Opening Day (3)
If things go well he might get 20K lmao
The community boards erupted the moment Han Doyoon's Opening Day performance hit. And the reaction went well beyond a simple he pitched well — people started zeroing in on the numbers he was putting up.
Seven innings of perfect baseball.
Sixteen strikeouts.
Eighty-three pitches.
Two records began circulating in the same breath almost immediately: the single-game strikeout record, and a perfect game.
Some said it was too early. Others warned against jinxing it. None of that stopped the anticipation from building.
Two innings left. Six outs remaining. Han Doyoon on the mound.
Nothing was over yet — but everyone already knew this was no ordinary Opening Day.
And the players on the field knew it just as well.
"Nice."
"Looking good today, Doyoon."
…What's going on?
When I came back after finishing the bottom of the seventh, the locker room atmosphere felt off. Through the bottom of the sixth the energy had been almost too high — but this was different.
They were still hyping each other up, sure… yet something about the way they treated me felt careful. Almost like they were avoiding me.
The whole vibe was too ambiguous to ignore, so I asked Kim Gyeongmo.
"Something going on?"
"Hm?"
He glanced at me, looked away for a second, then met my eyes again.
"Nah. Nothing."
"You sure?"
A brief silence.
"…You really don't know?"
"Know what?"
"…Never mind. Maybe it's better if you don't."
He said it and looked away again. That only made me more curious. Kim Gyeongmo clearly had no intention of answering no matter how many times I asked, so I left him alone and went after Kang Daegeun instead.
"What's going on? Why's everyone so quiet?"
"Uh… I, I don't really know, sir…?"
Kang Daegeun's reaction was just as awkward.
"Come on, what is it."
"Ah, that thing, sir. That thing."
He clearly knew something, but all he would call it was "that thing" — never actually saying what. I kept pressing until he finally cracked.
"Well, uh… hyung-nim. The perfect game…"
Ah.
That was when I finally understood the strange atmosphere. And the tension started creeping in.
"Hoo…"
I took a deep breath on the way to the mound for the bottom of the eighth. Saying I wasn't nervous would have been a lie, but I tried to stay as calm as I could.
There was only one thing I needed to do: put the next pitch in the strike zone, the same way I had all night.
I stepped onto the rubber, settled my feet on the rubber, and slowly lifted my head.
Bottom of the eighth. Leadoff batter. Two innings still left.
And then—
"Hup!"
Crack!
From the very first batter, they started putting the bat on the ball with almost no pretense. It wasn't a swing meant to drive anything. Just contact. Pure contact.
"Toward short — Kang Daegeun fields it and throws to first — out."
The intent was obvious. Rather than keep striking out, they were choosing to put something — anything — in play and hope for a break.
If you put the ball in play, anything can happen.
The so-called contact-or-bust approach.
Once I understood the intent, it was time to counter it.
Whoosh!
"Strike!"
All I had to do was aim more decisively for the corners.
After losing velocity, I had sharpened knife-edge corner work into a new weapon. And with the location for each pitch type locked in through recent training, my command was even more precise.
Crack!
Besides, batters locked into that contact-first mindset had a tell: they forced swings at pitches just off the plate and produced weak contact.
Two pitches later I got a pop-up to the catcher for another out, and shook out my shoulder once.
Then the sixth hitter, Kang Hoseop, stepped in again.
I had shown him a low cutter inside in his previous at-bat, so from a guess-hitting standpoint he was now down to three pitches he had to cover — which left me with a lot more room to work.
First pitch was, of course, a high fastball inside. A 161 km/h four-seamer was the best pitch for testing what he was hunting.
Whoosh!
"Ball."
Kang Hoseop didn't so much as flinch at a pitch that missed just off.
I went right back to the same location, trying to establish a conversation.
"Strike!"
Whatever he was thinking, he still didn't move.
One ball, one strike.
It looked like he was sitting on the slider again, but throwing the same pitch to the same spot three times in a row felt like too much risk.
