Widening the Outfield Net
The sprawling baseball complex in Peoria, Arizona, was so vast that Do Kang-hyun's mouth fell open.
A main stadium that seated twelve thousand. Twelve auxiliary practice fields. Clubhouses and training facilities, all of it fully outfitted. This was the Peoria Sports Complex, the site of the Daejeon Phoenix's first spring training camp.
"Well? Pretty incredible, right?"
"Yeah. I figured it'd be big, but this is something else."
"Scale like this, it's gotta be America. And it's the Padres' and Mariners' spring training home, so of course the place is built out like this."
Joo Min-ho's explanation finally clicked, and Do Kang-hyun nodded along. It wasn't just any camp. Major League clubs used these grounds, and that was the only reason a place this size could be kept up at all.
"This time they rented us a whole auxiliary field to ourselves. So we don't have to shuffle around between the morning session and the afternoon one. Nice and easy."
When Kang-hyun asked whether teams sometimes leased the fields piecemeal, Min-ho said it happened. Major League workouts took priority, so you couldn't always lock down an entire field. When that was the case, you coordinated with the big-league clubs and rented the grounds in four- to six-hour blocks.
"Twenty-five hundred dollars?"
A single day's rent on an auxiliary field ran $2,500—about 3.5 million won at the current rate—and Kang-hyun startled at the number. That wasn't even the end of it. Groundskeepers, an emergency trainer, locker rooms, trainer space: all of it fell under separate contracts, and the add-ons were nothing to shrug off.
"And that's not all. Hotels, meals, this and that—once you add it up, spring training costs a fortune. Which is why you've got to work even harder. The second they decide, mid-camp, that you're not cutting it..."
Min-ho drew a thumb across his throat.
"It's not common, but you've seen it on the news, right? Guys sent home early for breaking team rules. Most of them got nailed for a bad attitude in camp and written off as non-factors. Not that you'd ever be one of them, Kang-hyun."
Don't sweat it, Min-ho said, throwing an arm around his shoulders. Even without that encouragement, the resolve Kang-hyun had packed for this camp was firmer than most. He had boarded the flight to America determined to use spring training to tear down the sideways looks and the shaky ground under his feet, and to lay something solid in their place. An early ticket home was a scenario with not so much as a fingernail's chance of coming true.
February 1.
Camp opened with jet-lag adjustment and getting their bodies right as the main goals. Light running, stretching, an easy game of catch to loosen up. Among the players, Do Kang-hyun followed the schedule without a word. Most of them still wore their prejudice toward him like thick tinted glasses, but with club veteran Joo Min-ho stuck to his side, nothing came up that could actually wound him.
February 2.
Real workouts began. Scheduling had kept some of the big-league roster from reaching Arizona until January 31; today, not a single one of them was missing.
Whssht—pop.
"Oh! Shit! That ball's still alive at the end!"
Kang-hyun let out a short laugh at Min-ho—past thirty and still a clown—and kept the catch going. Thirteen years in the pros meant too much fooling around could look bad to the younger guys, but Min-ho knew exactly where the line was. Senior enough that nobody wrote him off.
Except.
"That bastard never shuts up. What is this, a little-league sandlot? You think you came out here for a company picnic?"
The one openly sneering at Min-ho was Choi Woo-sung, a man who had worn nothing but a Phoenix uniform for seventeen years. Senior to Min-ho, he bragged that Phoenix DNA ran in his blood and took pride in being a Phoenix man down to the marrow. He was also one of the loudest voices against bringing Kang-hyun in, and the practical center of the faction that wanted the new guy shut out—so watching Min-ho orbit him grated on Woo-sung more than on anyone.
"Woo-sung, isn't it better when everybody gets along? Besides, 'little leaguer' is a compliment, right? I mean, I do look young for my age. Hahaha!"
Min-ho knew there were thorns in the words and laughed them off anyway, thick-skinned as ever.
"Hey, Joo Min-ho. The fuck—is baseball a joke to you? You know our record? Jesus! They spent real money flying us all the way to America for camp, and you can't even think about grinding with your teeth clenched? You planning to play out the last two years on your deal and then call it a life? Get your shit together."
"......"
On any other day Choi Woo-sung would have snorted, called him an idiot, and let it slide. The moment he swore with a straight face, the air around them went cold. Even Min-ho—easygoing, slippery, hard to rattle—went stiff under a senior pressing down on him in the open.
"Not that there's any hope this year anyway, fuck. Nothing decent out of free agency, and they drag in some nobody past thirty that nobody's ever heard of and let him rot the clubhouse. You think real results come out of that? The more I think about it, this season's hopeless. Completely hopeless."
He said it loud enough for Kang-hyun to hear. Min-ho's face had gone hard; he started to open his mouth, then swallowed it. Blowing up here wouldn't help him, and it wouldn't help Kang-hyun. He knew that much.
"What's with the mood? Huh? Still not over the jet lag? You want to take today off too? Go shopping and screw around?"
Defensive coach Jeong Tae-hoon wandered over, curious what was going on, and only then did the stalled game of catch pick back up.
"What, nobody's got anything to say? Put some fight into it."
He kept trying to fire up players who were catching in silence, but even the usually lively Min-ho had his mouth clamped shut. Jeong Tae-hoon read the room well enough, clicked his tongue, and turned away. They finished catch in that quiet and lined up for defensive work.
"You okay?"
Kang-hyun edged the question toward Min-ho, whose face had stayed locked since the catch.
"What am I supposed to do if I'm not? You just let it go. Doesn't mean I'm not pissed, though. Straight up, the guy who's better than anyone at poisoning a clubhouse is the one running his mouth, and the more I think about it the hotter I get. You wouldn't know this, Kang-hyun. That son of a bitch Choi Woo-sung..."
