Advice
Lucky the return game was at home. On the road I probably would’ve gotten booed.
Whatever the reason, it would’ve been a perfect chance for the other side’s closer to rattle me.
But today we were in our own park.
I took off my cap and bowed carefully—home plate, first base, third base, even the home-run seats—and the whole crowd stood up and clapped. Every so often I caught someone yelling, “You didn’t do anything wrong!!”
Ko Mandeok, still riding high from his earlier home run, pounded his mitt with his fist, radiating confidence.
The batter stepped in. Ko Mandeok’s fingers disappeared between his thighs.
This guy’s feet were absurdly fast. Honestly that was pretty much his whole game, and he knew it—so he cared more about getting to first a half-step quicker than about actually hitting the ball clean.
He just stuck the bat out at whatever came and somehow still reached base a ridiculous amount of the time. A pitch that was a little off the black, a defender who hesitated for a heartbeat—that was all it took. And once he got on, he never stopped moving, always looking to steal. From a pitcher’s perspective he was pure misery.
In the old days I probably would’ve gone right after him, tried to end it fast. Off-speed stuff was pointless; he’d still wave the bat and take off for first. Better to just challenge him and trust the defense.
That was the old me. Before the suspension.
“Hong Jong-gu? Why can’t you get that guy out?”
Two days earlier—the same day I’d first thrown the knuckleball—Ho-min, Ko Mandeok, and I were talking on the way home when Hong Jong-gu’s name came up. Ko Mandeok had named him the most annoying hitter he faced.
That was Ho-min’s answer. Why can’t you get him out?
Then he even handed us the solution: “Throw three curves and you’re done.”
Ko Mandeok and I just stared. Hong Jong-gu already flailed at everything; now we were supposed to lob him slow curves? That was basically inviting him to hit and run.
But then—
“What are you talking about? Just throw it where he can’t hit it.”
“······ If it were that easy, every pitcher would be throwing perfect games.”
“Ugh, you’re killing me. What’s Hong Jong-gu’s stance look like? All hunched up, right? Like this.”
Right there in the middle of the street Ho-min dropped into Hong Jong-gu’s crouch.
“See? The reason he can foul off anything, even balls, is this stance.”
“Yeah.”
We already knew that.
“Now picture the ball coming in up here.”
“Hong Jong-gu handles high stuff fine.”
“Fastball-type pitches, sure. But what if a curve comes in like this?”
“Huh?”
“Look. He’s all coiled up. A curve that starts above his shoulder and drops into the top of the zone—what’s he supposed to do with that?”
“Wait··· uh···”
Ko Mandeok immediately tried the swing himself, imagining the pitch from that crouched stance.
“This is···”
“A little velocity on the curve would help, right? Around 130 km/h should be plenty. You throw curves harder than that, don’t you?”
“······”
Ko Mandeok’s sign was simple: curve, high but in the zone. And even though it wasn’t in the sign, as hard as I could throw it.
We’d agreed on it two days ago. No reason to hesitate.
Thwack!
“Stri~ke!”
The curve painted the top of the zone. Hong Jong-gu just watched it go by.
He nodded, took a couple of practice swings, stepped back in—and the second I saw him set, I went into the windup.
Thwump!
“Stri~ke!”
Whiff.
Same velocity, same pitch, same location. Hong Jong-gu flailed at the second one and missed by a mile.
He stepped out and looked back and forth between me and Ko Mandeok, clearly rattled.
He wasn’t the only one. I was pretty rattled myself.
Ho-min had spoken with total confidence and we’d gone along because it sounded plausible, but I never expected it to work this well. That second-pitch swing especially—he knew what was coming and still couldn’t do a thing about it.
While I waited for him to step back in for the third pitch, I looked at the new stance and a dry laugh slipped out.
“About Hong Jong-gu—this is just in case—but after he gets burned once or twice he might change his stance a little. Stand taller to handle the high stuff. If he does that, just bury one low.”
Ho-min had tossed that off casually. Ko Mandeok and I had just nodded and moved on···
And now Hong Jong-gu was standing in the box like every other hitter, waist straight, body upright, waiting for the pitch.
Ko Mandeok frantically flashed the sign, so startled he even dropped the mitt low and nodded over and over.
He’s going to give the whole thing away at this rate. Heh.
He’d said bury it, so I buried it.
