I Can See Your Pitch
"Shit!!"
A juicy curse carried all the way from the mound.
"Whoa~ now that was a delicious swear."
Even to my ears it sounded perfectly seasoned.
The only problem was that the guy doing the swearing… wasn't Korean.
So who was it? None other than Mr. Barnett, our Game 2 starter standing on the mound.
That guy… he'd been studying Korean, and lately he'd started stumbling through a few words. Simple greetings were a given, and he could manage "thank you" or "sorry" well enough… but when it came to swearing, he'd learned it perfectly.
I fully understood why Barnett was cursing up there right now.
Why?
Because the exact same thing had happened to me.
"Once you can call an accident. Twice, and you have to figure it was on purpose."
Here's how it went down.
Top of the fourth. Score tied 1-1. Leadoff hitter Jo In-beom took a pitch right on the elbow.
It was a ball headed for chest height on Jo In-beom, who was crowding the plate and waving his bat way too aggressively.
Then the problem started… Jo In-beom pretended to dodge while slyly shoving his elbow inward.
The ball just grazed the elbow guard that had come out to meet it and settled into Jeong Jong-seong's mitt.
The home-plate umpire ruled it a hit-by-pitch.
And the moment Barnett saw that, he let out that juicy curse, jabbed a finger at someone hard to identify, and stomped off the mound.
Batter or umpire… both of them were standing there together, so maybe it was both…
"Just take one step toward the mound. I dare you."
I was half hoping… but unfortunately Jo In-beom quietly chose first base instead.
Didn't even glance at Barnett.
Which left only Barnett fuming…
He'd given up a free baserunner with nobody out, but the veteran Barnett didn't rattle.
"Out!"
"Yes!!!"
He just celebrated a little too hard.
After that both our team and the Raiders scratched across one more run each, so we headed into the top of the sixth still knotted at 2-2.
And wouldn't you know it—the leadoff hitter was Jo In-beom again.
I was waiting for the batter to step in when I noticed Barnett, standing on the mound, staring at a completely random spot.
Why's he looking over there?
The only thing in that direction was the bullpen.
I found out why soon enough.
Thwack!
"Argh!"
With the count 1-1, the third pitch—a vicious 146 km/h four-seamer—buried itself in Jo In-beom's back.
Top of the sixth, game tied, count not even particularly favorable. Timing-wise it was hard to call intentional.
But none of us believed for a second that it was a mistake.
"Our big brother doesn't take that shit."
"…Really?"
"Yeah. He always walks around smiling like a nice guy, but his temper's no joke."
"Man, that must've hurt. He's not getting up."
Unlike yesterday when he got me, or the earlier at-bat where he just leaned in and let it graze him, this one landed clean.
Jo In-beom went down the second it hit him and only managed to get up a long while later, then limped weakly to first.
Barnett tipped his cap in a show of apology… and the umpire just gave him a warning and restarted the game.
"Out!"
"Out!"
Next batter, sinker, ground ball, instant double play.
Watching Jo In-beom standing on second base and heaving a sigh, I felt a quiet little rush of satisfaction.
Then came the bottom of the sixth. Jeong Jong-seong's RBI single put us back in front by one and it looked like we were seizing the momentum…
Our trusted closer Kang Chanjung gave up three straight hits in the top of the ninth and we dropped it 4-3.
Series tied 1-1, we headed for Suwon.
Kwon Jong-jin, who'd pitched the final game of the playoffs, was coming back on four days' rest to start Game 3 of the Korean Series.
And I, who'd sat out Game 2, was slotted in as the Game 3 DH batting sixth.
Before the game we zeroed in on Kwon Jong-jin's new weapon—the curveball.
In Game 1 of the playoffs the Hawks had clearly been caught off guard, but by Game 5 they'd started timing it pretty well.
"Those guys came in looking for nothing but the curve from the jump."
"Yeah."
"We do the same. If it was somebody like Hajin over there throwing absurd four-seam velocity, maybe it'd be different… but Kwon Jong-jin's four-seamer tops out at 145. We can handle that, right?"
Decision made.
Today's entire game plan boiled down to one thing: sit on the curve and nothing else.
Then the game started.
Top of the first, leadoff hitter Jo Chang-jun fouled off two straight pitches.
First pitch fastball. Second pitch slider.
Then he laid off another fastball for ball one, count 1-2.
Crack!
On the fourth pitch the curve he'd been waiting for finally arrived, but he got under the low one and lofted it high—straight into the second baseman's glove.
"Not easy, huh? Feels like it's coming back from farther away than I thought."
"Of course. If it were easy the Hawks wouldn't have scored only one run."
True enough.
