A Laser on Opening Day
Saturday, March 28.
The day countless baseball fans had waited and waited for had finally dawned: KBO Opening Day.
Do Kang-hyun was up early, taking stock of how his body felt.
"Not bad. No—at this level, I'm fine."
With his professional debut only hours away, he coached himself into reading his condition in the best possible light. The truth was he had barely slept, wound tight with nerves and the pressure to perform, but he told himself that nearly every player felt the same standing on the edge of a debut. He had just finished a hot shower to ease the fatigue from his muscles, and a simple breakfast, when his phone erupted.
Kakao! Kakao! Kakao!
The thing was ringing itself hoarse.
Of the Opening Day tickets he'd received from his agent, Jang Woo-seok, Kang-hyun had given two to his parents and sent the rest to the younger guy he'd met at the batting center and to the people from his old company. There was no grand meaning in it. They had cheered for him, and this was simply one way to say thank you. He checked the messages, answered each with a short word of thanks, and immediately started getting ready to leave the house.
"Mighty Daejeon!"
Boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom!!
"Mighty Daejeon!"
Boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom!!
Long before first pitch, Phoenix fans who had filed in early were already roaring at the top of their lungs, pounding out a prayer for an Opening Day win. Just like the Busan Titans, the Daejeon Phoenix had sold out their home opener faster than any of the ten clubs, and the seats at Phoenix Park were filling in real time.
Kang-hyun and the Phoenix players loosened up on the field, while fans who had booked seats close to the grass shouted the names of their favorites and beamed.
"Oh Hyun-woo! Oh Hyun-woo!"
"Hyun-woo! Over here! Over here!!"
"Let's go, Hyun-woo!"
Whatever anyone else might claim, the biggest star on the Daejeon Phoenix was Oh Hyun-woo. Every time he passed, the fans called his name and cheered, and he answered them with an easy wave. Young as he was, there was something about it that struck Kang-hyun as properly professional—something worth learning.
"Nervous, Kang-hyun?"
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't."
"A debut really makes your skin crawl, doesn't it? I came up as a backup and was just watching the game without a thought in my head when they suddenly threw me in in the fifth. You have no idea how bad I was shaking. Pitches that never bothered me suddenly felt like they weighed a ton. And afterward, the side of my thumb was black with a blood bruise, you know? I was so tight my receiving was a complete mess. Didn't even realize it hurt until the game was over."
Listening to him, Kang-hyun could believe every word. Some hitters said the ball had never looked so frightening as it did in their debut at-bat. Some pitchers said the hitter seemed to swell into a giant. Some fielders said their whole body felt heavy, as if shackles had been locked around both ankles. That was the weight a debut laid on you.
"Still, you look about as steady as I figured you would."
"I was so nervous I barely slept last night."
"That's the unavoidable debut debuff. How many people do you think get a good night's sleep before their first game?"
Even Kang-hyun had to admit that a player with nerves of true steel would be a rare creature. He nodded in agreement, and Hyun-woo studied him with a look that said he was seeing the man anew.
"Maybe it's the years on you, but you really do feel steady. Honestly, most guys playing their debut are kids. They get worked up too easily, wind themselves so tight with wanting to do well that they stiffen up and botch things. You don't really have that, so part of me thinks, is this what experience looks like? And then I watch you the rest of the time and think, no, maybe he's just built this way. Either way, if it's you, I figure you'll be fine. I'm not worried."
"Aren't you laying it on a little thick?"
"A guy who hit .800 in the exhibition games can fly around all he wants!"
Hyun-woo said it with a laugh, as if Kang-hyun had every right, and somehow a little of the tension drained out of him. Confidence rose in its place.
"What are you two going on about that's so funny?"
Joo Min-ho wedged himself between them. Same as last year, he had locked down the starting second-base job and Lee Man-jae's trust for another season, but his exhibition numbers had been ugly, and his mood lately had been nothing but gloom.
"We've got to cheer Kang-hyun on for his debut."
"......Leave this idiot alone. He does fine by himself. What's the point?"
Hyun-woo snickered at Min-ho's sulking, and Kang-hyun clicked his tongue at a friend who was still visibly bent out of shape.
"I'm not a coach. What am I supposed to teach you about hitting?"
"Yeah, yeah. Rack up all the hits and homers by yourself, why don't you. Your one and only friend on this team will put up garbage numbers, watch his free agency go up in smoke, and I guess I'll open a fried-chicken joint while I'm at it. Hyun-woo, you wouldn't happen to know the deposit and the monthly rent on a chicken shop by the Daejeon ballpark, would you?"
"Heh heh heh heh!"
Hyun-woo laughed so hard he clutched his stomach, delighted beyond saving, while Kang-hyun stared at Min-ho with an expression that asked whether the man had lost his mind. Then, all at once, something came back to him—a small hitch in Min-ho's swing that had nagged at him all through the exhibition games.
"I don't know about the rest of it. Try laying your wrists over just a little when you swing."
"My wrists?"
"Give me the bat."
