Come Out of the Warehouse
There was only one reason I had begun to doubt the life Baker was living. It was that remark of his—that he hoped the painting would rot away in a warehouse, the way he himself was rotting. Put another way, hadn't Baker already decided he was going bad?
He was living a perfectly comfortable middle-class life. Why would he think that? I needed a clue, so I sent Professor Jo Sudeok, and he came back with a fair amount.
Baseball gear enshrined like ancestral tablets. A devotion to Boston Red Sox games that still bordered on madness. From that, it wasn't hard to guess that his dream had been to play. He had aimed for the pros, and the dream had snapped off early. He must have felt that his whole life had come apart.
But why? Why did the painting have to rot in a warehouse?
At that point one possibility occurred to me. His parents' furious opposition.
Right.
The art filling that warehouse was staggering in scale—the sort of collection you could assemble only by giving a lifetime to art, out of absolute reverence. It was hard to imagine Baker harboring any love of that kind. Which left a single possibility.
He inherited it from his parents, of course.
Parents with a considerable eye for art. A lively son with enough artistic gift to have become an architect, who in truth loved baseball more.
So in the end he gave up baseball because they were against it.
The anger from that would have landed on blameless paintings, shoved into storage. And yet one question still refused to close: if he had loved baseball that much, why had he stopped playing altogether?
Because he hadn't made the pros? Because he couldn't stand the sight of the game anymore?
No. If he hated baseball, why lose himself so completely in Red Sox games? He enjoyed watching, and yet he wouldn't spare a glance for a club team or an amateur league.
Only one explanation satisfied me. I had thought he'd set the bat down because of his parents, but in truth, hadn't he felt the ceiling of his talent and let himself be shoved into quitting? A vicious circle—the less he could admit it, the harder he blamed them.
Why hadn't he held out to the end? Even if remarkable players had crowded the field, if he had gritted his teeth and kept swinging to the last, he might not have been left with a regret like this. The remorse of a man who fled too soon. He was only forcing his eyes away. In the end, wasn't the arrow of that anger pointed at himself?
"Was your parents' opposition just an excuse? Didn't you quit because you'd felt, all the way down, that you'd hit the limit of your talent?"
I asked it because I believed it.
"What the hell do you know, running your mouth!"
He wrenched the answer out like a scream. Looking into those two desperately unsteady eyes, I was certain my inference had landed. If I hadn't been an eleven-year-old brat, Baker might have grabbed me by the collar.
Anger with nowhere to go found another sacrifice at once.
"You bastard of a professor! What did you tell him, that the kid would say a thing like that! No—you set this whole thing up, didn't you? Otherwise..."
"Please, calm down."
Baker wasn't trying to hear me. His face said he wouldn't be satisfied until he'd poured every ounce of the rage inside him onto Jo Sudeok. But I was faster.
"You said you hoped the painting would rot in a warehouse, didn't you?"
"For God's sake, shut up!"
"No! Why should the painting rot? Because you're pouring yourself into it?"
"Professor, you worthless bastard—shut the brat's mouth! Or stop translating!"
"Stop planning to let the painting rot. You could just walk out of the warehouse yourself!"
"How! How the hell am I supposed to!"
He roared with his mouth open wide enough to show his throat.
"Climb into a time machine and go back? Is that it?"
"No. You could start now. Baseball."
"And what kind of bullshit is that!"
"You still love it. That's why you watch the games every day and write everything down."
"So what!"
He said it that way, and yet the shoulders that had been heaving with rage found their place for the first time. The eyes that had been throwing off flame seemed to settle, if only a little. At this much, a normal conversation was possible.
"Baseball isn't only something you do by playing yourself. There's no end of work outside the park."
"All I ever did was hold a bat for a little while when I was a kid. What am I supposed to do with a résumé like that."
"Then when do you plan to use those notebooks you've packed onto the shelves?"
"I just organized some stats. That's all."
That couldn't be it. There were official scorers for that work; why would he have compiled it all himself? He must have carefully added his own tactical notes.
"Statistical analysis, writing scouting reports... you don't have to be a former player to do that."
"..."
"You still have the heart for it, don't you? That's why you take notes while you watch. Because you don't want to let even that last chance slip away."
He tried hard to look unmoved, but Baker avoided my eyes. It was the moment the surprise inside him showed straight through.
"Let's talk more after you've watched this."
The words were hardly out of my mouth before the chauffeur came in carrying a large box. Inside were something like twenty videotapes.
"What's that?"
"There's a city called Gwangju. It's famous for baseball."
Baker tilted his head.
"Even there, they've got a pitcher who stands at the very top."
"And?"
"Explaining it would only wear my mouth out. Let's just watch."
The chauffeur had gone down to Gwangju First High himself to bring the footage back. Perhaps that was why his face, above the tapes, looked almost reverent.
