It's Not Like That
The moment I stepped into the dugout, I went looking for Eric.
I was just about to demand what the hell he'd been thinking when Ho-min opened his mouth first.
"Hurry up and thank him, you idiot."
"...What?"
"Eric made sure you got a proper introduction, didn't he?"
"What are you talking about?"
I couldn't make sense of a single word.
Eric just stared blankly at us, unable to follow a syllable of the Korean we were spouting.
"You left everything to Eric, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then that means Eric made you look good."
"Huh?"
"...Are you seriously not getting this, or what?"
"Speak so I can understand, man."
Ho-min let out a deep, frustrated sigh.
Something about his mood...
"Hey. Real talk—how many pitchers out there can throw every kind of pitch as freely as you do?"
"...Uh, almost none, I guess?"
"Exactly, you idiot. That's why Eric showed everyone what kind of pitcher you are. Honestly, if you'd gotten lit up, Eric would've taken all the heat for it."
"I-Is that so?"
"How important was today's game for Eric? And still, he went ahead and hyped you up."
It was something I'd never even considered, and I went a little blank.
In that opening, Ho-min rattled something off quickly in English to Eric.
And Eric's reaction—somehow he looked embarrassed.
"And now the opposing batters' heads are all scrambled. They just watched a pitcher they'd never seen before come up and throw stuff they couldn't get a read on."
"Uh... y-yeah, that makes sense."
"So hurry up and thank him, man."
"...... Eric, thank you."
What is this?
I'd been trying to ask Eric what the hell he'd been thinking.
Somehow I'd ended up thanking him instead.
Eric waved it off like it was nothing, looking awkward...
I felt like I'd been played by Ho-min somehow... but when I thought about it, he was right, so I couldn't even argue back...
"Anyway, the second you take baseball out of the equation, your brain just stops working."
"......"
Should I hit him?
The three of us were gathered, talking for a while, when the dugout suddenly felt restless. I checked what was going on.
And I confirmed an absurd fact.
"What the hell..."
There's something I've found strange ever since I was a kid.
Why? Why do the pitchers I root for always get such terrible run support?!
I'd decided early on that I had no way to make a living outside of baseball and thrown myself into this path, but that didn't mean I didn't love the game.
Especially the pitchers who'd gone overseas—I'd wake up at dawn just to watch their games on TV...
And every time the pitcher I was cheering for put together a good outing, the team's lineup would go ice-cold.
It wasn't always like that, of course.
But somehow it felt like the second my guy took the mound, the offense turned into complete idiots.
If he gave up three runs, they'd score two. If he gave up one, they'd score nothing.
I'd lost count of how many times I'd sat there at dawn, staring at the TV and seething.
And then I got to feel that exact same thing myself.
Right there with the Savers.
Our lineup hit just fine... so why, on the days I started, did the runs never come? That gut-churning, heartbreaking feeling.
How many times had I thought, I'll die out there if I have to—just give me two runs...
Looking at it that way, the most carefree pitching of my career—when I didn't worry about run support at all—was probably my Dragons days.
Back then... by the time I took the mound, the game was already long gone, the comeback ship had sailed.
My only job was to eat innings, so whether we scored or not didn't even register.
"Just throw thirty pitches and get out of there."
That was my entire mindset back then...
But this team. After joining the Boston Red Sox, I actually started expecting something.
The team I'd landed on was one of the most feared offenses in all of Major League Baseball.
And just yesterday, in the Opening Day game, they'd put that power on full display.
I took the mound thinking that if I just pitched well, we could win—and I shut them down in the top of the first.
Then came the bottom of the first. Right while I was having that short conversation...
"What is this..."
"What are you doing? Get ready already."
"...... It's over? For real? No, what the fuck..."
I was pretty sure I'd only been sitting in the dugout for about five minutes. So why was the other team's starting pitcher already walking off the mound?
Why were their infielders and outfielders all sprinting toward their dugout?
The starter for the Baltimore Orioles today was Endo Tsuyoshi.
A Japanese player in his third year in the majors.
True to form for a Japanese pitcher, his main weapon was a forkball, and he threw a four-seamer around ninety-five miles an hour.
Leading off against him for us was Arthur Burgart.
The same guy who'd batted leadoff for the other side in the spring training intrasquad game. He stepped in as our first batter.
And he took the first-pitch slider and lofted it into the air for an out.
The next batter was another face I'd seen in that same intrasquad game.
I hadn't known his name then, so I'd just memorized him as Prospect Number One.
I later learned he was Alan Thomas.
Whatever the name... Alan Thomas came up second and, of course, swung at the first-pitch forkball and grounded out.
Our third hitter, Eun-hyung, at least tried to live up to his reputation by taking the first pitch.
Then he took the inside two-seamer and grounded it to third for the out.
Our entire lineup had forced the opposing starter to throw a grand total of four pitches before the inning was over.
"They're not doing this on purpose, right?"
Honestly, it was a fair suspicion, wasn't it?
"Some kind of hazing ritual?"
The thought crossed my mind too.
Feeling the strength drain right out of me, I trudged back out to the mound.
A moment later.
A man with a gleaming shaved head and rhino-like muscles stepped into the box, swinging his bat in big, looping arcs.
Luis Duran. Nickname: the Rhino. Baltimore's cleanup hitter.
This guy was pretty famous even back in Korea—mostly because of his completely unrestrained fists.
I could name at least three players I knew who'd been dropped by those fists.
