As Wide as the Sea
Rondo was seriously disappointed.
The reason wasn’t anything dramatic. I simply wasn’t in the lineup for Game 2—his start.
Our grandpa of a manager had been saying since the beginning of the season that there was absolutely no reason to push me, and he’d sat me down. Looking back, the way he’d suddenly slotted another pitcher in front of me made perfect sense; it had all been about protecting my stamina and giving me rest.
I was actually fine…
But there was no way to explain that. Telling him I was perfectly fresh wouldn’t have convinced anyone. And you can’t exactly throw a tantrum at someone who’s resting you out of genuine concern.
“Haaah… Ahh, this is the life~”
He’d mentioned I might pinch-hit late if needed, so I had nothing to do in the early innings. That meant I could sprawl out in the dugout corner where the broadcast cameras never reached and just melt into the bench.
Crack!
“Whoa… look at that guy go. He’s flying out there.”
Alan Thomas had gone two-for-something with a homer yesterday, and today he ripped a double in his first at-bat. At this point I was more baffled than anything.
Seriously? Just changing the bat weight a little and he turns into this?
Come to think of it, he’d always been like that. Hand him a bat and he’d start crushing the ball out of nowhere. Never lasted long, though.
Crack!
Eun-hyung immediately followed with a timely single, and just like that we were up a run.
“Might not even need me today.”
My prediction was spot-on. Rondo gave up four runs and made things a little hairy, but our bullpen finally locked down the rest of the innings for once and we took the win.
The next day.
Charles Patterson took the mound as our starter, with Eric behind the plate as his battery mate.
It was the first time Eric had started a game catching for someone other than me. Maybe that was why he walked out looking deadly serious.
“Hope he’s okay like that…”
How to put it… he was trying so hard that every muscle looked locked up. I knew that feeling all too well, so it was a little painful to watch.
I watched Eric talking with the pitcher on the mound, then casually turned my head. Over there stood Gordon Perry, staring at the mound with a grave expression.
No… not grave so much as worried.
I’d seen that face somewhere before… where was it?
I dug through my memories and it hit me.
“Parents.”
Back in school games, most of the crowd was usually family and friends of the players. Every now and then you’d catch their expressions, and Gordon Perry’s face right now was exactly that. Whether he was watching the pitcher or the catcher, the man was clearly thinking, Please just do well…
A moment later I knew exactly who he was looking at. His eyes never left Eric as the catcher came down from the mound and settled in behind home plate.
Strange. Gordon Perry making that face over Eric. You only get that look when you’re pretty close to someone, right? But those two…
I’d heard they hadn’t exactly been warm even before I arrived…
Gordon Perry these days—the way he’d been treating me, the expression on his face today…
Something in him seemed to have shifted. Like the man had suddenly changed.
“He’s not sick or anything, is he?”
Now I was weirdly worried…
Crack!
“Ah…”
Charles Patterson had sailed through the first two innings, but in the third he got rocked for three straight hits and started to wobble. It was a little frustrating that he’d handled the top and middle of the order cleanly only to get tagged by the bottom, but it wasn’t a disaster. No extra-base hits, just one run in, and if he could just get the next few batters out we’d be fine.
The pitching coach visited the mound, settled the pitcher down, and headed back. Probably just told him to throw free and easy.
The next batter stepped in. On a 1-1 count the pitch caught the bottom of the bat and hopped strangely—not forward, but straight up in front of home plate.
While the batter frantically flung his bat aside and scrambled toward first, Eric was already up, bare right hand shooting skyward.
Barehand catch. And without even transferring the ball, he fired straight to third.
“Out!”
The third baseman immediately relayed to first.
“Out!”
“Whoa…”
It was an incredible play. Without Eric’s split-second barehand decision, would they even have gotten the runner at third?
I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Way off in the distance Gordon Perry was pumping both fists and yelling something.
Bases loaded with nobody out had become two outs and a man on second in the blink of an eye.
Eric had his mask off, shouting something toward the infield, and you could see the confidence flooding back into his face.
