Finishing Camp: Manager Park's Decision
The first of two blissful days of rest.
I was sleeping soundly when Ko Mandeok hauled me out of bed, chair be damned.
"Even if you're sleeping, eat first."
I barely managed to crack my eyes open. The guy waking me looked just as wrecked as I felt. He'd probably gotten up and come straight for me.
"······ What time is it?"
"One."
"Ah···"
I'd crashed before eleven the night before, which meant I'd been out cold for a solid fourteen hours. I really must have been exhausted beyond belief. Not that sleeping that long had magically erased all the fatigue.
"But why am I still this tired? I feel like dying···"
"You went overboard on training you don't normally do. Body's paying for it."
Anyone overhearing that would think I'd never trained a day all season.
"It's not like I never trained. We worked out together every single day."
I headed to the cafeteria with Ko Mandeok, ate, and even downed a cup of coffee. After that my body finally felt like it was coming back to life—enough that I didn't need to crawl back into bed.
"Want to hit the table tennis room? Help the food settle."
Move my body again?
I turned to refuse, but his eyes were sparkling. I couldn't bring myself to say no to that face.
"··· Sure, why not?"
We went to play table tennis and found other players already there ahead of us. Those guys had stamina to spare. We mixed in and goofed around for a long while, then headed back to the room to rest. Before I knew it, dinner time had rolled around again.
I checked the clock and was just getting ready to head to the cafeteria when someone showed up at our door.
"You're going to eat, right? Let's go together."
Jo Sangjun had suddenly dropped by our room. He wasn't alone either—Lee Yong-hun and Oh Gyushin were right behind him. When a guy like Jo Sangjun invites you to dinner, what are you going to say?
After we joined up, Sangjun didn't head straight for the cafeteria. He stopped by a couple more rooms first, rounding up Na Seungwon and Ju Yanggyu—guys who mostly came in as pinch hitters or pinch runners—before finally leading us to eat.
"Why'd he suddenly call us all together?"
"Beats me··· I've got a rough idea, though."
"What is it?"
"We'll find out once we get there."
Jo Sangjun didn't make us do anything special. We really just ate and left the cafeteria.
"But why are there so few people around?"
We were lounging in the break room afterward when Oh Gyushin tilted his head and asked. Thinking about it, he was right—there were way fewer players in the cafeteria and break room than usual. Especially the loud ones with big voices, like Choi Geunho and Yoon Hyojung. The noisy crowd was nowhere to be seen.
"Captain's missing too···"
True enough. Seo Gyeongmin wasn't around either. Neither was the backup catcher, Kim Dokyeong.
"They went out drinking."
Jo Sangjun let out a sigh as he said it. Come to think of it, he'd asked me yesterday if I wanted to go drinking. It wasn't the middle of the season, and I wasn't the type who avoided alcohol on principle, but I had zero desire to go hunting for booze on a rest day in the middle of training camp. So I'd turned him down.
"Ah···"
"So that's why we haven't seen them···"
"The captain went drinking too? Doesn't he hate alcohol?"
"Ah! Not Gyeongmin. That guy's off handling something else."
"Figures···"
Yeah. I couldn't picture Seo Gyeongmin skipping off to drink just because it was a rest day.
"Ah··· So hyung-nim kept us out of it on purpose?"
At Ko Mandeok's words, all our eyes swung toward him.
"Look at your group. You're all kids. Hajin here got traded in mid-season. If the older guys told you to come along, could any of you actually say no?"
He had a point. I'd thought the exact same thing when Sangjun asked me yesterday. If I'd been the one inviting people out, they probably would've had no choice but to tag along.
"But hyung, why···"
That explained us. But what about Ko Mandeok?
"Yeah. Hyung-nim. Why me···"
"You think you're any different? You can't even say no to people."
Jo Sangjun's half-mocking smile left Mandeok with nothing to say. Hard to argue when the man wasn't wrong.
We killed about an hour goofing around in the break room and were about to head back to our rooms when Seo Gyeongmin returned from whatever errand he'd been on. He pulled Sangjun aside for a quick private talk. When he came back, his expression had gone completely rigid. He'd clearly just heard that a bunch of guys had gone out drinking.
"But the coach said it was okay to drink yesterday, right?"
Back in the room, I flopped onto the bed and finally asked Mandeok the thing that had been bugging me.
"He did, yeah."
"So why are the captain and Sangjun hyung-nim both looking so serious?"
"The coach meant a light drink with dinner. He specifically said 'a simple drink.'"
"True."
"You think the guys who went out today are just going to have a couple beers and come back? Or are they going to cut loose and blow off everything they've been holding in?"
"Ah···"
"Just watch. We'll be lucky if they don't cause an actual incident."
"No way they'd go that far."
"Hmph!"
Hmph? Was that supposed to be cute?
I barely managed to swallow the curse that tried to slip out.
"But you know, when I first came to this team, I thought the atmosphere was really good. The results weren't great, but everyone seemed tight-knit."
"What team is actually like that? You just came from one that really was, so this one looked better by comparison."
