The First Official Game
The first official event of the Daejeon Phoenix's second spring camp was an exhibition game.
"Today's starting lineup."
The bench coach pinned the card to the dugout wall.
The faces that studied it told different stories. Men who found their names nodded, or let a small smile touch the corner of a mouth. Men who didn't found their expressions crumpling, or going hard, and the air around them sank so fast the rest of the dugout seemed to hold its breath.
You could tell yourself it was only an exhibition. But this was the first official game to crack open 2026, and simply being written onto that card was enough to loosen a chest with relief, or tighten it with hope. In a profession where competition was the given, a healthy body—no injury to hide behind—made the board a sensitive thing.
Anyone who had half-hoped for a surprise found, for the most part, the same names the club had leaned on last season. The impression was hard to shake. This was the starting nine the manager and the coaches were already sketching in their heads.
Which was why one player took the card harder than the rest, and looked ready to punish something for it.
Bang!
"Haaah— goddamn...!"
Choi Woo-sung kicked an innocent trash can, dragged in a long breath as if a curse were coming with it, and stalked out of the dugout instead. A few of the players watched him go, footsteps still steaming, and frowned as they let the complaints out under their breath.
"Every time Woo-sung does this, it gets on my nerves."
"Leave him. Far as he's concerned, he worked his tail off in Arizona and still can't get into an exhibition. That's why he's hot."
"He knows damn well it torches the room, and he does it anyway. That's what I can't stand."
"Still... he's got to be hurting, doesn't he? We should just understand and let it go."
"Understand what? However bad he feels, how do you cover for a guy who dumps his whole mood on everybody? By that logic, is there a single day all season the dugout stays good?"
"That's fair. I don't care how rotten you feel. You don't do that on a team."
"It's Woo-sung's last year under contract. He's going to be touchier than usual. He spent most of last season as a backup, so of course he's uneasy."
"This is Woo-sung's walk year? Then... whatever."
The veterans, and the players with weight in the room, said what they thought without hesitation. The ones without that weight only watched, and kept quiet. Do Kang-hyun was among the watchers. Whatever Choi Woo-sung's private reasons, he figured it was obvious enough: a player who soured a clubhouse was never going to be well thought of in a team sport.
"Feeling good about taking my spot, Kang-hyun?"
"Mm..."
"Kidding! I'm kidding. You're definitely not like the rest of this room. All those years in an office, maybe? Anyway, I fully accepted you back at the Arizona camp."
The one who dropped down beside him and started talking was Park Sang-min, the man whose primary position Kang-hyun had taken. Sang-min was the heart of the Phoenix outfield, and its core—a player with league-average defense and a league-average bat.
Twenty-eight, still young, and the fans in Daejeon had hung a good deal of hope on him. Give him a year, they said, or two, and if he took a real step forward the club might finally have one of the league's true outfield stars. And yet...
They always said the injuries were what held him back.
He had never once played a full season, so the idea that his body wouldn't hold up had stuck hard. Maybe because of that, the small injuries kept coming, and his name landed on the injured list four or five times over.
Some people refused to write the stamina problem off as purely his own. The Phoenix outfield was thin, and the weight of having to carry it was real; the toll of defending it, and the injuries that followed, were an evaluation you couldn't simply ignore.
"Honestly, at first I was ready to look at you through a tinted lens. Then I saw you defend in Arizona, and I didn't have a choice. I had to admit it. And this stays between us—if you can take center, I'm welcoming you with both arms open. Just don't tell the manager or the coaches I said that. Heh."
Kang-hyun was halfway to wondering whether Sang-min meant it when he remembered what Joo Min-ho had told him in Arizona.
Sang-min? Good guy. Easy personality. But center weighs on him. Call it a compulsion to be perfect. It's pretty strong, and he gets hurt a lot forcing plays he shouldn't.
Ankle, shoulder, wrist, back, hamstring, oblique—Sang-min's list of places he'd torn up forcing outfield plays was a long one. And as the injuries stacked, the body inevitably gave a little less back. Last season the defensive metrics and the batting average had both taken a clear step down.
"Watching you play defense, I don't even know what to call it. Animal? Your positioning doesn't look all that different from mine, but the way you react to the ball, the eye that reads the path—it's so far beyond me it gives me chills. In the end it's talent you were born with, I guess. Something like that. Anyway, because of you I can take the defense a little easier and actually focus on hitting. So I'm counting on you from here on out."
Sang-min said it with a straight face, and Kang-hyun answered in kind—that he still had plenty of shortcomings, and that he'd be grateful for the help. Sport was competition, he knew that, but taking the everyday center-field job from a man who had held it for several seasons had left him quietly sorry.
Sang-min coming to him first, light on his feet and honest about it, let Kang-hyun accept the position with an easier mind. Playing it as close to perfect as he could—that, he decided, was the professional thing.
"Oh—and I'm counting on you in the box today, too. If you mash the way you did in the intrasquad and rattle the pitcher once you're on base, chances are going to come my way. However it looks, I gave up center, so I need to show that the bat got better. That's the only way I hang on to even a little pride."
He said it with the serious face swapped for a comic one, but Kang-hyun could see that the eyes hadn't come along. They had settled heavier than at any point in the conversation. A professional's pride. Park Sang-min was not a man who would fold that easily.
The exhibition between the Daejeon Phoenix and the Chunichi Dragons' farm team was underway.
"Murakami's feel is excellent today. The Daejeon hitters won't solve him easily."