“Don’t have to worry anymore.”
The little knot of concern I’d been carrying eased as well.
I glanced behind me. The perfect dark corner where I’d been parked yesterday was empty.
“Time to stretch out again~”
The second I relocated to that corner, the inning ended.
A little later, top of the fifth.
Crack!!
“Huh? Shit, huh? Huh? It’s gone!!!”
Riding high on that confidence, Eric crushed his first home run of the season.
We took Game 3 as well—the one I’d thought might be tough—and the whole team’s mood shot through the roof.
The other side, meanwhile, looked thoroughly miserable. They’d lost yesterday and gotten caught by Baltimore. On top of that, yesterday had been their number-two starter’s turn while we’d been using a fill-in. Getting beaten anyway… yeah, their clubhouse vibe was easy to imagine.
“When the other team’s in a funk, that’s just free money for me.”
Everyone was busy. Pre-game prep had the whole dugout moving at full speed. And not a single one of them came over to say anything pointless to me.
Even though it didn’t matter at all.
I’m not the type who holes up in a corner and glares at the world or gets snappy just because I’m starting. No special routine either—just eat a normal amount, loosen up a normal amount, and I’m good.
Back in Korea, Ko Mandeok had known that perfectly well, so he’d chatter away right up until I took the mound. Ever since I came here, though, it wasn’t like that. Even after I told Eric it was fine, he still wouldn’t approach me the way he usually did before a start. Even that motor-mouth Alan Thomas seemed to be deliberately avoiding eye contact…
“Just how much of a pain in the ass are the other pitchers…? Sigh…”
Nothing I could do about it. Guess I’d just have to sit around talking nonsense with Ho-min again.
Today I was batting sixth. That meant I got to rest comfortably in the dugout through a one-hit first inning.
When I finally climbed the mound, the leadoff hitter was staring at me with pure murder in his eyes. Full of venom.
So the atmosphere really was that bad—maybe the manager had ripped into them…
Eric wanted the first pitch just off the outside edge. Usually a ball’s width outside the zone.
But this umpire was different.
According to the guys, this ump had the widest strike zone in the world. They’d been laughing that as long as it didn’t bounce, he’d call it a strike.
“Just how wide are we talking…?”
Pop.
“Strike.”
Insane.
Pop.
“Strike.”
Completely insane.
First pitch: one ball’s width outside. Second pitch: a slider that broke even farther out. Both called strikes.
The batter checked the location, shot a quick look at the umpire’s face, then just shook his head. He’d already given up.
“Does he really call anything that doesn’t bounce a strike?”
I put down the sign myself. Eric saw it and, without a word of protest, set his mitt.
I took a curveball grip. Power curve—if the break was too sharp it might bounce, so I went with the flatter one.
And I threw it with full confidence.
“Ball.”
Hmm… guess that one’s out.
It hadn’t bounced. The mitt had been just off the dirt…
Whatever. Fine.
“Batter out!”
Because that ocean-wide outside corner was still there.
The batter stomped back to the dugout, jaw clenched so hard his teeth were grinding. He was furious about the zone but couldn’t say a word. If it only screwed their team it’d be one thing, but apparently this ump was always like this…
“Foul.”
The next hitter lunged, arm fully extended, and fouled off another pitch on the outer edge. Swinging at that location wasn’t going to produce anything good. A foul was the best he could hope for.
“Foul.”
Same desperate swing, same foul.
“No need to even throw hard here.”
As a hitter myself, I knew exactly how impossible that pitch was to handle. I couldn’t hit it either.
Eric clearly wanted to finish him cleanly.
“Batter out!”
A splitter that dropped off that distant outer edge. Of course it was a swing-and-miss. At this point it was basically free.
Tap.
The next batter poked the first pitch into a routine grounder to third, and the bottom of the first was over.
“This game is ridiculously easy. Is this even allowed?”
For the first time in my life I felt a little sorry for the hitters because of the strike zone while I was on the mound.
“What are you talking about? Now you have to hit against that zone.”
…Oh. Right.
Ah, shit…