A Day That Scratches
My first season in the majors was finally drawing to a close.
September had arrived, leaving roughly a month left in the campaign. Of course, even after the regular season ended, the baseball would keep going.
The Red Sox had all but locked up first place in the division. Unless the team suddenly went completely insane and dropped ten straight, we were finishing the year on top. That was how dominant our record had been. Across the entire league, we were the clear favorite for the best winning percentage in the American League.
Before the season even started, the Red Sox had been written off as a team that might not even secure a wild-card berth. And for good reason—the moment the previous year ended, both our number-one and number-two starters walked out the door. The club tried to keep them, but the two of them left without a backward glance, as if they had planned it together.
The offense sat comfortably among the league’s elite, but the pitching staff had been a complete question mark. Losing the two arms that had been holding the whole thing together left the outlook bleak. The general manager who had let both pitchers slip away so easily was hanging by a thread.
That was the situation when I chose this team and walked through the door. How much respect were these people really going to give the Korean league, anyway? The media still rated it somewhere between Triple-A and Double-A. Plenty of former Korean MVPs had come over and flamed out, so faith was in short supply. On top of that, bringing in the injury-riddled Rondo and handing him the number-one starter job only deepened the fans’ despair. A few people welcomed it, but the louder voices were the ones asking why the hell we were signing some old, broken-down pitcher.
Then Rondo came back from the dead like it was nothing. And right behind him, from the very start of the season, I climbed the mountain on both sides of the ball. Mid-season trades suddenly turned the bullpen into a weapon. With every weakness erased, the Red Sox surged upward like a force of nature.
Overnight, General Manager Terrance Terrell’s stock skyrocketed among our fans. A front office that had built a perfect season. A manager the entire roster respected. A captain who was already a legend. New arrivals who started flying the moment they put on the uniform. And the holdovers who had always been good and simply survived. The Boston Red Sox of right now had no real soft spots left.
“You spent the whole first half bitching that the team was a complete mess.”
“…It was a mess back then.”
“That was because of you.”
“What the hell? The whole clubhouse really was chaotic! Everyone looked like they were just hanging out in their own little groups!”
“They only acted like that in front of you. Behind your back they were all buddy-buddy.”
“…Okay, maybe not that extreme. I might’ve misread a few things… but it all worked out, right?”
“Yeah, well… the vibe around here has been pretty good lately.”
We were talking after pregame work, Ho-min practically reclining in the dugout without a single drop of sweat on him. Even while we talked, both our eyes stayed locked on the visitors’ dugout.
“Those guys are really going hard in their warm-ups, though.”
Today was a home game against the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays were squeezing every last drop out of their roster right now. Their wild-card chances were hanging by a thread. Division first place was already a pipe dream, so they were fighting for one of the three wild-card spots. They were locked in a brutal scrap with the Yankees, Texas, Houston, and the rest… and at the moment Tampa was trailing those three just a little.
And of course, that was exactly when they ran into a Red Sox team whose momentum was trying to punch a hole in the sky. If they got swept in this three-game set and the gap opened even wider? This year’s Rays could pack it in and start thinking about next season.
That was why, just like Ho-min said, the eyes of every player on the other side were full of pure poison before the game even started. One light poke and they looked ready to explode.
“John’s gonna have a rough night.”
Today’s starter was John Greinsky—the guy who had moved up in the rotation while I sat out my suspension. And since I was scheduled to start tomorrow, today was a full rest day for me.
The game got underway a little later. John Greinsky, who had been quietly excellent all year, and the always-crafty Gordon Perry toyed with the impatient Tampa hitters like it was nothing. They just nipped at the edges, daring them not to square anything up, and the approach worked perfectly.
There was another storyline worth watching, too. Ernie Witt, who had been grinding away in silence, finally got the start in left field. All that work paid off—he played clean, steady defense the entire night. The good glove work carried over to the plate: two hits, one of them a two-RBI single that put us on the board first. Thanks to Ernie’s RBI, we stayed ahead from the early innings and closed it out 5–3, planting a firm foot on the neck of a Tampa team that desperately needed to keep moving.
