A Drink Twelve Years Late
Twelve years a professional, and only a month from his thirteenth, Joo Min-ho had already taken his family overseas and gotten that particular piece of homework out of the way. He could walk into the training complex with an easy mind.
"If I want to really cash in at the next free agency, next year and the year after are everything. Grind for two years and chase five billion won, whatever it takes."
Two years ago he had signed his first free-agent deal and pulled on a Phoenix uniform, but the contract had landed a long way from the jackpot he'd been waiting on. Ten-billion-won free-agent deals seemed to drop every season now, yet even for a fellow pro like Joo Min-ho that kind of money might as well have been news from another country.
The paper he actually signed was four years and 2.8 billion won, and even that drew mostly complaints—the Phoenix had been too soft, people said; why bring Min-ho in at a number like that at all?
Through the season just before free agency, his career line sat at a .259 average, 689 hits, 48 home runs, 298 RBIs, and a .658 OPS. Min-ho knew better than anyone that those numbers weren't a jackpot. They weren't even a decent middle score. So he clenched his teeth and ran harder.
Some players signed a monster deal and promptly got accused of letting the good life settle into their guts. Min-ho went the other way, grinding with a kind of desperate loyalty just to be worth something to the club. The last two seasons hadn't been bad at all because of it. Inside the organization and among the fans, people had started calling it a team-friendly contract. In two years he had proved, thoroughly, what he was worth.
Still short of the five-billion-won deal he was dreaming of. Which was why he had come out to the complex ahead of almost anyone, of his own accord, to start getting ready.
"Hey—look at everybody already. Diligent as—"
CRACK!
The greeting he was tossing toward the Phoenix players huddled around the batting machine vanished under a clean, vicious report that punched straight through his eardrums.
"Whoa! Who was that? That bat is nasty!"
He came closer, still marveling, and only then did the players notice him, dipping their heads one after another in greeting. Twelve years in, with one free-agent contract already behind him, there wasn't a single older veteran in the complex.
"Min-ho hyung! You're here?"
"Yeah. You get any rest? And who's in the cage? Don't tell me it's Senior Jung-wan. That doesn't sound like him."
"Not Senior Jung-wan. That's the player who just signed and joined the club."
"A new guy? Who? An outside signing?"
Wondering if the team had already locked up an external free agent, Min-ho pushed through the younger players with his curiosity out in front of him. In the box, he finally got a look at the face of the hitter squaring up every fastball the machine threw—157 kilometers an hour, just under 98 miles per hour, and he was barreling them clean.
"Huh? Wait—wait. Do Kang-hyun?!"
In Min-ho's memory he was still the baby-faced high school kid who trained more quietly than anyone. The man holding the bat was past thirty.
"Hey! Kang-hyun! Do Kang-hyun!!"
Kang-hyun, set in his stance, turned his head at the shout. He lowered the bat, came around, and offered a faint smile.
"Joo Min-ho. It's been a while. First time since graduation."
The greeting was so natural it might have been for a friend he'd seen yesterday. Not a trace of awkwardness in it.
"Man, how long has it been? I heard bits and pieces, but I never in a million years thought you'd actually sign with the Phoenix. You stamped it for real, right? Deal's done?"
Kang-hyun had put his seal on the Phoenix contract only the day before. Anyone paying close attention to domestic baseball already knew. Min-ho had been overseas with his family, and he'd figured the other free-agent signings were still a ways off, so he hadn't been watching. The news had missed him entirely.
"It just sort of happened."
"Wow, I'm actually getting chills. You quit when we graduated, right? Changed your number, blew off every reunion—that was you, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. That was me."
Sure enough, once his senior year arrived and he still had no faith in his own ability, the rookie draft passed him over, and Do Kang-hyun fled into the military the moment he graduated.
"Whenever the guys got together, your name still came up. People said you should've at least tried college. Then you wouldn't have had anything to regret."
Kang-hyun answered with a bitter smile and nothing else. His parents had mentioned college too. He simply hadn't trusted himself enough for that, and he hadn't wanted to be a burden on them any longer. That was the choice he'd made. Min-ho caught that he didn't want to linger there and jumped to something else.
"Anyway, what happened? I watched all your clips..."
For someone who remembered Kang-hyun in high school, those videos were genuinely hard to process. The hitting footage fans were already calling a devil's talent, the defense, and above all the throws home—Min-ho's first instinct had been to doubt it was even him.
"I quit baseball, but I kept training, in my own way. I don't know how much that actually helped... and even then, it still doesn't compare to real pro level."
He knew how impossible this was to explain to anyone who actually knew him. He couldn't very well announce that one day a special ability had simply appeared, so a vague excuse was all he had.
"Are you kidding me? That swing and that arm—I was jealous, and I mean it. The Phoenix can get called suckers all they want; they're not handing a thirty-two-year-old rookie terms like that for nothing. They made the offer because they decided you had a real chance."
"I'm grateful for that. It's why I'm more set on playing well. And it's better that you're here, Min-ho. I'm counting on you."
"Counting on me? Come on. You and I are the only classmates on this whole team! Anyway—late or not, congratulations. You made the pros. For real. Let's do this right."
