A Lifeline in Center Field
"……That concludes the report."
The Daejeon Phoenix coaches had gathered in a room that served as both the Arizona spring-training conference room and Manager Lee Man-jae's hotel suite. It had been only yesterday — the camp's first intrasquad, Blue against White.
Head coach Kim Do-jin finished walking them through the highlights and the results, and Lee Man-jae reached by habit for a cigarette, then clicked his tongue short and let his hand fall. He smoothed a palm over a mouth that felt too empty, and spoke.
"Luis Cardoso's fastball velo is a little down, but the off-speed stuff plays, and more than anything his command is steady. So we can give him a passing grade as the number two, just like we figured?"
"It's still early to lock that in, but I think he's worth expecting something from. The minor-league record shows the same pattern. Early in a season the velocity comes up slow, but the command was good enough that the results stayed consistent on the whole. The real flaw is what happens when the defense behind him wobbles. He tries to solve it all by himself, the walk rate climbs, the pitch count balloons, and he can't work deep into a game."
Defense coach Jeong Tae-hoon added his piece at once.
"You can just as easily call that flaw a strength, the way we saw yesterday. Once Jung-wan's ball was caught in the first and Hyun-woo's in the second, Cardoso's outing settled another notch."
Pitching coach Yoo Young-cheol nodded as if that were obvious, and on that point Lee Man-jae agreed.
"If anything, Jung-wan and Hyun-woo probably felt like those hits got stolen. Still — quality contact like that, first time seeing the guy, means their timing is good. If nothing major changes, I don't see a problem leaving the middle of the order in their hands again this year."
"Their condition really is sharp. They said they managed their weight through the winter and kept working in the gaps, and it shows. The swings already look like midseason."
At hitting coach Park Sung-hoo's praise, Lee Man-jae nodded as well, conceding that both bats had an edge to them.
"So as of now, nothing about Cardoso looks like a real problem?"
He looked to the pitching coach, who answered with an open, affirmative face.
"No, sir. He's been healthy since he joined the club, and yesterday he couldn't have been in better shape. If the defense backs him the way it did yesterday, then barring something unforeseen, I think he'll lock down at least the number-two job."
You couldn't render a final verdict off a single intrasquad. With a foreign arm, though, there was nothing to lean on but the individual record. He would still have to prove it more cleanly in the exhibition games ahead. Even so, matching exactly what they had projected in his first live outing was a distinctly good sign.
When the pitching coach finished, defense coach Jeong Tae-hoon offered his own view, careful with it.
"Personally, I'd like to keep testing Do Kang-hyun in center. You saw yesterday. Honestly, even if we'd put Sang-min out there, those balls off Jung-wan and Hyun-woo wouldn't have been easy."
"That's because Sang-min's body still isn't all the way right…"
Choi Ha-neul, the baserunning and strategy coach, started to object and then shut his mouth. "It's still preseason" was a poor excuse when Do Kang-hyun was under the same conditions — and if anything, a man who had only just turned pro deserved the extra credit. Kang-hyun was far older, besides, so sticking up for Park Sang-min, the supposed heart of the Phoenix outfield, sat wrong. Choi Ha-neul had cut himself off, but that only let Jeong Tae-hoon lean harder on the point.
"I'm not saying we hand him the starting job tomorrow. At least through the rest of the intrasquads, and in Okinawa, I want him to get every chance we can give him to show what he's actually worth in center."
He didn't so much as mention the preseason games. There was a reason.
If he keeps looking that sure out there, the way he did yesterday, the skipper will put him in the exhibitions on his own.
Jeong Tae-hoon's faith in Do Kang-hyun ran that deep. Defense, he believed, could be a fluke once. A second time, it was never an accident — and so he was convinced that what Kang-hyun had shown with the glove was one hundred percent real.
I don't know about the rest of it. But in the outfield, there's nobody on this club above Do Kang-hyun.
One other coach believed in him just as firmly.
"Since we're on Do Kang-hyun — I think the bat deserves as many chances as we can give it, too."
Hitting coach Park Sung-hoo was arguing for opportunity as well. None of the others pushed back, or worried aloud that the take was too one-sided. They couldn't.
That was the line he had made as a hitter. From the very first at-bat he had launched a towering leadoff home run, and in the second he went back-to-back off the same pitcher, Jo Ki-hoon. In the third, even with the pitcher living on pitchouts, he ripped a double through the right-center gap. In the fourth he beat the hold again and shot a bullet single to third.
Perfect in the box — and he showed them he wasn't finished there, not once he was on the bases.
The timing on those steals was absurd.
Choi Ha-neul's mouth had fallen open. Once from first, and twice from second he had stolen third. He hadn't even looked all that fast, but he took his jumps as if he already knew the pitcher wouldn't throw over, and that read was the whole of it. Intrasquad numbers or not, refusing a chance to a hitter like this — a runner like this — would land hard on every backup and farmhand fighting to crack the active roster.
"Heh."
Lee Man-jae let out a dry laugh. He'd already seen it without being told. It wasn't only the defense coach and the hitting coach who had fallen for the way Kang-hyun played. The baserunning coach had gone under with them.