"Still. There didn't seem to be any cliques among the players···"
"That's only because Gyeongmin hyung and Sangjun hyung-nim had the hitters and pitchers locked down. Look closer and you'll find guys who quietly split off into their own little groups."
"For real?"
"Yeah. The ones who went out today are exactly those guys. All 'yes, yes' and smiling to the seniors' faces, then talking trash behind their backs."
"Whoa."
"You, punk—I looked out for you from day one so you never got mixed up with them. Be grateful!"
How did the conversation end up there?
The next morning, when I went down to the cafeteria for breakfast, I discovered that everything Ko Mandeok had said so confidently the night before was true.
"Ugh."
"Oof···"
Sitting a little apart from everyone else, a group of players had their faces buried in their trays, shoveling rice and soup like their lives depended on it. All seven of them had faces flushed deep red. Clearly still drunk.
"See?"
"······ Yeah. How much did they drink?"
"Came back late as hell, I heard."
"Ah··· Still managed to get up and come down for food, though."
"Gotta hangover-cure somehow. Heh."
Ko Mandeok watched them with pure disdain.
"They did the same thing at spring camp last year. What the hell are they thinking···"
"Really?"
"Yeah. Back then our manager had only just arrived, so it got waved off with a warning. Think he'll let it slide again this time?"
"Then what?"
Right then the chair next to me scraped back and Taeseong hyung set his tray down and sat.
"He's probably deciding whether to keep using those guys next year the way he did this year—or replace them entirely."
"That far?"
"Our manager's surprisingly strict about this kind of thing. He's not the type to just let it go."
"Even so······"
Taeseong hyung was saying they might get dropped from the starting lineup··· Not all of them were irreplaceable, but a few were core players. Trading them just for getting drunk once felt hard to swallow. Especially when the coach had literally said drinking was allowed. Granted, looking at their condition, they'd clearly gone way overboard.
"Doesn't it seem weird that the coach openly allowed drinking in the first place? What coach just gives the green light like that?"
"Then why···"
"I think he was testing them."
"Huh?"
This was getting more ridiculous by the second. Testing them? Was this one of those schemes you only read about in books? Drop a hint, then use the opening to crack down?
"I've known the manager a while. I know the man··· He's more than capable of something like that."
"······"
"Drinking the night before a rest day? Fine. A couple beers on a weekday? Acceptable. But getting blackout drunk and causing problems for any reason? You're out."
"But Coach, some of those guys drank during the season too and nothing was said."
Ko Mandeok, who'd been listening quietly, pushed back at Taeseong hyung's words.
"Well··· first year. He was reading the room. Hadn't fully taken control of the team yet either."
"······"
"But it looks like he's made up his mind now. Probably got a taste of ambition after things went better than expected this year."
"We finished eighth···"
"That's excellent. And honestly we easily could've been seventh. Seventh was basically handed away. Everyone said we'd be lucky just to avoid last place."
"That's true."
"He wants to put up real numbers next year, and to do that he probably wants to cut the dead weight and keep only the guys who are serious··· That's my guess, anyway."
Everything felt so complicated. Coming from a place where I'd been treated like a complete outcast, none of this was anything I could have imagined. Unlike me, though, Ko Mandeok seemed to buy every word. He'd been nodding the whole time.
While we talked and ate, the hangover-cure squad finished their storm of food and hurried out of the cafeteria. Judging by how they could barely keep their eyes open, they were probably heading straight back to bed to make up the sleep they'd lost.
While the players were eating breakfast in the cafeteria—
"Choi Geunho, Yoon Hyojung, Kim Dokyeong··· Ha··· Exactly the ones I expected are all mixed in, aren't they?"
Manager Park Donghoon let out a deep sigh. Across from him, head coach Kim Myeonggu's face was just as dark.
"Indeed. At least Sangjun looked after the younger ones, so only these guys went out."
Park Donghoon outranked him, but Kim Myeonggu was older, so the two spoke to each other with mutual formality.
"Manager··· what are you going to do?"
"That's the question. What should we do with these guys. Ha···"
"The others we can replace somehow, but Geunho and Hyojung are a bit···"
"··· Honestly, even those two are replaceable if we want to. Neither of them put up any spectacular numbers··· And Hyojung's defense is so bad we had to use him as a DH."
"That's true, but···"
Unlike the hesitant Kim Myeonggu, Park Donghoon seemed to have already made his decision.
"Rick Sanchez isn't going to work out, is he?"
"Doesn't look like it. He really wants to take another shot at it··· He's still young."
Rick Sanchez was only twenty-six.
"Having to replace two foreign players is already a headache, and now these guys on top of it··· Sigh···"
"For now, issue a warning and···"
"No. We already gave them a warning a year ago. They won't even care."
"But···"
"We were already thinking about trades anyway. We need a closer."
"Don't tell me you're going to···"
"Yes. Might as well send them all together while we're at it."
"··· Will the other side even take them?"
"We'll take a bit of a loss. We were going to have to give up a lot either way, so this actually works out."
"······"
And just like that, the future of the Drinking Seven was sealed.