A New Pitch
Kim Hyeong-gu picked up the helmet that had clattered to the dirt and stared up at the scoreboard.
The board lit up with a clean 142 km/h.
That wasn’t a slider. A splitter? But…
He couldn’t quite accept that the pitch that had just owned him was a splitter.
Because…
They said his four-seamer, slider, and changeup were all elite, and that he’d shelved the curve for a while before starting to sprinkle it back in. They said he’d never thrown anything else…
In all this time, Kang Hajin had never once shown a splitter.
Kim Hyeong-gu turned toward the dugout with a look that screamed What the hell was that?
But the dugout had no special answers either. They were learning it for the first time right along with him.
“What just happened? Why’s he suddenly throwing a splitter?”
“I… I don’t know, sir. The analytics room never mentioned any other pitch.”
“Son of a bitch. We got completely smoked. What’s wrong with that kid? They said the medicals came back clean!”
“Yes, sir.”
“So this is his real stuff and he’s been hiding it the whole time? Does that even make sense?”
“Well… honestly, we never paid him much attention before…”
“Haa… I’m losing my mind. What do we do?”
“Maybe just lay off it for now? At least we’ve studied the four-seamer and slider thoroughly.”
“…Tell him to do that.”
“Yes, sir.”
And so the bench sign that finally came out amounted to nothing more than “figure it out yourself.”
Lay off the splitter and handle the rest however you can—a completely irresponsible game plan.
“Hoo…”
Kim Hyeong-gu let out a long breath and stepped back into the box.
The broadcast booth was just as stunned.
“That last pitch… looks like a splitter.”
“A splitter…? But Kang Hajin has never thrown a splitter before…”
“We’re looking at the slow-mo now… yes, there it is. You can see the fingers split.”
“Ah—yes. Split grip.”
“Watch how it comes in hard and then drops sharply right in front of the bat. A splitter… Kang Hajin is throwing a splitter.”
“Wow… a 142 km/h splitter. Flying in like a fastball and then just falling off the table—can hitters even touch that?”
“Not unless they’re sitting on it from the start. And when exactly did Kang Hajin polish this up?”
“Kim Hyeong-gu looks pretty shocked himself, doesn’t he?”
“Of course he does. They would’ve completely written the splitter out of Kang Hajin’s arsenal. He wasn’t even thinking about a dropping pitch.”
“Two outs, bases loaded, one strike. Let’s see who wins this battle.”
Naturally, the community was going just as wild…
They had already started stacking Kang Hajin up against Im Jong-hun, the man widely regarded as the best closer in the country.
“Looks like he got pretty shook.”
Watching the veteran Kim Hyeong-gu fail to hide the shock on his face, I smiled with quiet satisfaction and waited for the next sign.
Ko Mandeok, who’d been studying the instructions coming from the dugout, tilted his head slightly and flashed me a sign.
Whether it came from the coaching staff or was pure Ko Mandeok, I couldn’t tell—but it was the same fastball I’d been thinking of myself.
Only he wanted it low, around the knees on the inner half.
A tough ask. Miss by a hair and it either drifts over the heart of the plate or plunks the hitter.
Two outs, bases loaded, and another aggressive sign came flying in.
“Sheesh. If this goes wrong, don’t blame me~”
I muttered to myself and threw exactly what the sign asked for.
Crack!
It went exactly where Ko Mandeok wanted it.
Except Kim Hyeong-gu, as if he’d known it was coming, suddenly pulled his front foot back a fraction, opened his stance, and lifted the ball cleanly.
Thankfully it caught the top of the bat and sailed foul behind the catcher.
My heart dropped for a second.
“Aaargh!”
Kim Hyeong-gu finished the swing and roared in frustration. He’d thought he had it dead to rights.
How the hell had he known a low-and-inside pitch was coming and even adjusted his stance to sit on it?
I briefly eyed the runner at second, but Ko Mandeok hadn’t set his mitt that way or given anything away.
“Just pure feel? Analysis? Man…”
With two strikes now and a slight edge, I used the third and fourth pitches purely to tempt his bat.
On the third I went bold with a curve, but it dropped too early and he didn’t bite. The fourth—a well-located splitter—he simply froze and took for a ball.
Two strikes, two balls, two outs, bases loaded. Everyone in the park knew this was the moment.
Kim Hyeong-gu gripping the bat white-knuckled. Ko Mandeok flashing signs at me like a madman. And me, shaking my head at every single one.
I shook him off twice in a row.
He wanted another splitter or slider, one more soft toss to lure the bat. I didn’t like it.