Not that I have any room to talk.
He was the same. Attack, defense, the bases — he wanted to throw both arms wide and shout. At last, a player complete in all three phases had walked into the last-place Phoenix. He couldn't pretend otherwise. Premature as the thrill might have been, it had been a good feeling.
After the intrasquad, Do Kang-hyun could tell that the way the players treated him had shifted, if only a little.
"Sir! Good morning!"
"Sir! Was the meal all right!"
"Sir! Have a good one today!"
The younger guys bowed low and offered their greetings bright and loud.
"You remember me? We met in the Blue Dragon round of sixteen when we were sophomores. Hoyeon High — any of that ring a bell?"
"You said you came up with Min-ho, right? Then we're the same age. No need to stand on ceremony."
Men his own age, who until now had gone on pretending they didn't know him, began to sidle over and talk.
"Joo-il really did see it. We ought to get a meal with him one of these days."
"Enough with the 'sir'! Just call me hyung!"
The older players warmed to him too, and a familiarity that hadn't existed before stacked up fast. Not from everyone, of course.
"……What?"
Choi Woo-sung, for one, still couldn't stand the sight of him. He couldn't grind him down in the open, either. If Kang-hyun had been airborne out there — a one-man show, plain and simple — Choi had been ordinary enough with the bat and the glove to earn the review that he was the same as ever.
"It's nothing."
Choi had given him a sour, what-are-you-looking-at look for nothing more than meeting his eyes, and Kang-hyun ducked his head first, the old office reflex. His face stayed blank, but the shape of it was a junior apologizing, and with eyes on them Choi couldn't get another word out.
Ha! This son of a bitch, acting like a complete asshole. One intrasquad and his neck's already stiff. Just you wait, you little shit.
Choi Woo-sung poured the curses out where no one could hear them. Kang-hyun saw straight through them, and still only turned away with the same even face.
He'll be waiting for me to eat dirt. That isn't going to happen.
Even in the company years, on the work that was unfair and exhausting, he had been the stubborn kind — the one who stayed through the night rather than make a mistake. And now, with a talent other people simply did not have in his hands, playing baseball poorly was something he would not allow. Choi Woo-sung or no Choi Woo-sung.
That frame of mind only made him stand out more as camp wore on. Bunt work, situational hitting, live baserunning, focused outfield throwing — he worked harder than anyone in a Phoenix uniform, and the results matched the work. The coaches praised him so many times a day it was as if their mouths itched when they held it in, time and place be damned. Behind the dark sunglasses, Lee Man-jae's eyes spent longer and longer locked on the way he played.
On February 10, the second intrasquad took the field.
This time he was the Blue team's number-three hitter and the starting center fielder, and the pitcher who came over to him still had a pale, baby-smooth face under the hard Arizona sun.
"Kang-hyun, sir, I'm counting on your defense today. I give up a lot of flies to the outfield, so if you'll take care of those, I think I can actually stand up there and throw without bracing for the worst."
Baek Young-joon bowed out of nowhere. Twenty-six, and bouncing between the first team and the second, he was walking into this game with that much desperation on him. The defense Kang-hyun had shown in the last intrasquad was bound to echo loudest through the Phoenix pitching staff.
In baseball the center line matters enormously. Catcher, second base, shortstop, center field — the middle, the spine of a defense. A pitcher who needs that support at his back can only stand on the mound and throw his own pitch, free of worry, when those gloves are sound.
Modern baseball, though, had been tilting harder and harder toward the bat over the glove at exactly those spots, and the burden a pitcher carried up there had only grown.
For the Daejeon Phoenix it was worse than anywhere. Escape the cellar, juice the offense, watch the defense rot — that chain reaction had been stamped directly onto the lineup. From a pitcher's seat it was enough to drive you mad. The gloves were short, so the errors came often, and the offense everyone had been promised never quite exploded into runs either.
Baek Young-joon had barely known what it felt like to be helped by a defender in a Phoenix uniform. If anything, among every pitcher on the staff, he was the one who had cried over the most errors behind him, as if he had been dropped into a pit of rotten luck. Forget help.
The mistakes handed over runs that should never have scored, and no pitcher's mind could stay intact in that. In the middle of the wreckage, Do Kang-hyun's defense — the polar opposite of everything Phoenix — was a rope lowered out of the sky.
"If it's a ball that can be caught, I'll do what I can to catch it. Throw it easy."
At that, Baek Young-joon broke into a bright smile and nodded.
"Yes, sir! I'm putting my faith in you, Kang-hyun, sir!"
Joo Min-ho, who had been listening off to the side, stuck his lip out.
"So I'm the one you don't trust, Young-joon? Fine. Anything hit to second, I never saw it."
"Min-ho, sir! Of course I'll trust you too when I throw!"
"Hey — and shortstop?"
"Oh, for crying out loud. So third base is a hole, is that it?"
"Infielders, don't you dare throw it to first. I'll pound it into the dirt with my glove."
The teasing came from every side, and before long Baek Young-joon's fair, smooth skin had flushed so red it looked ready to split. Snickers broke out around them. Kang-hyun liked the looseness of it well enough, and he started getting comfortable for his first at-bat.