Preparing to Soar (2)
Pop!
“Ball!”
“·····”
A fastball boring deep inside. Hajun twitched the bat forward the barest fraction, then held up. Neither the home-plate umpire nor the first-base ump even bothered to check for a swing.
There was a time when even this felt impossible.
Back then he had been desperate just to swing at anything. Before that, he could not even track how the ball was coming. Pro pitchers with frames harder than any high-school arm. Packed stands every single night. On a stage that different, calmly taking a pitch had been unimaginable.
But now it’s different.
He trusted his swing. There was no need to chase junk. He waited for the one he could drive.
“·····!”
The pitcher on the mound delivered, and Hajun’s eyes sharpened.
This is it!
CRAAACK!
He saw it clean and swung exactly the way he had drilled a thousand times.
“Hup—!”
Before the pitcher even finished his follow-through the ball was already screaming over his head. Neither the shortstop nor the second baseman had a prayer. A line drive slicing through the heart of the infield in mid-air. By the time the center fielder casually tossed it back in, Hajun was standing on first with his fourth hit of the day.
I can do this·····
He forced the pounding in his chest to settle. Satisfaction at this level would mean nothing more. This was the chance of a lifetime he had barely clawed free. Every second spent savoring the rush was a second he could have spent swinging the bat or taking another grounder. The skill set did not hit the pitch for him or glove the ball for him.
CRAAACK!
A clean, ringing contact. Ji Gyeongjun, playing second, watched the ball leave the bat. The moment it was struck it rocketed away like lightning. Second and third basemen could only stare.
Thud!
As the pitcher spun around, the ball took a hard hop on the infield dirt.
“·····”
And shortstop Lee Hajun snared the ball that had just exploded right in front of him. His weight was already shifting sideways when he caught it, yet the transfer out of the glove was lightning-quick.
“Out!”
The strong, laser throw that followed turned the batter into a very unhappy man.
Kid’s a straight-up animal.
Ji Gyeongjun let a smile of pure admiration spread across his face. A rocket like that bouncing up in your face and he just casually vacuumed it. Even a defender felt that primal fear when a ball came off the bat that hard—yet here was this kid.
Even on a Futures League stage where every player was hungry, Gyeongjun still could not fully grasp just how desperately Hajun wanted the call-up.
I’m going up. No matter what.
Hajun erased the play from his mind the instant it was over. Whatever pitch a pitcher threw, whatever ball a hitter drove—none of it mattered next to the fire of reaching the first team.
Pop!
“Strike three!”
The scoreboard flashed 154 km/h. Hong Jongyeon, the new fireball closer of the Seoul Grizzlies, had just slammed the door.
“Hong Jongyeon! Hong Jongyeon! Hong Jongyeon!”
The home crowd at Jamsil poured every ounce of love onto their national-team closer. Meanwhile the Daejeon Hawks road fans filed out with heads down after watching their two-three-four hitters all go down swinging.
Every game starts like a festival. By the end there are always clear winners and clear losers.
Pop!
“Strike three!”
Hawks three-hole hitter Park Jinhyeok’s swing cut nothing but air.
I thought it was down the middle·····
It had looked like a breaking ball riding in on his hands. The second he committed, the pitch was diving away to the outer half. No matter how many times he faced it, he still could not get a read on this ridiculous pitch. The nastiest weapon a right-hander could throw to a right-handed batter.
“James—!” “James—!” “James!”
“Skip·····”
Hawks bench coach Yoo Jinho spoke carefully, reading the room.
“Yeah, Coach Yoo.”
Competitive fire burned in Park Taesik’s chest; he was barely holding the anger down. It felt like the baseball gods were toying with him. On paper the roster was not that bad. Every time the team’s cycle started to climb, injuries yanked them back. Even average defenders committed errors in the biggest moments. The foreign hitter they had counted on had mailed it in and been shipped out; the scouts were about to work overtime through the entire All-Star break.
It felt like someone had driven a stake straight into his chest. Park Taesik still could not believe this season was real.
“Gyeongjun’s coming up too, so let’s get after it again.”
Ji Gyeongjun was a solid player, but he was not going to flip the whole script. Still, as the leader he threw out something positive.
“About that player I mentioned last time·····”
“Ah.”
He knew exactly who. The shortstop they had brought over from the Lakers—Lee Hajun. A kid he had expected nothing from. A kid he had still been half-doubting just a few days ago.
Even if it is only Futures·····
Since he started playing every day his average sat at a ridiculous .485. No home runs yet, but four triples already. Starting at shortstop and still flashing rock-solid defense. Numbers that shattered every bit of common sense Park Taesik possessed. With every team in the league hunting for shortstops, the Futures coaches’ defensive evaluations were usually pretty accurate.
“Bring him up with Gyeongjun.”
“Yes sir!”
Bench coach Yoo Jinho answered like a man who had just heard exactly what he wanted.
“Excellent call.”
He understood that a manager’s chair demanded caution. Baseball was an inherently conservative sport.
“Heh·····”
Park Taesik briefly wondered whether this sudden young shortstop might somehow break the suffocating cycle—then laughed the thought away. How could he hang everything on a kid like that?
His fist clenched.
We avoid the sweep. That’s the bare minimum.
Stay out of last place and punch their natural enemy, the Gwangju Kings, right in the mouth. That would be the first step toward spreading wings that were already a wreck.
“Hoo·····”
Lee Hajun stepped out of the Hawks Futures manager’s office in Seosan. He had one call to make right away.
“Hello?”
“What’s up, Hajun, calling this late? Did you eat?”
“The food here is actually really good. More importantly·····”
His mother never took long to pick up. Days were for player duties; evenings were for only-son duties.
“I’m getting called up to the first team tomorrow.”
“What? Really?!”
The pure joy in her voice pulled a smile onto his face. Funny how life worked. He had been on a first team once, then gotten traded and dropped to the minors. All he had done was find a new spot. Yet the feeling now was completely different from a month ago when he had walked out of the Jamsil manager’s office.
“Your dad kept saying you’ve been playing so well lately you’d get called up any day. I guess he was right. Aigoo.”
Hajun’s mother did not know much about baseball. She was the positive type, but she still got too nervous to watch when her son was in the game, and she had long since stopped reading online comments for fear of even one bad one.
“I’ll probably play a lot more than I did before once I’m up there.”
He said it with real confidence. Back with the Lakers those words had been pure reassurance for his parents. Now he simply wanted to show them something.
Of course·····
Whether the first team would feel the same change he felt was a different question. But he would crash into it head-on either way.
“Hold on a second—your dad just stepped out, he’ll be right back—”
“It’s fine, really.”
Hajun wanted to earn their belief with first-team performance, not just the call-up news.
“·····”
After the call he set aside the mix of joy, comfort, and quiet guilt. Those feelings could wait.
Weird.
He was not sure he had always been this way. Did the position make the man? The happiness of being recognized as a first-team player on a new club was real—yet somehow he was already looking past it. In the old days just getting called up right before the All-Star break would have been enough.
Gwangju Kings, huh?
Two games left in the first half. Saturday and Sunday home games at Daejeon Hawks Park. After Friday’s loss the series sat at 0-1. Lately he had been so locked into his own games that he had not followed the first team as closely, but he still knew the Hawks had been absurdly dominated by the Kings since last season and were winless against them again this year.
Baseball was a game of momentum. And momentum always flipped eventually.
“Hmm·····”
Hajun hoped the new wave that would one day rise might start this very weekend.