The easy familiarity, the same way Min-ho had treated him back in high school, let Kang-hyun loose a quiet sigh of relief. He knew the professional game was a cold world, and that he was not the sort of newcomer anyone was going to welcome.
He'd braced himself for a hard life. Even today, Hwang Jun-sik and Kim Yeo-un hadn't given him much of a reception, so he had swallowed it as reality, as something only natural to endure. Which made Min-ho's presence feel solid in a way he hadn't expected.
"You said you only came to look around today?"
"Pretty much."
"Seen the whole place? If there's anywhere you still don't know, I'll show you."
"No. I think I've seen enough."
"Then let's get out of here. First time in forever—we owe each other a drink. You drink, right?"
"The drinking sessions I've been dragged to could already match your hit total."
"...You keeping score on me right now?"
"Still quick to catch a dig. Good to know."
Twelve years after they'd last met, Kang-hyun drank with his old high school classmate. They started with those years when both of them had dreamed of the pros through the thick reek of sweat, and went on into the lives they'd actually lived—one inside baseball, one out in the ordinary world. For the first time in a long while, Kang-hyun could set his guard down and simply enjoy a night of drinking.
"You don't talk to Hae-woon either, do you?"
At the question, Kang-hyun thought of Jeong Hae-woon as he'd watched him on a TV at a company dinner. Once they had trained side by side, sweating through the same work. Now Hae-woon was one of the KBO's signature home-run hitters.
Even in high school he had been praised as a talent beyond the high school level, the best player in their class of schools, the kind of name people argued over for the first pick or the second in the opening round of the draft.
A friend... Would Hae-woon even think of me that way?
Min-ho got along with everyone—classmates, seniors, juniors, it didn't matter. Hae-woon never had. Baseball was the only thing in his head, and if someone wasn't useful to his game he barely bothered to speak to them. Prickly. A wall.
Maybe he's forgotten I exist at all.
Even so, Kang-hyun didn't feel particularly hurt, or left behind. He had assumed the same thing himself. Graduate, and they would live in different worlds. There would be no reason left to meet.
"Hae-woon... well, he's always been a prickly bastard. Still, if he hears you made the pros, he's gonna lose it. Want me to try calling him?"
"No. We'll run into each other eventually."
"Why not? One call, for old times' sake?"
"Call him now and it'll just be me drunk and picking a fight. Better to do it later, sober—whether that's a call or a hello in person."
"Yeah? Okay! We're all pros now anyway, so we'll be seeing plenty of each other. Drink!"
Whether he was simply glad his old classmate had made it, or glad for the excuse to keep drinking, Min-ho hauled Kang-hyun through a third round. By the end Kang-hyun was well past drunk himself, and it took everything he had to pour a staggering Min-ho—making a scene, demanding a fourth stop—into a taxi and send him home.
"Where to?"
He gave the driver his address and slumped into the back seat, staring out the window without really seeing it. When he had graduated and quit baseball like a man running away, he had been sure he would never see that classmate again.
Meeting him had stirred something up anyway. It felt a little like being back in high school, twelve years gone, and it also felt, finally, as if the dream of being a ballplayer had actually come true.
He still didn't know why the ability had come to him. What he did know was that because of it he had started baseball again—the only goal his life had ever had, the old sediment of regret he had never been able to scrape out—and for that he was simply grateful.
If I hadn't watched that broadcast at the company dinner that night, would any of this have happened?
Watching the pitcher-against-hitter showdown between Senior Kim Chang-woon and Jeong Hae-woon, Kang-hyun had felt, for the first time in years, envy and shame and resentment all at once. The people he had trained with had become superstars, living brilliant lives under the cheers of thousands, while he grilled meat at a company dinner, poured drinks, and managed his boss's mood.
In that moment he had resented the simple fact that he did not have their talent, or their skill. And when his coworkers learned he had been in the same class as Jeong Hae-woon and asked if they were close, he couldn't answer cleanly. He had only managed an awkward laugh. It was the recent past. He still could not forget it. Which was exactly why he kept telling himself he had to work harder.
Of all things, the radio was carrying Jeong Hae-woon's contract news. The biggest name on this year's hot-stove market had done exactly what everyone expected: word was he would put his stamp on a deal with his original club, the Gwangju Thunders.
"Sixteen billion... People say ballplayers' salaries are all bubble, but the guys who can get paid still get paid. Hae-woon's thirty-two now, isn't he? Spend his whole career with the Thunders and he'll clear twenty billion easy. Somebody raised their boy right. Heh."
The driver, clearly a baseball man, muttered it with his voice full of envy.
Hae-woon...
Kang-hyun felt the same way. A massive seven-year, eleven-billion-won extension in his fifth season, before he ever reached free agency—and now a six-year, sixteen-billion-won deal on the open market.
It was astonishing, plain and simple. The numbers belonged in the KBO record books, and yet, given everything Jeong Hae-woon had stacked up, it didn't look like the kind of contract that would draw much real abuse. His high school classmate now stood as the best hitter in the league. The fact only hardened Kang-hyun's resolve.
He would stand even with him. No—he would gather every ounce of rage and bitter regret from all the years he hadn't been allowed to play, and at least in the short run he would blow past his old classmate. He had to.
All the way to his door, he never stopped urging himself on, as if he were casting a spell.