They're Pissing Me Off Again
Honestly, I'd been worried sick heading into today's game.
No—scratch that. The worry stuck with me all the way up onto the mound, right until game time.
Even after my final pregame check, when the radar gun flashed 155 km/h, I still couldn't quite trust myself.
It was that nagging fear—what if I climbed the mound and just… turned back into the old me?
And then—
There it was, stamped across the scoreboard: 164 km/h. The crowd's gasps and awed murmurs rolled through the stands.
A little confidence came trickling back.
Whap!
"Stri~ke!"
163 km/h. A little more confidence.
Whap!
"Stri~ke! Out!"
A 163 km/h four-seam fastball painted the outside corner for a looking strikeout.
"Hoo… nice. Nothing wrong."
I hadn't taken the pills. I hadn't been with Han Song-yi. And still—no problems at all.
The confidence swelled higher.
Fastball checked out. Time to test the other pitches.
I sent the sign to Ko Mandeok first.
First pitch: changeup inside.
Tick.
"Foul."
Second pitch: slider running away outside.
Tick.
"Foul."
Third pitch: still outside, but this time a slider diving vertically.
"Stri~ke! Out!"
The batter, expecting another pitch to run away like the second one, just watched it go by and walked back to the dugout with a strikeout.
"Breaking stuff's fine too…"
The anxiety vanished completely, and out of nowhere I thought of the first time I met the Hooded Woman.
She'd appeared out of thin air, shoved a pill into my mouth—and from that day on, my skill and standing as a baseball player had changed completely.
I'd trusted a total stranger and taken her medicine, and it had brought me all the way here.
I'd believed for over two years. So why couldn't I trust her this time? Why had I been so anxious…?
"Not enough faith. Faith."
The muttered words sounded so much like some religious convert that I couldn't help snorting a laugh.
Peterson, the number-three hitter just stepping into the box, seemed to say something as he looked at me.
Ko Mandeok shot something back at him.
Peterson muttered something else at Ko Mandeok.
"Doesn't look like a fight… and he's a decent guy, so it's probably nothing."
I remembered Peterson speaking highly of me in that last interview. Anyone who compliments me is a good person, right?
And the way Ko Mandeok and Peterson were grinning while they talked, it couldn't be anything serious.
So I tuned them out.
Their exchange ended soon enough—probably the umpire cutting it short.
Tick.
A fastball inside got jammed, and the ball lofted high into the air.
"Out."
One pitch. Final out of the first inning.
"What were you two talking about earlier?"
"You don't know?"
"Huh? No—you were going on with him for a while, weren't you?"
"Yeah. I was."
"……??"
"No idea. He said something in English and started laughing, so I just laughed back and answered in Korean."
"……"
So they'd just been talking past each other.
No wonder their laughs never quite lined up.
"Hey. More importantly—aren't you muscling it too hard this early? Ease up a little. You trying for another perfect game?"
"No. Just felt like my condition was a little off, so I put some extra on it."
"…The ball's good, so just throw like usual. What the hell is 164 km/h? I thought my palm was gonna get blown through."
"Pfft. Yeees, sir~"
Today's starter for the Jaguars was Lee Chan-dong.
The player who'd taken the second-most abuse after Manager Min Gucheol on the Olympic national team.
The reason was simple: he'd been called up as Kwon Jong-jin's replacement.
With Kwon Jong-jin out, they'd suddenly plucked Lee Chan-dong—who was sitting at 3–7 as a starter at the time—and baseball fans were never going to swallow that.
If he'd at least pitched well after getting selected, fine…
"Looks like he fixed the way he steps on the rubber."
I'd faced Lee Chan-dong once last year.
Back then, Ko Mandeok had caught how he was stepping on the rubber and we'd won relatively easily. The only pitch he threw from a different spot was his forkball—Ko Mandeok spotted it, and we used that to take him apart…
Apparently he'd fixed that.
"I know. But it looks like that's all he fixed."
According to Ho-min, he'd started tinkering with this and that and ended up becoming a pitcher who was neither here nor there.
His former bread-and-butter forkball had lost its bite, and a guy who'd once been the team's number-three starter was now fighting just to stay in the fifth-starter conversation…
CRACK!
