The first pitch rode high and inside. The second, a two-seamer, clipped the very tip of the bat—foul ball.
One ball, one strike.
He'll come after the strike zone this time, won't he?
With runners aboard, Taeyang dropped into his set position from the crouch.
Kang Hyuk was already starting his swing, planning to fire at this one—and flinched.
The ball's trajectory broke away outside, nothing like what he'd anticipated.
A slider?
The bat was already committed, mid-swing in the power position. He wrenched his mechanics into order in a split second.
The old Kang Hyuk would have rolled his wrists to reroute the swing's path. But having weathered countless identical situations in the White Room, he kept the swing intact and simply bent his front knee, shifting his contact point instead.
Crack—
The ball rocketed off the bat on a line.
Slapping it into the air from such a hastily improvised stance, Kang Hyuk figured extra bases were out of the question, so he didn't even watch the ball fly—he just bolted for first.
Mid-sprint at full throttle, he caught sight of the base coach crossing his arms overhead.
"Kang Hyuk! It's gone! Home run—take a lap, and don't hurt yourself!"
"I'm sorry—what?"
The training field had somehow gone silent as a library. He turned his head and found Yoon Taeyang staring at the outfield fence with a hollow expression, their eyes locking.
The kid's eyes were screaming it: if even this gets out, what am I supposed to do?
Before he knew it, Kang Hyuk had raised one hand in an apologetic gesture.
"Sorry."
Still, it seemed the hours spent training in that white void hadn't been wasted after all.
"There's nothing left to see, is there."
"Hm?"
Park Sungho, who had been blankly admiring the flight of Kang Hyuk's ball, looked up at Kim Hyun-woo with a puzzled frown.
"See what?"
"Him, obviously."
Kim Hyun-woo pointed at Kang Hyuk, lazily rounding the bases.
"Doesn't seem like there's much point in me testing him at all."
"You're just being lazy again."
"Oh, come on. What do you take me for?"
Grumbling that anyone who'd come this far couldn't possibly be lazy, he pressed on.
"Yoon Taeyang, was it? The kid who was all but locked in as the first overall pick."
"That's right."
"And he just took him deep twice in a row off that arm. What else is there to prove?"
"High school and the pros are different animals."
Kim Hyun-woo shot Park Sungho a look of sheer disbelief.
"Can't you see it with your own eyes? Fastball touching over 150, a quality slider, a two-seamer as his third pitch. That kid could get bumped straight to the big league bullpen today and survive."
"There was Han Dae-ju with the Gwangju Pumas, wasn't there? Jumped straight from high school."
"…That was an exceptionally rare case. What are you going to do when someone's mental game is a wet noodle no matter how good the raw stuff is?"
"So you're saying Hyuk could survive in the pros too?"
"There's no such thing as a sure thing in baseball. But yeah—the kid's earned the right to some confidence."
"See? Told you."
At the unpleasant grin spreading across Park Sungho's face, Kim Hyun-woo instinctively put distance between them.
The front office is going to have a nightmare of a time signing this kid.
Lost in thought for a moment, Kim Hyun-woo checked that no one was within earshot, then lowered his voice.
"By the way……"
"Hm?"
"That second home run of his—he launched it with his mechanics completely falling apart."
"Yeah."
"…He's not on something, is he?"
"Oh, please. You know they run doping tests right before the draft."
"Then that's… genuine, natural talent?"
Kim Hyun-woo studied Kang Hyuk with fresh eyes.
If that kid had been on our roster……
It was water under the bridge now, but the Hawks' lineup this season had been nothing short of pitiful. Four weeks into the season, in late April, the team batting average had sunk into the .140s and the team wRC+ had actually gone negative.
It was suffocating. Nearly killed me.
What else could explain a man who never touched anything outside the pitchers' cluster contemplating calling a team meeting himself?
The averages had gradually climbed back as the season wore on, but the need for a true power hitter remained as desperate as ever.
And into that exact vacuum had walked a rookie monster who conjured memories of Stanton at the height of his MLB reign—the raw, frightening strength of him.
The small sample size worries me, sure……
But with his own MLB resume, Kim Hyun-woo could say this with certainty: sluggers of that caliber imposed a crushing psychological weight on pitchers merely by walking to the plate.