Every time Kang-hyun had watched the swing, he'd had the feeling that a small correction at the wrists would raise the odds of squaring the ball up by a lot. With a hitting coach standing right there, he hadn't thought it was his place to step in. But if Min-ho was going to whine every time they saw each other, he might as well say what he'd noticed.
"Like this?"
"That's too flat. About that much."
"Hmm...... I'm not really getting it."
"If you're not getting it, don't worry about it."
"Still. The god of hitting offered advice. I've got to take it for a spin in today's game."
As if he had never been grumbling at all, Min-ho turned serious and swung the bat without pause, drilling the tip into his hands.
"What about me, Kang-hyun?"
"......You're already good."
Oh Hyun-woo had hit a whopping .400 in the exhibition games. Kang-hyun had no interest in running his mouth and then being left to deal with the consequences if something went wrong with that swing.
The opponent for the Phoenix's opening two-game set was the Incheon Rangers, who had finished fifth in the league the season before. A formidable homegrown ace. A sturdy middle-relief corps that could smother an opposing lineup no matter the moment they were called. A batting order whose pieces locked together and refused to break. The Rangers had enjoyed a dynasty of their own once, and they were nobody's easy mark.
"Play ball!"
With the plate umpire's call, Opening Day began. From center field, Kang-hyun looked in at the man standing on the mound for the Phoenix: Luis Cardoso. He had been signed with something like a number-two starter's role in mind, but through camp and the exhibition schedule he had been the best pitcher on the staff, and he had claimed the Opening Day start without apology.
Crack!!
The instant the ball jumped off the bat, Kang-hyun broke reflexively toward his left. Yoon Da-on, the right fielder, got a jump as well, but Kang-hyun was two strides ahead of him and hauled the ball in without trouble.
"Whew, you're fast. Too fast. Hyung, don't try to catch everything yourself. Leave a few for me."
Da-on laughed and tapped Kang-hyun's backside with his glove after the easy fly had been put away. Five years younger, and the line drew only a faint smile before Kang-hyun jogged back to his spot. The Rangers' number-two hitter pulled the sixth pitch, but he couldn't get it past the glove of Clay Bryan, the third baseman with the rock-solid defense. Two outs. Into the box stepped the number-three hitter: Woo Jo-hyun, the Rangers' franchise face and one of the league's marquee bats, standing on the doorstep of 400 career home runs in the KBO.
▹ Pulls down the left-field line.
▹ All contact trends fly ball. Hold your depth.
▹ Almost never goes the other way.
▹ Exit velocity: above average.
Kang-hyun checked the shift card, slid three steps toward left field, and measured the distance to the warning track.
Better to drop back a little more.
Once he had settled into a deep position, he even ran the math on a ball hit straight off the fence—which way the carom would kick. Fence contour, the likely path of the ball: he turned the simulation over in his head and locked in on the duel between pitcher and hitter. Luis Cardoso, wary of a man who punished mistakes with home runs, worked the edges as tightly as he could.
He trusted the ABS, more precise than any human eye, and still his respect for the hitter was so deep that the usually well-commanded pitches leaked off the plate a hair at a time, and the count ran against him. At 3–1, Cardoso went to the slider. It was a sharp one, boring from the outer edge in toward the body, but Woo Jo-hyun swung without hesitation and got the barrel to it.
Crack—!
A big, clean sound rolled out like thunder, and the ball tore for the outfield at the speed of a bullet. Woo's exit velocity sat above the KBO average, and the ball was at the fence in a blink. Left fielder Park Sang-min and center fielder Do Kang-hyun both chased it, but there was no catching this one. All that remained was to watch it become a home run, or to play the ball once it slammed off the fence and kicked back.
Top of the fence!
Kang-hyun drew the carom in his head before it happened. The ball was aimed at a hard stretch along the top of the wall, which meant it would rebound hard, and he was already moving to the spot he had chosen.
Thud!
Just as he'd pictured, the ball struck the top of the fence and sprang back. He barehanded the one-hop in a flash, and there was Woo Jo-hyun, rounding first and heading for second. Confidence surged up through him.
I can get him!
From the warning track he took a single crow-hop and fired with everything he had at Joo Min-ho, planted on the bag at second.
Whsssshhhhh—!
The ball left his fingertips and flew dead straight at Min-ho, a laser beam in the most literal sense.
"Hup—!!"
Pop!
Startled as he was, Min-ho gloved the incoming throw cleanly and spun in the same motion.
Woo Jo-hyun, sprinting for second, never even got a slide off. He just stared, blank as a row of question marks, at Min-ho and at the ball sitting meekly in that glove—the face of a man asking what in the world this situation was, and how anything this absurd was allowed to happen.
Tap.
Min-ho stepped in and laid the glove on him. The second-base umpire, fumbling for his voice in the face of the ridiculous, got the call out.
"Uh—out!"
On an ordinary day, Woo Jo-hyun's drive would have been a routine double. Because of Kang-hyun, it went into the book as a single and a baserunning out at the same time, and the inning was over.
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
That impossible, enormous throw was entered into the record as the first assist of the 2026 KBO season.