“They do that kind of thing in America too…”
The next day. Right before first pitch I spotted the other team’s players gathered in a tight circle in front of their dugout. They were clearly trying to fire themselves up, but seeing something that rare even back in Korea felt strangely fresh over here.
“Looks like they’re going to come at us with everything they’ve got.”
“Let them.”
They might be busy, but I had gotten pretty busy myself lately. From the opening week I had sat alone at the top of the ERA leaderboard, and I was still there by a comfortable margin. The rest of the alphabet soup of stats looked the same—my name was always parked in the highest spot. But this damn wins column…
While I had missed a couple of starts recently, that weird guy glued to Lee Gijun’s side on the Angels—Rafael Anderson—had suddenly closed the gap like a madman. The kid had been absolutely possessed. Then he threw a shutout, did the postgame interview, and flat-out said he was starting to get hungry for the Cy Young Award. Not a single category where he actually led me, and he still said it.
Maybe he figured a little stumble on my part made him a real contender. Either way, Rafael Anderson was coming for me, and he had told the media he wanted it. The Cy Young is decided by writers’ votes. If I gave them even one category as an excuse…
Ho-min had said it wouldn’t be that hard, but honestly I had started thinking this level of dominance ought to be enough. I never claimed to be desperate for awards, but when the numbers look like this, nobody else is supposed to be close. Having one category slip and losing the whole thing because of it would just feel wrong. Not wanting something and having what’s yours taken away are two completely different feelings.
On top of that I was a rookie making my debut this year, and I was Asian. People say things are better now, but racial bias still hasn’t disappeared. So I needed to take the numbers that had dipped for a moment and shove them right back up where they belonged—high enough that no one could open their mouth.
“Funny… back in Korea you barely cared when you won MVP.”
“That’s because I already had it. This one I might not.”
“And the bonus money’s pretty sweet too, right?”
“Well… yeah.”
It wasn’t just about the money. Seriously.
Before I even walked out for today’s game I had actually debated it for a second—whether to take a Booster. The Hooded Woman had given them to me as a gift; I had already used one, so two remained. I had been saving those last two for something big like the World Series or the Asian Games. But then the thought kept nagging at me: Do I even need one for the Asian Games? The only teams worth watching out for over there were Japan and Taiwan, and Taiwan was at least two full levels below us. Japan? They basically pick their roster from industrial-league teams, right?
So I had been wrestling with it… right up until the moment I started throwing my warm-up pitches.
Bang!
“Oh! Good! Your stuff is filthy today!”
Every pitcher has those days when everything just works—the days people call “scratching.” Once, a post had gone up on a Korean community board that went something like this:
I had nodded along when I saw it. Even with the pills and Han Song-yi’s buff, there were still days when nothing worked no matter what I did. Sure, there were also days when I felt especially sharp… but they never felt dramatically different from normal. Just a little lighter than usual. Somewhere along the way I had stopped thinking, Today’s really scratching.
Until today.
“…It’s scratching?”
It wasn’t even that my body felt especially light the way it does on a good day. If anything, I felt a little stiffer than normal. Yet the more I threw, the more the ball seemed to stick to my fingers. The rough seams under my fingertips felt sharper, more vivid than usual.
“What the hell is going on…”
It was different from the Booster, too. Just a quiet certainty that whatever I tried would work. By the time I finished my warm-ups, only one worry remained: whether this feeling would die in the bullpen or carry all the way into the game.
Bang!
“…Strike.”
A 105-mph four-seamer painted the absolute lowest, outermost corner of the zone—so far out and so low you almost wanted to argue it was gone.
“Well, look at that.”
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
“Batter out!”
“Batter out!”
“Batter out!”
Top of the first: three straight strikeouts. Ten pitches total. Not a single ball so much as kissed a bat. The Tampa hitters wore the same hollow expressions.
Sorry… what am I supposed to do? This body decided today was the day it wanted to scratch.