His defense will need polishing, but worst case, he can always DH.
Somewhere along the way, in Kim Hyun-woo's mind, Kang Hyuk stepping onto the first-team stage had become a settled fact.
The game, played out through the fifth inning, ended in a White Team victory.
Woo-cheol had battled hard for his part, but after an infielder's error his command wobbled again—and on the Blue Team's side, there was simply no one besides Kang Hyuk capable of touching Taeyang's stuff.
Yet on the face of the winning pitcher, Yoon Taeyang, there was only shadow. The duel between the two first-round draft picks had been, to anyone watching, a resounding victory for Kang Hyuk.
"Alright, alright, everyone gather round!"
Once the game ended, the Bomoon High manager assembled the players and introduced Kim Hyun-woo.
"You all know who this is. MLB veteran and current Hawk—Mr. Kim Hyun-woo."
"Good to meet you, boys."
The baseball club members gazed up at the arrival of the KBO's signature pitcher with naked admiration. Kim Hyun-woo straightened up.
"Watching you all out there, I found myself thinking the future of Korean baseball looks bright."
With the customary encouragement delivered, he moved down the line offering each player a brief word of advice—until his gaze settled on Yoon Taeyang.
"Yoon Taeyang, was it?"
"Yes, sir!"
At the sound of his name from Kim Hyun-woo's lips, Yoon Taeyang's eyes lit up as though the gloom of minutes ago had never existed.
"Your delivery's got real athleticism to it, and you control it well. Good stuff, too."
"Thank you, sir!"
"Don't dwell on the home runs. Just keep doing what you're doing."
He was about to wrap up the advice there when Yoon Taeyang's hand shot up.
"Sir."
"Hm?"
"Isn't core work more important for pitchers than weight training?"
And as he asked it, the kid was looking straight at Kang Hyuk.
"I read an interview you gave here in Korea, back in the day."
"Oh, that one?"
Kim Hyun-woo scratched his head.
"That's how I trained as a rookie, sure."
"I'm sorry—so that's not how you train now?"
"My belief in the importance of core work hasn't changed one bit. But over in the MLB, the pitchers there lift too. Those guys aren't stupid."
"……"
Perhaps it was his imagination, but Yoon Taeyang's complexion seemed to darken in that instant.
"…Then is there no way for me to develop command like yours, sir?"
"Hmm."
Kim Hyun-woo studied Yoon Taeyang and the other pitchers for a moment, then shrugged.
"At a certain point it's territory only talent can reach, so there's nothing for it but to throw. A lot."
"Ahhh……"
"That's not to say the arm gets stronger the more you use it, mind you. If you want to find that feel for locating pitches without sacrificing velocity, in the end the only path is throwing baseballs. Period."
In their place, he stressed instead the importance of visualization training and refining one's delivery—and naturally, his gaze drifted toward Kang Hyuk.
Yep. Just like I thought.
Slabs of muscle that brought to mind the players he'd met in the majors.
"Hitting isn't my area of expertise. But even a layman like me could see how good your swing was out there, Kang Hyuk."
"Thank you."
"Your receiving, though—that needs work. These days with ABS doing the strike zone, there's no real need to work on framing. Focus on your blocking. A little more practice there."
"Yes, sir."
"Study up on your pitch sequencing, too."
"Understood."
"And do some research on KBO hitters."
"…?"
Unlike the other boys, who had each gotten a single line, Kang Hyuk was blinking at this endless cascade of advice and assignments—and Kim Hyun-woo caught himself, realizing he'd gone too far.
"No, it's—something about you just makes me think you can actually handle it."
Was this how a professor felt upon discovering an exceptional graduate student? A brilliant workhorse, rather.
Watching Kang Hyuk's face, Kim Hyun-woo became aware of an inexplicable surge of anticipation welling up inside himself.
And as he finished up his remarks, he found that same anticipation glowing in every player's eyes.
"This is what you've all been waiting for, isn't it?"
Kim Hyun-woo produced his credit card, and the players' eyes turned to starlight.
"Team dinner later. Eat as much as you want."
"YES, SIR!"
They were, after all, athletes at precisely the age when appetite was at its glorious peak.