Why keep running? I’d already walked two balls doing that.
The old me would’ve dodged a straight fight and tried every trick to coax a swing.
The me standing here now didn’t feel the need.
“If he hits it, he hits it.”
What else could I do? If I threw the best pitch I had and he still squared it up, that was beyond my control. A hitter doing his job—what was I supposed to do about that?
Well… since I was shaking off Ko Mandeok, if I threw my pitch and got lit up, it would be on me…
But no matter how I look at it, Kim Hyeong-gu doesn’t seem like he’s going to bite.
So the pitch I wanted was a four-seamer high and tight, just kissing the edge of the zone.
I knew if I left it out over the plate it could leave the yard. I’d already seen what happened when he sat on the low-and-inside one earlier.
“Still, this is the pitch I’m most confident in.”
Ko Mandeok accepted my greed.
He’d given in to me, so all that was left was to put the best pitch I could throw in the exact spot I wanted.
“Kuaah!”
A long stride, the arm whipping over the top, the seams biting into my fingertips.
That electric tingle told me I’d gotten a clean rip on it.
The ball drifted a little more toward the middle than I’d planned.
I’d squeezed every last drop of power out of myself and the command had wavered a touch. Didn’t matter.
Whoosh—
Kim Hyeong-gu’s bat sliced cleanly underneath the ball and spun through empty air.
“Stri—ike! Out!”
“Waaaaaahhhh!!!”
“Kang Hajin! Kang Hajin! Kang Hajin!”
I could see the crowd leaping and chanting my name.
“Whoa… that last pitch was really…”
“A little dangerous, right?”
“Huh? Dangerous? Are you kidding me? I thought you threw an upshoot.”
“What?”
“The ball just… floated up… damn…”
“Come on…”
“I’m serious, man! Your four-seamer always has a little rising-fastball feel, but that one actually climbed!”
Ko Mandeok was completely losing it. He was overselling it pretty hard, but…
I’d been pretty damn happy with that pitch myself, so I let him have it.
“Ah—right now on the screen is the final pitch that struck out Kim Hyeong-gu, correct?”
“That’s right. Look how nearly straight the trajectory is.”
“Yes. It really does look like it’s traveling in a straight line.”
“We usually call that a rising fastball. High spin rate reduces the natural vertical drop of a four-seamer.”
“So can we call this pitch of Kang Hajin’s a rising fastball?”
“Kang Hajin’s four-seamer already sat on the high end of spin rates before. But that last one… it looked like even more than usual.”
“Ah—so that’s why Kim Hyeong-gu swung right under it…”
“From Kim Hyeong-gu’s perspective the ball genuinely rose. Ah—what an incredible pitch he just threw.”
“Bottom of the eighth ends one-two-three, and now the top of the ninth. Kang Hajin takes the mound.”
“First pitch. Fifth batter Song Yeong-jin fouls it off. Shortstop fields it, throws to first—one out.”
“Sixth batter Jang Seong-bae. Two-and-two—swings through the dropping pitch! Strikeout!”
“Seventh batter Park Jun. One-and-one—he swings! High fly ball. Left fielder drifts under it easily—three outs! And that is the ballgame.”
We wrapped up the first midweek game on a high note and I finished the postgame interview cleanly.
The broadcast crew had clearly been pretty shocked by the splitter I’d suddenly unveiled, and by that final four-seamer that punched out Kim Hyeong-gu.
“When I threw that pitch, the feel in my fingertips was really strong. I thought I’d gotten a clean rip on it, and it turned out even better than I expected.”
I gave them the textbook answer, and they launched into a whole thing about rising fastballs, even dragging out some legendary senior who’d once dominated in the majors just to heap praise on me.
That was when Ko Mandeok suddenly popped into frame.
“I thought that pitch was an upshoot!”
He dropped that one line and bolted. The broadcast guys found it so hilarious they laughed for a solid minute.
After the interview I rinsed off quickly and headed out to find fans waiting.
Quite a few of them were already wearing jerseys with my name and number on them.
Before, I’d been signing other players’ names. Now I was putting my signature on jerseys that actually said Kang Hajin and 62, and it felt pretty damn good.
“Same thing tomorrow, okay?”
“I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”
I answered one female fan’s request with a little humility mixed in, then headed back to the apartment.
The second I arrived I collapsed onto the bed. When I opened my eyes again it was seven the next morning.
“What the hell?”
The moment I woke up, Ho-min was standing right in front of my face with a deadly serious expression, waiting for me.