A total hothead who never, ever held back, constantly turning games into bench-clearing brawls.
They said the nickname came from his muscles... but from where I stood, it was that garbage personality that earned it.
The second he got pissed, he charged in without looking left or right—exactly like a rhino.
Ironically, that exact reputation made him hugely popular in Korea.
Well... nobody hates a good fight, and if the guy always wins, of course he's going to be popular...
I shook off Eric's first-pitch sign for the first time today.
Because he'd called for the outside corner.
That hotheaded South American would charge the mound almost one hundred percent of the time if he got hit by a pitch.
Even when he was crowding the plate himself, if an inside pitch so much as grazed him, he'd come flying in like he meant to kill you.
Eric knew that, which was probably why he'd asked for outside. Maybe he was a little scared too.
If we were throwing outside because that was the right pitch, fine. But running away just because something might happen if we went inside? That wasn't it.
Especially when this particular hitter was plenty dangerous on the outer half.
"Is that why he acts even more insane on purpose?"
A reasonable suspicion: maybe he threw those punches so opponents would start feeding him the pitches he liked.
While I was lost in that thought, Eric changed his mind and put down a new sign.
This time it was a Splitter. One that would drop well out of the zone.
Inside was off the table, apparently.
Fine. I'd compromise this far.
"Ball."
The bat twitched but stayed put, and the pitch just barely missed the zone.
I took the ball back and waited for the next sign.
Eric's fingers moved cleanly.
Outside four-seam fastball again.
I started to sigh and shake my head, thinking he was running away again—then I saw Eric jab a finger at his own temple a couple of times.
Meaning he had a plan.
In that case, I'd go along with it.
"Strike."
A four-seamer that just nicked the outside edge got the call.
The hitter seemed to think it was a little far; he tilted his head and stuck the bat out to gauge the distance.
Then the third pitch.
"Ohh..."
After running away low and then pulling it outside, the third pitch finally brought an inside sign.
A cutter diving in on the left-handed hitter's hands.
Crack.
"Foul."
The cutter that bored in on him caught the inner half of the bat and went foul.
It had probably missed the zone by a hair. It had come in more inside than I'd intended.
Was that why?
That rhino was glaring daggers at me.
"What are you gonna do about it?"
It's not like my command is perfect every single time. Pitchers miss a little here and there—that's just how it goes.
Luis Duran stood in the box staring me down for a long moment, then suddenly said something to the umpire and stepped out.
He tossed the bat aside and pulled out a new one.
"It cracked? Heh heh."
Probably just a hairline fracture.
It had looked like it caught a little too far inside.
But apparently he'd seen me laughing without meaning to.
He stopped halfway back into the box and fixed me with another murderous glare...
"Mm... I really shouldn't keep smiling on the mound like this."
I was trying not to, but it just kept slipping out.
That one was on me, so I gave the brim of my cap a little tug with my finger to show I was sorry.
But the guy somehow looked even angrier...
"What's his problem?"
They'd said he was a hothead, but did he really have to get pissed off every five seconds? I waited calmly.
Maybe staring that hard had made his eyes hurt. He finally stepped back in.
One ball, two strikes. Fourth pitch.
"That's it."
I liked the sign immediately, nodded, and adjusted my grip inside the glove.
Thwack.
"Batter out!"
A high fastball screaming in at chest height on the inner half.
Luis Duran's bat sliced empty air, and he went down swinging for the strikeout.
"Nice! Senior, your stuff is filthy!"
Watching the game at Ko Mandeok's place, Hyeon-bin was yelling at the top of his lungs in pure excitement.
It was the middle of the night when everyone else should have been asleep, the kind of noise that would normally get you a sharp word—but nobody told him to shut up.
They were all just as glued to the TV.
"How is that any different from what he threw in Korea..."
"Right? Even the way he stands on the mound cursing under his breath is exactly the same."
"He's seriously fearless. Throwing two straight pitches inside to Luis Duran."
"Ha! That guy? He might've been hoping for it. Wanted the benches to clear."
"Come on, no way..."
"What's that guy's nickname again?"
"Crazy..."
"Don't try to apply common sense to him."
Crack.
"That location just now..."
"When you throw it like that, the hitter has no answer."
"How does that senior even throw like that?"
"More than anything, I'm jealous of the command. They say there's no special method or anything."
"Exactly. He just looks and throws and it goes where he wants. When they asked what that was about, he said it's always been that way."
"Ha... I'm so damn jealous."
The two pitchers were mid-complaint, full of admiration, when—
"Ha! Even major leaguers don't stand a chance against this."
At Ko Mandeok's words, the other three heads nodded furiously.
"Hey, why are you out there picking fights?"
"What did I do this time?"
"Earlier, man. You smash a guy's bat and then apologize—you think that's gonna make him feel better?"
"What the hell are you talking about now?"
The second I walked into the dugout, Ho-min started spouting more nonsense I couldn't follow.
"I honestly thought that meathead was going to charge you."
"No, seriously—what are you talking about?"
"You, man. You tipped your cap to the guy coming back in after changing bats."
"So what?"
"He's already pissed that his bat broke, and then you apologize for breaking it? That's a provocation if I've ever seen one."
"......?????"
How does that even work?
I'd only felt bad about laughing...
"Hmm... did you do it on purpose? To get the hitter riled up?"
Eric offered his own take on Ho-min's theory.
I said it's not like that.