The First Record in Five Seasons
Korean baseball is a small world.
Word of the Titans' tryout traveled, as a matter of course, to every club in the league.
"I hear some kind of monster showed up at the Titans' tryout?"
"He's thirty-two? Not twenty-two? What has he been doing all this time, only now deciding he wants to play baseball?"
"He was on Yang Joo-il's show? The god of hitting?"
"Word is the Titans coaches were adamant they had to sign him... Check whether that's actually true."
"Get me the test footage. I want a look at it myself."
"Yang Joo-il ran interference and they couldn't even stamp the contract? Find out exactly what happened."
"An outfielder? Hmm. If he's an outfielder, there's not much in it for us right now..."
"Reach out today! We've already got a hole in the outfield for next season—at least call and ask him to come in."
"He's got an agent? Who? Jang Woo-seok? Oh—that lunatic?!"
The offseason was already more than enough to drive every front office out of its mind. Clubs that had finished well were scrambling to carry that success into the next year; clubs that had taken a beating from their own fans were scrambling to rebuild something that might soothe them. Salary talks with the current roster. Locking down their own free agents before they wandered. Signing outside free agents who could actually move the needle. Hunting fresh imports. Unlike the players, who could finally stretch out and rest, a front office sometimes had to carve sleep down to whatever the crisis would allow.
Into the middle of all that walked Do Kang-hyun, out of nowhere—the last face a front office with a splitting headache wanted to see. Yang Joo-il watching with his eyes wide was burden enough; it was no exaggeration to say he was the man who had discovered Kang-hyun. The agent, Jang Woo-seok, was something else. To anyone who knew the name, he was a disaster waiting to happen.
Sure enough, the disaster went off.
"What? If we want to negotiate a contract, we have to accept an Early FA Acquisition Clause?"
"Free agency off two seasons of numbers? The man's insane!"
"Is he mouthing off just because he's thirty-two?"
"From the look of it, he's stapled on one of those MLB performance opt-outs. Is he actually that good?"
"Debut at thirty-three, and two years later he's thirty-five? So the whole play is to squeeze in one taste of free agency, no matter what."
"Everyone else has to grind eight or nine years for that. Shortcut it down to two, and ordinary numbers won't come close."
"Is there any reason to sign a guy like that if it means tearing down the order we've already got?"
Jang Woo-seok had set one condition above every other in any contract talk with Do Kang-hyun: the Early FA Acquisition Clause. If Kang-hyun met specific marks across two consecutive seasons, the club would grant him free-agent status. No complaints. No debate.
"Is there a club anywhere that would accept terms like that?"
Even Kang-hyun had to wonder who on earth would take a condition this absurd.
"Let me ask you one thing. Are you the sort of man who thinks, If it isn't Korea, I won't play?"
"I've never thought that. Realistically, I'm not in any position to choose my stage. Right now, if I can play baseball anywhere at all, that's enough."
Jang Woo-seok nodded, plainly satisfied with the answer.
"I'll have the test footage circulating tonight—to the States, of course, and to Japan, Taiwan, and everywhere else."
"...Will that even work?"
Common sense said that a condition Korea itself was refusing would not be welcomed anywhere else. Kang-hyun certainly thought so. Jang answered with a face full of certainty.
"Your test footage, and the results that come with it, are the kind of thing a great many people will have no choice but to notice. Trust me, and wait. Oh—and you remember what I said the other day, about turning public opinion your way?"
"Yes."
"Three days from now, you're filming a variety show."
The suddenness of it pulled a frown across Kang-hyun's face. Jang Woo-seok, as if every piece of the plan were already in place, looked entirely sure of himself.
Steel Baseball.
The most famous sports variety show in Korea. Its Steel Heroes—a team assembled entirely from retired professionals—played high school and college squads made up of the country's elite, Korea's second-team clubs, even independent-league teams from nearby Japan, and the show was enormously popular for it.
"I really do try not to go on this thing, if I can help it..."
Yang Joo-il let out a long sigh, then looked at Do Kang-hyun and went on.
"But if it's for my junior, I'll lend a hand. That's the spirit I'm walking out there with."
"I'm grateful, as always."
"Save the thanks. I've got a stake in what happens to you, so it's only right."
"Then why were you so set on staying off a show this famous?"
"You haven't seen it? This place is brutal! They call it variety, but if you don't want to get your face shoved in the dirt, you've got to train like you're still active. I retired—what riches and glory am I chasing out here... Haa. I did this to myself."
He wasn't wrong. The retired players on Steel Baseball—some of them, anyway—were good enough that people said they could step back into a big-league lineup tomorrow and not look out of place. Lean on old glory and start putting on airs, and your own teammates would turn on you, to say nothing of the viewers and the abuse they'd send your way.
"Anyway. Let's play a good game today."
Today's taping was the start of Yang Joo-il joining the show in earnest, as a Steel trainee. Do Kang-hyun, meanwhile, would appear on the other side, as a member of a Korean independent-league team. Yang and the agent, Jang Woo-seok, had talked the producers into the spot, and that left Kang-hyun with a weight he couldn't shrug off: he had to be worth watching today.