Kwon Jong-jin had given up a few hits, but he'd still gone six innings with one run and gotten the win.
So why the hell were we copying the losing team's plan?
Kwon Jong-jin mixed four-seamers, sliders, and curves just right and retired the side in order in the top of the first.
Then Marte.
Bottom of the first, Marte's third-pitch fastball got absolutely crushed by Raiders leadoff man Jo Sang-won for a home run.
He retired the next three, but that leadoff bomb had completely handed the stadium atmosphere to the Raiders.
To snatch it back we needed to score as fast as possible.
And right on cue, the most reliable bat we had stepped in as the leadoff hitter in the top of the second.
Crack!
"Captain!!!"
A double ripped as if he'd been waiting for it all day.
The stadium that had been roaring after the first-inning lead went dead quiet in an instant.
Which made our small pocket of fans sound even louder.
While Shane stepped into the box I stood in the on-deck circle watching Kwon Jong-jin's pitches.
First-pitch fastball, then a curve on the second.
It was a relatively small, quick break—almost like a power curve.
And that little hop that curves usually have? Barely there.
More accurate to say it was less than most other pitchers' curves.
Still…
I can still tell, though.
Less isn't the same as none.
So now the real question was whether that curve was the hard one, the medium one, or the soft one.
And whether it was going to catch the zone or miss.
"Strike! Out!"
Shane swung through the ball dropping out of the zone and went down looking.
My turn.
First pitch: curve.
A hard curve that just nicked the edge of the zone.
Is this a slider or a curve?
Standing in the box it was even nastier than it looked on video.
Second pitch.
Crack.
"Foul."
I cut a high fastball, count 0-2.
Huh?
What was that? I knew it was a fastball and still swung?
Curve.
"Ball."
Not a curve.
Crack.
"Foul."
Crack.
"Foul."
Crack.
"Foul."
Weird.
I get it now.
Not that I know exactly what pitch it is. Just that I can tell whether it's a curve or not.
The weird part is I have no idea why I can tell.
I know it's a curve, but I don't know why I know it's a curve. Completely absurd.
Crack!
Crack!
"That was a curve just off the plate. But he waited on it like he already knew it was coming and just punched it."
"What the hell? How'd you hit that?"
The second hit had Ko Mandeok buzzing around me.
Our whole team had only four hits so far, and two of them were mine.
The copy-the-Hawks plan was a total bust.
"I just… saw it."
"Saw what?"
"The curve."
"…How? There's something, right? Think about it—he just learned that pitch. There has to be a tell or something's off with it, right?"
"……"
I had no idea about any of that.
Top of the sixth. Our captain worked a walk and stood on first. Shane's well-struck ball went right at the third baseman for the second out, and my third at-bat came around.
I took a first pitch just off the plate, then checked my swing on a four-seamer a little high.
2-0.
Knowing the next guy was Ko Mandeok—who still couldn't touch the curve today—I figured maybe I'd walk and waited for the next pitch.
The ball left Kwon Jong-jin's hand and I knew instantly it wasn't a curve. But the location was high.
Of the pitches Kwon Jong-jin threw, only two ever came in that high.
If it wasn't a curve…
CRACK!
"That pitch was almost chest-high. Completely out of the zone. And he still drove it over the wall. Incredible power."
I was dazed.
Even while I circled the bases the sting kept buzzing in my hands.
The second the ball met the bat I'd felt a little heaviness, so I never thought it was going out…
But it just kept climbing and climbing with no doubt at all.
This whole game is weird as hell…
I'm picking up a pitch everyone else is flailing at… and a ball I barely squared up still flies out.
I had no idea what was going on.
That was it for Kwon Jong-jin.
Six innings, three runs.
Solid enough outing, but Marte had somehow flipped a switch after the first inning and was dealing.
Marte locked it down for one run through eight and came out.
Then the top of the ninth.
Crack!
Fourth at-bat, leading off. The timing was a hair late so it turned into a push, but luck put it over the first baseman's head and rolling down the line.
The defense had shaded a little toward left against me, so by the time the right fielder picked it up I was already around second and coasted into third with room to spare.
Then Ko Mandeok—who'd taken three strikeouts today and was pure poison by now—ripped an RBI single that brought me home.
After that Kang Chanjung, still stinging from Game 2, came back out for the bottom of the ninth and cleanly retired the side to close out the Game 3 win.
Game 4, where we were clearly outgunned in the starting matchup.
Visner, after throwing 121 pitches over nine innings in Game 1, came back on just three days' rest and still pitched lights-out.
Meanwhile Hwang Chan-young looked somehow overmatched and couldn't even finish five, and we lost 7-2.
"Huh?"
An opponent I never saw coming.