Frontier League Exhibition Game (1)
"All right. We'll leave the hitting report there. Next is the pitching staff... and the first man I want a look at is Kang Moo-baek."
The moment Rick Hernandez spoke the name, the pitching coach answered as if he'd been waiting for it.
"His pitching data is excellent. In live batting practice the hitters couldn't find any timing at all — you could see them laboring. If you look at the pitch data we submitted, his spin rate holds beautifully right around a hundred revolutions per minute. And he has not thrown a single mistake pitch."
The knuckleball.
Among the pitch's deadliest risks was the mistake pitch itself. Killing the spin completely was so difficult that the slightest slip of the fingertips put rotation back on the ball, and a slow pitch that spun became the easiest batting-practice meatball a hitter could ask for.
A knuckleballer who never throws a mistake pitch. No such pitcher exists in this world.
If you named the legendary knuckleballers who had left a clear mark on the long history of the game, there were three: Phil Niekro, Tim Wakefield, and R.A. Dickey. Even those greats committed plenty of mistake pitches when they threw the knuckleball. They were simply judged dominant because those mistakes came far less often than anyone else's.
By that standard, a week of Kang Moo-baek with zero mistake pitches deserves to stand alone.
Rick Hernandez called up the image of Kang Moo-baek on the mound.
Even the delivery is unusual. A delivery as compact as the legendary Tim Wakefield's. So stripped down that someone who doesn't know baseball would think he was just lobbing it.
That compact motion made the transition into a fielding position after the pitch perfect as well. His balance never came apart, and the defensive numbers were measuring out just as beautifully.
By nature the knuckleball produces a lot of ground balls. A pitcher who can field his position is never a bad thing.
Rick Hernandez let out a low, heavy sigh. The reports from the pitching coach and the analyst could not have been better, and still a deep unease sat in one corner of his mind.
The problem... is the catcher. It's been a week of pairing him with our starting catcher, Colton Burns, and the receiving hasn't shown the slightest sign of improving.
He was sitting there with his brow knotted when the battery coach rose from his seat at the table.
"Skip, I've got something else to report on Kang Moo-baek."
"Go ahead."
The battery coach hesitated, straightened his notes, and then spoke.
"This is yesterday's pitch data on Kang. Take a close look at the receiving numbers."
The data he put up on the monitor recorded, in detail, every pitch Kang Moo-baek had thrown the day before.
"We've only got about a day's worth of collection, but if you go by this alone, the receiving looks reasonably stable."
Rick Hernandez stared through the report, and then his eyes went wide.
This data... the coach is right. It has improved. The passed balls are down sharply, and the stability of the receiving has jumped.
The gloom on his face cleared in an instant.
It could be a one-day fluke... but what matters is that a clear, visible improvement showed up. If he can just hold these receiving numbers, I can use him in a real game without a problem.
Rick Hernandez nodded and spoke.
"Then we'll watch a little longer. See how far the battery work between Kang Moo-baek and Colton Burns can still improve."
I stood on the bullpen mound and stared a hole through the catcher's mitt.
In the crouch, a young Black man in his early twenties was breathing hard and resettling his mask. Colton Burns, starting catcher for the independent-league Schaumburg Boomers, staying late every day for extra work in the hope of somehow catching my knuckleball.
"Hey, Kang! How about it? Don't I look better?"
He slapped the dirt off his thighs, stood, and tossed the ball back as he asked.
"You're getting there. A little more and you'll be ready to play in a real game."
A complete lie, of course. Colton Burns's receiving was no better now than it had been a week ago. Even the most gifted catchers in the major leagues struggled terribly to catch a knuckleball. There was no way a catcher in an independent league was going to improve his receiving after a single week of work on a pitch that nasty.
What's actually improving isn't Colton Burns. It's me.
Throwing to a live catcher was something I didn't have much experience with either, so I'd needed time to adjust. The ball moved erratically all the way to the front of home plate, where the hitter swung, and in the split second after it passed the bat I steered it so it settled naturally into the mitt.
Once it's already gone by the hitter and there's no way he can hit it, I just ease it into the mitt.
If the mitt was so far off that dragging the ball into it would look unnatural, I had no choice but to let him miss it. In every other case, I could adjust the path as much as I liked to make the catch easy.
Of course, if he caught a hundred knuckleballs out of a hundred, that would be its own kind of impossible.
So in side work and in live pitching alike, I staged a few balls getting by him on purpose.