"Young master, the first tape is the oldest material. After that, they're recorded in order of time."
"You heard him? This is from the pitcher's first year of high school."
Baker didn't look particularly interested—the reaction of a man wondering how hard an Asian pitcher, a Korean one at that, could possibly throw. Still, I had brought twenty tapes. He would at least humor me and watch.
Thwack!
At the first pitch, Baker shook his head.
"That windup takes forever. Pitch like that and you could give up ten stolen bases a game."
Thwack!
"Why is he stepping on the rubber like that?"
"Why? Is something wrong?"
"You're supposed to set up on the front of it. Step on the top and... ah, forget it. I'm not even going to say it."
The verdict, harsh at first, began to shift little by little once the second-year footage started to play.
"Is the radar gun off?"
"Off how?"
"No—can a man's velocity jump like that in a single year?"
"He's still growing."
"Even so..."
And then, after the third-year tape went in—
"...!"
Baker ran out of words at a startling speed. In their place he pulled out a thick college notebook and began scratching something down in a hurrying hand.
Fifteen minutes passed that way. In the brief gap while the next tape was being loaded, Baker turned toward me.
"This kid... what's his name?"
"Sun Dongyeol."
"What?"
"Sun. Dong. Yeol."
"That's too hard."
"You can call him Sun."
"The sun?"
"Yes."
With a perfectly serious face, Baker wrote it into the notebook.
"Well? This player. No good, because he's Asian?"
"Ahem. That is... well. Judging a man by the color of his skin is, how should I put it, an extremely old-fashioned idea."
"Is it?"
"O-of course. Continent—yes. What does it matter which continent a man lives on? Before a baseball, everyone is equal."
I let out a small breath of a laugh and asked.
"You still haven't answered me. What do you think?"
"Ah, right... I was definitely surprised. For one thing, his lower half is absurd."
"What happens if the lower body is good?"
"You drive everything you've got through your center, and then you can let the ball go. Put simply, you throw it from closer to the hitter."
"That would favor the pitcher?"
"Obviously!"
The lecture went on after that.
"The force usually loads into the shoulder, you know? But this guy knows how to use his waist. Meaning... he spreads the strain that would pile up in the shoulder down through his core."
"And what's good about that?"
"The shoulder takes less damage. It means he can last."
"You're a complete expert."
"Some expert..."
"No. You saw at once why this pitcher is outstanding, and you even explained it."
"..."
"So?"
"So what?"
"I was thinking it might be time you took yourself out of the warehouse."
For an instant, Baker's Adam's apple rolled, hard.
"Go to the Red Sox front office. Hold this video out to them. Tell them this is a player you found, and ask them to hire you as the Asia-Pacific scout. I have a feeling they'll print you a business card on the spot."
"Th-that's ridiculous. Even if he's from the middle of nowhere... at this level, Boston will already have been watching him on the quiet. Walk in with one scrap of information and they make you a scout..."
"Then you take responsibility for the contract, too."
"How? He's a once-in-a-generation high school arm... he'll be looking at a signing bonus of fifty thousand dollars... you think Boston is going to lay that kind of money on some nameless Asian player?"
"I'll put up the money."
"...?"
"I'll pay Sun Dongyeol's signing bonus."
"Fifty thousand dollars... you?"
"Did you forget? I'm rich."
For a moment Baker forgot how to speak. His face was the face of a man furiously counting every possibility that had just risen in his head.
"You'd spend fifty thousand dollars... just to get your hands on one painting?"
"Are you worrying about me right now?"
"Ahem."
As Baker's hesitation stretched on, I turned to Jo Sudeok.
You remember what I asked you for?
When I sent the signal with my eyes, Jo Sudeok lifted out the shopping bag he had brought in from the car.
"Mr. Baker, this is a present I prepared."
"A present?"
"Take it out."
Inside the bag was a vintage Red Sox uniform from the 1960s. The name across the back read Baker. The number was 51, the one he had worn as a boy.
"Back then, playing was your dream, wasn't it?"
Baker spread the uniform open with both hands, and the signatures crowding it came into view. Jerry Adair, Mike Andrews, Gary Bell, Ken Brett, Joe Foy, and others besides—the Boston players he would have looked up to like idols, back in the years when he himself had dreamed of taking the field.
"Where... did you get this?"
"Get it? We tracked each of them down and had them sign."
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why?"
"All of this, just for me?"
Instead of answering, I pointed at the center of the jersey.
"You see the spot with no signature?"
"...?"
"I left it empty on purpose. So a player you discover yourself can put his name there."
"Me... discovering someone?"
"Are you going to stop with one pitcher, Sun Dongyeol? You'll have to keep bringing the others in, won't you?"
Perhaps it sounded like a dream. For a long time Baker stared down at the uniform, his face blank with disbelief.