"It's gone! It's gone!"
Ko Yeong-su crushed a massive home run that cleared the center-field wall.
Then Park Jeonghun followed with a double.
The pitching coach visited the mound, trying to settle a shaky Lee Chan-dong.
"I was planning to just focus on pitching today…"
But this changed things.
No reason to go easy on a pitcher already unraveling in the first inning.
With one out and a runner on second, they intentionally walked Seo Gyeongmin to load first base.
Then Shane stepped in. I moved into the on-deck circle and watched Lee Chan-dong's pitches.
"Ball."
The first-pitch forkball bounced in absurdly early.
"What the hell is that? Why's it dropping so soon?"
A forkball needs to get out in front of the hitter before it dives—that's when a batter either bites or doesn't.
Lee Chan-dong's forkball was falling way too early.
You couldn't get fooled by that if you tried.
"No wonder he said just sit on the fastball."
The second Ko Yeong-su had come back from his home run, he'd told everyone not to bother with anything else—just hunt the heater.
I'd figured his fastball was just off today… but that wasn't it.
Shane took two forkballs in a row.
Without so much as a flinch, he casually worked the count, then got a fastball.
Tick.
Shane's ball shot through the hole between third and short. The ball was so hard, and the left fielder got to it so quickly, that Park Jeonghun had to hold at third. One out, bases loaded.
"We've got a chance~ We've got a chance~"
At this point, even if someone told me to take it easy, I couldn't.
I gave a light nod to the umpire and the opposing catcher and stepped into the box.
"Aren't you crowding a little too much?"
Kwak Jae-min, the Jaguars' catcher, grumbled as I planted myself right on top of the plate.
I ignored him and chewed on the thought.
I'd been thinking about this before I even stepped in. In a situation like this—could Lee Chan-dong really throw inside?
If he tried to be aggressive inside and slipped even a little, something big could leave the yard. Would he really go in there?
My conclusion: absolutely not.
He wasn't that kind of mentally tough pitcher. And he wasn't precise enough with his command either.
So inside was off the table.
Forkballs I could see and take. He supposedly threw curves and sliders too, but honestly none of them were anything to write home about.
One out, bases loaded—and he was going to try to win with pitches he couldn't even throw well? No chance.
So the only thing I was hunting was a fastball away.
Sure, every fastball he'd thrown today had gotten lit up—but if he wasn't throwing that, he had nothing left anyway.
That was the plan as I waited for the first pitch.
"Hey!"
"You son of a bitch!!!"
What the hell was this?
Lee Chan-dong's first pitch came screaming at my shoulder.
Or somewhere around the shoulder and face, really.
I jerked out of the way so hard I ended up sprawled on the ground.
Startled and half-outraged, I turned my head without thinking—and there was Kwak Jae-min, the corner of his mouth curled up just slightly.
He wiped the expression fast, but I'd already seen it.
"……A beanball. At a pitcher."
"What? Hey. It was just bad command—what beanball?"
"Throwing a brushback at a pitcher…"
"I told you, it's not like that."
"Interesting. I hit 164 km/h today."
"……Are you threatening me right now?"
I was about to answer Kwak Jae-min when—
"That's enough! Both of you—warning. Leave it there."
The umpire's intervention cut it short.
I waved back the few guys who'd come out because of me.
Then I looked at Lee Chan-dong, the one who'd thrown the ball…
"Huh?"
That guy's face looked like he'd just bitten into pure shit.
Annoyed he hadn't hit me? Didn't seem like it…
Had someone ordered him to throw it, and he had no choice?
Who? Manager Seo Jang-ho?
That man wasn't the type to order something like that.
Then who…
"Ahh~ so that's how it is."
Kim Jin-tae, playing third base, was making a face and flashing some kind of sign at Kwak Jae-min.
Kwak Jae-min took the sign and relayed it to Lee Chan-dong.
Lee Chan-dong's face twisted again for a second.
But he nodded.
Suddenly the team's most senior player was calling the signs…
Not the manager—the oldest guy standing out there on defense.