It'll ding his catching numbers, but hey, not my problem.
If I'd been some overflowing saint of a man, I never would have started this cowardly business of playing baseball with telekinesis in the first place.
But I don't have much of a conscience, do I? I still don't know how I got this telekinesis, but it only works when I'm holding a knuckleball grip. That's an ability that exists to be used when I throw a knuckleball.
And if it really was a gift from God? Then using it more aggressively against hitters would be God's will. Maybe even God had wanted to see the beautiful path of my knuckleball.
Which is why he handed me this telekinesis.
...Or not.
Maybe it was just some mutation that had suddenly surfaced in my body, the way it happens in movies and comics.
Either way, all I have to do is use it well. Use it cleverly enough that nobody ever catches on.
And that was exactly why I was out here every day, putting in extra work with Colton Burns without a word of complaint.
Spring training for the Schaumburg Boomers was racing toward its end.
Spring training in an independent league is not long — a short stretch of roughly ten to twelve days, not even two full weeks. Three to five exhibition games in that window. On those results, the final 25-Man Roster would be decided.
The real roster gets cut on those results.
With the last exhibition game ahead of him, Schaumburg Boomers manager Rick Hernandez was sunk in thought. The report the battery coach had brought him yesterday kept circling in his head.
The club's own intrasquad scrimmage, not long before. The result of sending the Kang Moo-baek and Colton Burns battery to the mound had been nothing short of shocking.
Not a single hitter reached base.
Not one of the Schaumburg Boomers' proud starting hitters had set foot on first. It hadn't been a full nine innings — more of a live session, one batter at a time — but the performance Kang Moo-baek had shown on that mound could only be called overwhelming.
Do I send Kang Moo-baek out in this exhibition?
The option of putting him on the release list had been deleted from his mind a long time ago. He'd been holding him out of the exhibitions only because of the receiving issues with the catcher. The knuckleball itself had a finish that soared far beyond independent-league level.
And here I thought what I picked up at the tryout was a bomb. Turns out it was a winning lottery ticket. Heh.
The corner of Rick Hernandez's mouth lifted on its own. A player who made him glad just to think about him. That was Kang Moo-baek.
If I had my way, I'd keep the card hidden to the end and spring him as a surprise on Opening Day.
Just picturing the look on the opposing manager's face already made him want to laugh. A choice that bold, though, was harder than it sounded.
Practice and a real game are not the same thing. I've seen more than one or two kids chew up an intrasquad and then fall apart the moment they stand in a real game.
In the end, sending him out in the last exhibition and sharpening his feel for live competition was the right call for a manager.
The next day. The final exhibition, the finale of spring training. The Schaumburg Boomers' starting pitcher was Kang Moo-baek.
The opponent was the Joliet Slammers. Like the Boomers, an Illinois club — the geographically closest team they had.
Overlapping territory means the rivalry usually runs pretty hot.
Against that rival, Rick Hernandez did not hesitate to name Kang Moo-baek the starter. In truth, the title of starting pitcher meant little in an independent-league exhibition. Nobody was going to be asked for a deep outing; it only meant you were the first man to the mound.
I'm not planning to let Kang Moo-baek pitch long either. One inning or so. If his feel for the game looks all right, I'll have him right back off the mound.
A first real game.
Everyone has a first time. And most human beings, standing in front of that first moment, lock up tight with nerves. I was no exception.
Shit. Why are my legs shaking like this?
I was a failed player who had never even made an American high school team. Never having played a real game with a proper crowd and umpires was, in a way, only natural.
I pitched a lot in the middle-school league... but that was middle-school ball, a lifetime ago.
It was so far back that the memories of those days had gone hazy. I planted my shaking legs, stood on the mound, and held a hand out toward the plate for a ball. The moment I caught the baseball Colton Burns tossed me, I slid my hand into the glove without hesitation, pressed the tips of my nails into the leather, and took my knuckleball grip.
The heart that had been pounding went cold and still in an instant.
Hah. Now I can breathe.
I closed my eyes and savored the calm settling in. An exhibition game. Nothing more than an exhibition in an independent league. The stands were nearly empty, a stage as quiet as they came. I opened my eyes slowly and looked out at the batter's box.
Right. It's only an exhibition. My real stage is the major leagues. Getting nervous on a mound like this would just look pathetic.
I let out a long breath and eased into my delivery.
"Play ball!"