"Well, look who it is! Sunbae Joo-il! We begged and begged and you turned us down—heh heh heh—and now you walk in on your own two feet? The rest of us are joining once the season's over and we've had our tryout. What's with showing up as a trainee? Looks lame."
Park Su-wan, once the franchise star of the Incheon Rangers, needled Yang Joo-il through a grin. Behind him came Song Mun-hak, the signature bat of the Changwon Dragons; Lee Yong-su, a .300 hitter who had spent all fifteen of his years with the Seoul Duonex; Kwon Ji-hyuk, treated as a legend in Daejeon Phoenix colors; and others besides. Superstars of the KBO once. Now the core of Steel Baseball, crowding in to greet Yang like old friends.
"This is my junior, Do Kang-hyun. You've all heard the stories, so you know the gist—he's suiting up today as a guest for the other side, so let's say hello."
At the introduction, the Steel Baseball players turned curious eyes on Do Kang-hyun. They had retired from active duty, but most of them still worked somewhere in the game, and every one of them had already heard the rumor at least once. That only sharpened the interest.
"I hear you came out of Goryeo High? I'm a Goryeo alum myself. You know me?"
Lee Yong-su, fifteen years with only the Seoul Duonex and a career average of .300, offered his hand and opened the conversation.
"I heard about you until my ears wore out when I was in school. It's an honor to meet you. I'm Do Kang-hyun."
"That's Goryeo for you! I watched Joo-il's show—that swing is pure Goryeo."
"Yong-su hyung! There is no Goryeo style. This guy, honestly."
"Hey! Did you go to Goryeo? I'm telling you, our swings are clean, just like this kid's! You think fifteen years of a .300 average happened by accident?"
They could have frozen him out as some stranger who had popped up out of nowhere. Not one of them looked at Do Kang-hyun sideways. Yang Joo-il was a sturdy pillar at his back, yes—but more than that, here was a fellow baseball man taking a hard, late swing at a dream at thirty-two, and what they felt was closer to sympathy. They wanted to cheer for him.
"Let's play a hell of a game today. Not that hitting my stuff will be easy."
Hong Jun-oh. In his playing days, a legend of the Gwangju Thunders, with 185 career wins in the KBO. Barely a year retired, still meticulous about his body, and already locked in as the ace of Steel Baseball. Variety show or not, he pitched as close to perfect as he could against whoever stood across from him. High school and college hitters went without saying. Even KBO second-team lineups had been smothered by him more than once or twice.
"It's an honor to share a field with you. I'll give it everything I have."
"Yeah. I saw Sunbae Joo-il's show too. I've been dying to find out how well you really hit... Let's make it a fun one."
Hong Jun-oh still carried the competitive fire of his playing days, and Do Kang-hyun set his jaw to match it. He was not going to lose.
CRACK—!
The lead announcer's voice rang through the booth, raw with excitement. Beside him, retired player Seo Won-ho—on the call as the show's main analyst—spoke like a man half out of his body.
Seo Won-ho shook his head, past hollow disbelief and into something like surrender. Where does a hitter like that even come from?
The announcer and the analyst talking as if they were just chatting was part of the show's fun, and they weren't exaggerating. Hong Jun-oh, starting for the Steel Heroes, had been as close to perfect as the word allowed. The sixth was underway, and nine strikeouts already told the story: against his pitches, the independent-league hitters had no answer at all.
One man was different. One hitter. Do Kang-hyun.
Batting second, he had opened his first at-bat by rifling a clean double into the right-center gap. In the third, with a runner aboard on a walk, he drove one over the fence in left-center.
And now, in the sixth with one out, he had just sent another over the right-field fence—home runs in consecutive at-bats. Up on the mound, Hong Jun-oh followed him as he quietly circled the bases, and the hollow little laugh of a man who couldn't quite believe it was caught clean on camera.
Six innings, and Hong Jun-oh came out. Three runs, yes, but the Steel Heroes had already put up six, and if the lead held the rest of the way, the win was his.
It didn't hold. Do Kang-hyun blew the victory away before the end.
Do Kang-hyun stepped in with the bases full and nobody out, turned on a sinker diving down and in, and yanked it clean over the left-field wall. That was enough. Nothing could have told the world what kind of hitter he was more perfectly than this.
Two weeks later, Steel Baseball went out nationwide.
The reaction—
"The fan boards of every club have gone insane."
The broadcast hit hard. The moment it ended, calls started pouring in from everywhere, and Do Kang-hyun had to shut his phone off.
"I'm setting off one more."
"What? What are you—"
Jang Woo-seok uploaded a video on the spot. The full cut of Do Kang-hyun's outfield defense test from the Titans' tryout, released without a flinch.
The Titans' permission?
"And why would that be my problem?"
That was what he said. In truth, he had already vetted it and confirmed there was nothing to stop him. It hadn't been a closed tryout. Every other participant's face was thoroughly obscured.
There was no commercial aim behind the footage—no ad revenue to chase—so the Titans had no real way to block it. With his defense now fully in the open on top of the hitting, baseball fans' interest in Do Kang-hyun began to burn like a furnace.