The catcher took it and passed it to the pitcher.
"…They're pissing me off again after all this time."
I had a pretty good idea how this was going.
Just one thing I couldn't understand.
Why the hell were these guys doing this…?
It was only the first inning. One out, bases loaded in the first—and they were deliberately trying to hit me? Accepting the runs?
If it were the late innings of a game already out of hand, sure—but this…
"Ah, whatever. No reason to understand it. You guys started it, so…"
Not my fault.
Then something flickered through my mind.
"Don't tell me this is payback for the perfect game?"
No way. They couldn't be that petty.
I crowded the plate again, right up against it.
Somehow I had a feeling about this next pitch. So I crowded even tighter…
And of course.
The ball left Lee Chan-dong's hand, seemed to float up slightly, then came drifting toward me on a lazy arc.
A curveball.
A curve he barely threw all game—and he was pulling it out here.
Throwing it at me.
From Lee Chan-dong's perspective, this was probably the best he could do.
Thud!
The ball came inside again and finally caught me in the back. The crowd exploded.
Over in our dugout, guys looked ready to charge out any second.
"Don't come out."
I raised a hand to hold our dugout back, then slowly peeled off my gear.
Without any reaction at all, head down, I jogged slowly to first.
I stepped on the bag. First baseman Heo Yun was standing right there.
"This is fun."
"Huh?"
"You weren't in on it too, right, hyung?"
"W-what are you talking about?"
"Nothing."
Heo Yun looked a little flustered. I'd said it with a smile, though.
"Th-that was just… bad command, you know."
"Of course. I'm a pitcher too—I get it."
"R-right?"
"Yeah. My command goes off all the time."
"…It's a real misunderstanding. Why would we do that in the first inning? We just started the game."
"I know, right? I don't get it either. Did you guys just give up on today's game from the jump? I have no idea what you're thinking."
"……"
"Don't worry. My command will be just fine when I throw to you, hyung."
"……"
Our team scored four runs total off Ko Mandeok's sacrifice and Choi Min-gi's bases-loaded walk.
Then the top of the second.
Tick.
"Out."
I got the cleanup hitter, Heo Yun, on a fly to right.
Tick.
"Out."
Next batter, Noh Jae-jin, grounded out to third.
Then the number-six hitter—third baseman Kim Jin-tae.
I got ahead 1–2 with a curve and two sliders.
Then the fourth pitch.
I shook off Ko Mandeok's sign for a slider away and flipped him one of my own.
Four-seam.
Ko Mandeok shook his head at my sign.
But when I put up the four-seam again, he shook his head once more—and still raised the mitt.
Outside.
The seams locked tight into my fingers inside the glove.
The extra force in my hand was probably just my imagination.
The ball left my hand.
"Aaaagh!!"
Kim Jin-tae was on the ground, screaming like he was dying.
I forced a worried look onto my face and hurried over to him.
"I'm sorry. Are you all right?"
The umpire scowled at my concerned face and pulled me away.
The look in his eyes said, I know exactly what you did.
But the fact that he didn't eject me on the spot meant he was letting this one slide…
Fine by me.
Kim Jin-tae was eventually half-carried off the field.
Straight to the hospital, probably.
A pinch runner took his place at first. Next batter: So Yeong-seop.
But the way this guy was standing…
He was set up pretty far off the plate.
"…I'm not planning to hit you."
I threw four pitches, all away, and finished the second with an easy strikeout.
Then the third.
One out. Stepping in: the number-nine hitter, the catcher—Kwak Jae-min, the one who'd been smirking earlier.
THUD!
"Aaaagh!!!"
I just threw it first pitch. Right at Kwak Jae-min's waist.
I'd turned my body and aimed for the hip, but the guy was slow spinning away and it caught him somewhere awkward.
I was ready right away. For what?
A bench-clearing brawl.
Our dugout looked ready to pour out too…
"They're not coming?"
The Jaguars' dugout was just… quiet.
A few players were on their feet, but overall it was silent.
"What the hell?"
I was still puzzled by the reaction that didn't match my expectations when the response came from somewhere else.
"You're out of the game!"
Well. That much was inevitable.