Choi Woo-sung called himself true-blood Phoenix, and he had a strong streak of shutting out anyone who came in from somewhere else. Even a player forced over in a trade, against his own will, got the territorial treatment for a while, and Woo-sung's feelings ran hotter still toward free agents, where money was on the line. Flip it the other way, though, and a Phoenix fan who had also turned pro with the Phoenix got treated like a little brother—kept at his side, openly favored.
"The man's shallow as hell. When I showed up after signing my free-agent deal, that bastard was around, and for two months the younger guys wouldn't even say hello to me. Can you believe that?"
"It was that bad?"
"That's why I call him a piece of shit. Where the hell did all those years go? It loosens up eventually, more or less, but until then it feels like garbage. Looks like he's got you marked too, so unless you have to, don't hang around him. All you'll catch is something ugly."
With that, Min-ho headed off for infield defensive work. Kang-hyun, an outfielder, had no choice but to land in the same group as Choi Woo-sung—the very man he would have to compete with for those outfield spots. Sure enough, the moment Woo-sung saw his face, he picked a fight, just as Min-ho had warned.
"Hey."
"Yes?"
"Yes? The fuck—you don't know what a senior is?"
"......"
"You ignoring me now?"
"No, sir."
"Then what? That's it? Unbelievable. This is why dealing with guys who don't know the pecking order wears me the hell out. The GM's lost his mind too. With that money he should've just raised the guys already here."
Contrary to what Choi Woo-sung wanted, Kang-hyun simply stood there, his face untouched.
How many nightmare bosses have I already survived? This is nothing.
It was about as threatening as a grade-schooler puffing up for attention. Out in the real working world, Kang-hyun had met plenty of disasters so bad he couldn't understand how they functioned in society at all, let alone held down a job.
"This bastard—I'm talking, and he's just standing there staring like a—"
"Enough chatter! Get ready!"
Choi Woo-sung was winding up for another tirade at a man who wouldn't take the bait and wouldn't even flinch, then shut his mouth at the coach's shout. The malice icing both eyes only seemed to grow, a silent promise that this wasn't finished.
Kang-hyun met that, too, with the same dry nonreaction. The days when a look from a senior or a boss could make him shake—when every glance got blown up until his nerves were in shreds—were long behind him, back when he was new to the working world. He knew exactly how to handle someone like Choi Woo-sung.
Crack!
A ball climbed high, splitting the sky, and Kang-hyun was already standing under it, tucking the ball into his glove. The first one was, plainly, an easy ball—the kind anyone watching would expect a fielder to catch. The second and third were the same. From the fourth, it changed.
"Yoo Kang-min! You gonna run or what?!"
Big-league backup outfielder Yoo Kang-min ducked his head, sheepish under the coach's yell. The ball had jumped in difficulty like a game that suddenly cranked the settings, sailing outside the range he'd read—but it was the kind of batted ball that showed up in a real game all the time, and he was supposed to catch it. The mistakes didn't stop with the backup.
"Agh! How am I supposed to catch it if you hit it like that out of nowhere?"
"Sang-min! You're a starter, and that's what you look like out there?"
"I'm just not loosened up yet."
"Bullshit. Your legs look plenty loose to me!"
"What! Coach, come on! These are steel legs—I stole twelve bases last year!"
"Save it and get out of here! Next!"
Park Sang-min had been locked into the lineup for three seasons, someone the Phoenix couldn't do without, so the back-and-forth came naturally. After him came Choi Woo-sung, the man who swore Phoenix DNA ran through his veins. He really was a die-hard who loved the Daejeon Phoenix more than anyone, but among the fans themselves he was, in a lot of ways, a disappointing player.
In seventeen long years, Choi Woo-sung had put up numbers the league could actually respect for exactly four of them. Even those weren't consecutive, and for nearly half his career the production wouldn't have bought him a starting job on any club that wasn't the Phoenix, stuck circling last place or the bottom of the standings.
Last season had been his worst. A .224 average, thin enough that he shuttled between starter and bench, and on defense his slowed feet and shrunken range drew sighs out of the pitchers all on their own. This year's glove didn't look likely to move the needle much either.
"Fuck..."
Not one step short. Two. Choi Woo-sung couldn't close the gap, couldn't glove the ball, and the curse came out through a twisted face. The defensive coach, maybe weighing Woo-sung's age and his standing on the club, called the next man without another word.
As it happened, that man was Do Kang-hyun. Coach Jeong Tae-hoon wasn't especially warm toward him either. But if you looked at it coldly, the Titans tryout tape alone put his defense at the very top of the league.
We'll know once I see it.
Jeong Tae-hoon sent the next ball a full notch harder than anything the others had gotten.
Crack—!
Once the range opened up, fielders had already started missing, or barely hanging on. He'd hit this one even tougher than those, with no real warm-up behind it, and he figured Kang-hyun obviously wouldn't have a chance.
And yet.
"Whoa—?!"
Kang-hyun broke with the sound of the bat, faster than anyone, sprinting back and to his right on a diagonal, glove stretched all the way out.
Thock.
He pocketed the ball as neatly as you please. At that soft, clean catch, Coach Jeong Tae-hoon's eyes went wide.
"This kid... he's the real thing."
The test footage hadn't lied. And with it, a new expectation started to take hold: if it was Do Kang-hyun, he might throw the Phoenix outfield's tight little net wide open.
"At the very least, he's more than enough as a defensive replacement."
Of course, there was still plenty left to prove.