Four-seamer.
I worked the PitchCom and put down the sign. Kim Gyeongmo must have been thinking the same thing — he set his mitt low and away.
Whooosh!
A pitch that knifed into the zone.
Whoosh!
"Strike!"
The big empty swing finally told me why Kang Hoseop hadn't been reacting.
What — he just can't catch up to my stuff.
The realization settled something in my chest.
Full Effort — activate.
Full Effort
Forces max velocity · Doubles stamina consumption
From here on, I was ready to wring out whatever stamina I had left.
"Kang Hoseop swings right through it! Ah, Han Doyoon is really grinding through every pitch out there."
"That high fastball inside against right-handers has been outstanding this game."
The caster nodded along with the analyst.
"They're clearly struggling to handle that location."
"It's the recent trend. Pitchers who trust their velocity go after that high fastball aggressively."
Before the analyst had even finished, Han Doyoon was already into his next pitch at a quick tempo.
Whooosh!
This one low and away.
Kang Hoseop's bat came through late and desperate.
Tick.
A faint sound — and the ball was sucked into the catcher's mitt.
"Foul tip — strike three!"
Waaaaaah!
The crowd exploded the instant the caster called it.
"Man, that is a beautiful pitch."
The analyst layered admiration into his next line.
"He completely lifts the eyes with the high fastball inside, then finishes low and away."
The replay caught the ball grazing the end of the bat before vanishing into the mitt. On the mound, Han Doyoon dropped his head, gathered his breath, and walked slowly toward the dugout.
End of the eighth.
The scoreboard still showed a zero.
The moment I came off the mound, I went straight for Kim Gyeongmo.
"Hyung, can we talk for a second."
"Huh? What?"
He still had his mask on and whipped his head around at my voice. His eyes were already locked tight. Somehow he seemed more wound up about the perfect game than I was.
"Take the mask off first."
"Yeah, yeah."
When he came back without it, he studied my face first. He looked so tense I figured I should be the one to start.
"Hyung. It's the bottom of the ninth."
"…"
"We've got something on the line. A perfect game."
"Hey— hey…! Why would you say that out loud!"
"Come on, it's fine. That's all just superstition."
"Even so…!"
His hands were actually trembling a little. At this rate the conversation wasn't going anywhere, so I cut straight to the point.
"I've been thinking about something."
"Yeah. Yeah."
"Their hitters keep trying to just put the bat on it, right?"
Kim Gyeongmo nodded.
"So here's what I'm thinking————"
As calmly as I could, I walked him through the picture in my head, piece by piece. Following along, Kim Gyeongmo's eyes started to widen.
"…Hold on."
He cut me off, then muttered under his breath like he was rearranging it in his mind.
"If we go that way…"
"Yeah."
Then, short and sharp:
"…That's actually perfect."
For the first time, certainty cut through the rigid tension that had been locked on his face.
Bottom of the ninth. One last step remaining.
Last offseason, Kwak Daehwi and Gang Junseong sat across from each other in a quiet café.
"Hyung, are you really okay not going to the Mariners?"
Gang Junseong's hometown club — the Busan Mariners. A team that had nearly stormed the postseason the year before had been aggressive in free agency for veterans, and Gang Junseong's name had naturally been on that list.
He had turned the offer down without hesitation and stayed with the Wonju Flyers.
"Yeah."
Not a flicker of doubt in the answer. The brevity of it only made Kwak Daehwi frown harder.
"Because of Doyoon? You saw something in him, didn't you."
"I did."
"What could be worth that? It's your hometown team — and you walked away from the Mariners for it?"
Gang Junseong looked down at his coffee for a moment, then slowly nodded.
"The kid might look a bit dense,"
"…Hyung."
"but he's got natural instincts."
Kwak Daehwi's gaze locked onto him.
"What kind of instincts?"
"How to get outside a batter's expectations."
Gang Junseong paused, then added it with absolute certainty.
"He knows it instinctively. That's something you're born with."