Hideki Kusano, the pitching coach, said it like a verdict. He had reason. Ryunosuke Murakami, today's starter, had entered the organization as the second pick of the 2024 draft, and the club had watched his development with strict, hungry attention. His farm numbers last year had been very good. The odds of him pitching in the top team this season were high, and one reason he was on the mound today was to build his confidence against KBO hitters.
"Did you tell him which bats to be careful with?"
"Of course. Among the Phoenix hitters, the ones Murakami needs to respect are the two, three, and four holes."
Takashi Inoue, the farm manager, looked over the Phoenix lineup and brought up the fifth hitter, Kim Tae-san.
"You can't ignore Kim Tae-san's power, but his precision has fallen off a great deal from what it was. He's the classic victim of a pitch that drops. Murakami's forkball is as good today as it's ever been. As long as he doesn't hang one, I don't think we have much to worry about."
The certainty in the coach's voice found an answer in a nod. Inoue thought the same.
Then the leadoff man, Yoon Da-on, stepped in. His style was textbook—fast, good with the barrel, happy to take his walks. The kind of leadoff hitter the Phoenix trusted without a second thought. But he never got to show the speed, the bat control, or the sharp eye.
"Strike!"
A fastball that knifed the outer half. Murakami had dared to throw a pitch that touched ninety-four miles an hour into the zone, and Yoon was gone in three pitches.
"Guy's in a hurry."
Yoon shook his head on the way out of the box, as if he hadn't expected the other pitcher to come out quite that aggressive. From the on-deck circle he'd meant to pass a word to the next hitter, but Clay Bryan was already nodding and walking to the plate as if he didn't need it.
"Tch. Fine. He played in the big leagues. He'll figure it out."
Yoon clicked his tongue, ducked into the dugout, and started explaining Murakami's stuff to the Phoenix hitters in earnest. He was only a few sentences in when the sound came.
Crack!
A clean, bright report, and Clay Bryan shot a ball through the hole between third and short and stepped on first.
"Nice, Bryan!"
"That's a big leaguer for you!"
"Yeah! Knew it!"
Yoon's three-pitch strikeout could have sat on the dugout like a wet blanket. Bryan wiped it clean with one tidy hit, and the cheers poured over him. The Phoenix dugout lifted. The face on the mound did not.
Damn it.
The pitching coach had warned him to be careful with Clay Bryan. Murakami had heard it, and underneath the warning he had still written the man off—a big leaguer who had failed, and then chosen not even Japan but Korea.
Next time I pay you back the same way.
He swore the revenge to himself and went to work on the three-hole, Oh Hyun-woo. Irreplaceable on the Phoenix, and a catcher who belonged on the short list of the best in the KBO. Murakami carried the proper respect into the at-bat. It didn't save him.
"Ball four!"
"Tch."
He had been shaving the edges of the zone, and one pitch missed by just enough to be called a ball. Full count became a walk. He had struck the leadoff man out cleanly. Now the two-hole and the three-hole were both on base, and the catcher, Naoki Saito, came up the mound.
"Ryunosuke, forget the hit. Your stuff is excellent today. Attack them with confidence. Korean hitters can't touch your pitches. Trust me."
"Yeah, yeah."
He let the words of Naoki Saito—a career farm catcher past thirty—slide off him, and watched the four-hole, Park Jung-wan, taking vicious practice swings in the on-deck circle. The most dangerous bat on the Phoenix. With first and second occupied, Murakami saw no reason to challenge him straight on.
Even if I walk him, I'll do it with chase pitches. Hide the forkball and deal with the five- and six-holes. That's the safer play.
He made the plan alone, walked another full count, and filled the bases after all.
Bases loaded. Kim Tae-san, the designated hitter, in the box. The glove was nothing special, but the bat had carried real power—thirty-seven home runs in his prime. As his hands lost the breaking ball, and contact slipped away with it, the fans had taken to sneering at him as an empty-calorie slugger. A few still trailed him with the old hope that one swing was in there somewhere.
Whoosh—!
"Swing! Batter's out!"
The first big-dropping forkball he showed, and Kim Tae-san waved through it. Exactly as Murakami had drawn it up, he struck out and left the box looking helpless.
The six-hitter... nothing there worth looking at.
When the lineup had come over, the name was unfamiliar, and he'd had to scramble for information. What he found was less surprising than it was absurd. A rookie signed this year—and thirty-three years old, short on real game experience. The corner of Murakami's mouth twisted. Standing in the box, the hitter didn't project an ounce of menace. If anything, Murakami could only imagine how locked up a green bat must be, stepping in with the bases loaded.
A fastball away?
He frowned at Saito's sign and shook him off. Spending a ball was fine. A fastball that missed away was a pitch that did nothing.
The last guy just ate a forkball. Show him another and stamp it into his head. This is why that catcher never gets out of the farm.
He insisted on the forkball, and got his way: a pitch that knifed down hard, just in front of the plate. As expected, the hitter didn't move.
Heh. His head's full of forkballs now. Time to steal a strike with something up?
After a forkball that nearly spiked in the dirt, Murakami chose a fastball through the top of the zone. Nothing easier, he thought, for getting ahead of a hitter whose brain was branded with the fork. He reared back and let it go.
It came out mean. The ball jumped as fast as the one that had fooled the leadoff man for a strikeout, and Murakami was sure he could carve up the Phoenix's sixth hitter however he liked.
This was the moment the hitter should have flinched, or frozen, and given up a strike he never saw.
Instead he swung, utterly at ease. As if he had been waiting for this pitch. Hard. Fast. Light, and clean.
CRACK—!!!
The ball shrank to a dot in an instant, and Ryunosuke Murakami stood frozen on the mound, able only to blink.