“Strike three! Out.”
Hong Jong-gu watched the low four-seamer go by, head hanging, and trudged back to the dugout.
I gave up a single to the next guy—a slider that leaked a little and found the gap between first and second.
But the hitter after that I induced with a splitter into a grounder to second for the double play.
And that was the ballgame.
The second it ended, Ko Mandeok came sprinting out to the mound.
“What··· what the hell was that?”
“I know, right? Haha.”
“Man, seriously··· wow··· I mean··· it worked so well I don’t even know what to say.”
“Same.”
“Hong Jong-gu was muttering every curse in the book on his way in. Heh. He knew he was in deep trouble. We’d found his weak spot. Heh.”
“Once the other teams see today’s game they’ll probably keep hammering it.”
“Ah, if Dennis could throw a curve we wouldn’t have given up those two runs either. Frustrating. Really frustrating.”
He was still sore about the run Hong Jong-gu had scored earlier. Not much we could do—Dennis, our starter today, didn’t have a curve. And just having a curve wasn’t enough; you needed the command to put it in the high zone.
Ko Mandeok, who’d hit the game-winner, got called away for interviews almost immediately.
The broadcast wanted me too—first game back from suspension—but I politely declined. Opening my mouth right now wouldn’t get me anything good. For a while I was going to keep quiet and stay out of sight.
“So? How was this big brother’s advice?”
“······ It··· it was good. Yeah.”
The second I walked through the door, Ho-min was waiting with that smug look, and every good feeling I’d had evaporated on the spot.
I’d been planning to praise him without being asked··· but there he was, chin and shoulders jacked up, endlessly crowing about his analytical genius.
I got that he was thrilled—the strategy he’d only ever drawn in his head had finally worked in a real game—but there were limits.
“Would you knock it off? Honestly it only worked because I put the ball right where it needed to be.”
“This big brother built the whole plan around your command. Know what you’re talking about before you open your mouth.”
“······ Fine. Fine, just shut up already. You’re driving me crazy. Let me rest. Please!”
“Tch. I was even going to tell you how to handle Lee Gijun.”
“Huh? What? Lee Gijun?”
“Yeah, you idiot. Lee Gijun. You’re facing him in the weekend series, right?”
Lee Gijun. The best hitter in the country, the one Major League teams were already salivating over.
Contact, power, plate discipline—nothing missing. And just to be unfair, he was fast too. Plus he played a solid third base and sometimes shortstop.
In short, a hitter with zero holes.
A pure talent who also worked like a maniac···
“Completely different species from you.”
“······ Shut up.”
“Heh. So? Feeling confident? Think you can get him?”
“··· He’s not even hitting .400. It’s not like he’s got sixty or seventy homers. I’ll handle him just fine.”
“Tsk tsk. That’s how you end up getting lit up.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“You’re not thinking of trying to bait him with off-speed, are you? He won’t even bite.”
“So what, challenge him head-on?”
“And get lit up.”
“Jesus. Then what the hell do you want me to do?”
“Hmm~”
Should I just hit him? Is it okay if I beat the crap out of this guy? My fist clenched on its own.
“You raise that and I’m kicking you out.”
“······ You little···”
The house was too nice to ignore him and start swinging. Living rent-free left me with zero comebacks.
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“What do you mean, what? If you’ve got a big lead, go after him ready to get hit. If it’s a one-run game—”
“If it’s a one-run game?”
“Walk him, obviously.”
“······ That’s your answer? You said you were going to teach me how to attack him.”
“That is the answer. You’re not ready yet. I don’t have real confidence you can get him out for sure.”
“Ha! I can get him out, you know.”
“Yeah, right.”
I almost unloaded on him, but the look on Ho-min’s face was so final I shut my mouth.
Instead—
“Just go to the majors already instead of farming softballs here. Tch.”
A little grumbling felt necessary to settle the score.
“You think I won’t?”
“I’m in year five now.”
“Huh?”
“What?”
“Uh··· never mind.”
“Hey! What is it!”
“Nothing. Later.”
“What the hell.”
He’d started to say something and then stopped, but it wasn’t the first time, so I let it go. That was the end of the late-night conversation.
The next day our team won again, sweeping the Stars and climbing to seventh in the league.
Then we packed up for the long road trip to Busan—where Lee Gijun was waiting.