Fall Camp Ends
For a few days after seven players were thrown out, our camp felt unsettled.
The punishment had been far heavier than anyone expected — and two of them had been a starting pitcher and the guy who'd locked down the five-hole all season. Another had been our backup catcher, not a starter but someone who'd carved out a real role. As for the remaining four, it wasn't as if they were nobodies either. On a rebuilding club like ours, anyone invited to camp was a prospect the organization had hopes for, starter or not.
Seven players, gone in a single stroke — all because of one slightly excessive night of drinking. There was no way the atmosphere could settle down easily.
The only reason the younger guys kept training without much noise was that Seo Gyeongmin and Jo Sangjun were holding the center of gravity on both sides of the ball. Without those two, I doubted even the manager and coaches could have kept things together.
I'd wondered why Seo Gyeongmin and Jo Sangjun hadn't been around the morning those seven were shipped back to Korea — turns out they'd gone to see them off and try to calm them down a little. According to Taeseong, sending that many guys home only a week into camp was bound to stir up talk, and the two of them had probably been laying groundwork for the fallout. Me, I wasn't the type to get tangled up in complicated business, so I just filed it under "huh" and moved on.
In the middle of getting thoroughly worked over in Japan — Sunday night, November 7th, to be exact — I finished dinner, took a short walk alone around the lodging, and ran into the Hooded Woman.
That was the day I was supposed to meet her. When I'd seen her before leaving for Japan, she'd already known I was going, so I'd stepped out alone on the off chance. Sure enough, she found me on her own and handed me a chocolate box tucked inside a shopping bag, same as last time. Then she gave a cool little wave and left.
How she'd tracked me down here, what she actually was — I'd decided to stop asking. She wouldn't answer anyway, and I wasn't all that curious anymore. For all I knew she might someday say, I helped you this much, so now you owe me something. But she hadn't yet, and worrying about it wouldn't produce an answer, so I chose to think of it kindly. A little unease wasn't going to stop me from taking the pills at this point.
Back at camp, the mood stayed rocky for a while and then settled again. From week two we shifted into individual work, and through weeks three and four we focused on patching the weaknesses that had shown up during the season.
"Is fall camp always this brutal? If it's like this now, how hard are they going to ride us at spring training…"
"Worse than you can imagine. Heh."
It wasn't the training I'd pictured. Any hope that things would ease up after the first week's conditioning got crushed — the manager and coaches clamped down hard again, and every day became the same loop of practice and collapsing into bed. Especially me. With the move to the rotation locked in for next year, I was doing even more conditioning than everyone else, worked so hard that every so often the thought Maybe I should just stay closer would pop into my head uninvited.
Four full weeks of it. On the last morning, after team practice and before lunch, the head coach spoke up.
"You've all worked hard. Training ends here. Rest up for the rest of the day — we're having a team dinner tonight, so keep that in mind."
"Oooooooh!!"
"For real? No afternoon session?"
"We don't grind you into the dirt on the last day. Dinner tonight. Tomorrow everyone's off, and we head back the day after. That's it."
"Yes!"
"Thank you, Coach!!"
Faces that had looked half-dead a second earlier lit up all at once.
"What are we eating for the dinner?"
"Dunno. Whatever's famous around here, right?"
"We're on an island, so seafood?"
"Nah, I don't think so. This place is known for pork."
"……Why?"
"You didn't know? People here supposedly don't eat much fish."
"……Okay, but why?"
"Same reason black pork is famous on Jeju, maybe?"
I got it immediately.
Just as Ko Mandeok said, we really did end up at a pork specialty place. They called it a local cuisine restaurant, but everything that came out was pig. A little tuna showed up here and there, but it felt more like a courtesy tasting than an actual course.
We were deep into the meal when Taeseong wandered over to Mandeok's table with a beer in hand. The odd thing about tonight's dinner was this: the coaches had said a light beer was fine and were drinking themselves — and yet none of the players touched a drop. It wasn't like anyone was swearing off alcohol forever; back in Korea plenty of them would be drinking again. But in front of the coaching staff, nobody had the slightest intention of lifting a glass.
"Your stamina's come a long way."
"After getting worked like that, it'd better have."
"Heh. Once we're back, rest a few days, then we start getting ready."
"For what?"
"What else? Your training."
"……Hah. Yeah. We've got to train. Right."
"You've got to handle things on your own until spring camp in February anyway, so I'm going to take just you and Mandeok and work with you myself."
"Ah…"
What about Ho-min? He'd been tearing his hair out building my training schedule…
"We'll treat December as recovery. I won't push you that hard. Mandeok's going to have it rougher, though."
"Me? Why?"
"You've got to start practicing."
"Huh?"
"The knuckleball. You've got to catch it."
"Ah…"
"Once you get the hang of it, it's doable. I'll work with you, so don't stress too much."
"You're going to catch knuckleballs, hyung?"
"You didn't know? That's my specialty."
"Whaaat?"
How was I supposed to know? I'd never seen anyone around throw a knuckleball, so how would I know who could catch one?
"Anyway, both of you — keep that in mind."
"But hyung, I've got this… friend who's helping with my training…"
"Yeah, I heard. Sounds like he's already built out a schedule? Talk it over with him and we'll adjust. Don't worry about that part."
And how did he know that? The longer this went on, the more it felt like I was the last person to hear about my own life.
Back in Korea, I spent three straight days doing absolutely nothing but burrowing into bed. Ho-min, who'd held down the house alone for a month, kept trying to drag me out and do something — anything — but I refused every time. Recovering the stamina Japan had wrung out of me mattered more than wandering around with another guy.
"Did you even watch the postseason games?"
"Me? I watched the highlights."
"Not the actual games?"
"What's the point? Knowing who won and which team took the title is enough."
"…And this is the guy who plays professional baseball. Unbelievable."
"I don't care. Win or lose, whatever. Our team wasn't in it."
"Tsk tsk. Pathetic, seriously."
Ho-min clicked his tongue and shook his head. I was fishing for a comeback when something I'd completely forgotten surfaced.
"Hey! Come to think of it — you!"
"Huh? Wh-what? What?"
"You never noticed my delivery changed?"
"Huh? Ah, n-no? Wh-what delivery?"
Look at this guy. Getting flustered. The way his pupils were trembling, he looked exactly like someone caught mid-theft.
"You… knew, didn't you?"
"……"
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"I-I didn't— hey, and even if I did know, so what? Was I supposed to tell you?"
"You crazy bastard. You're my manager, aren't you? Training, the little day-to-day stuff — you handle all of it. And you don't mention something that important?"
"What good would telling you midseason do? Were you going to fix it on the spot? What if you wrecked yourself? What if you rushed a change and threw off your balance? You were pitching well. Why mess with it?"
"You still should've said something."
"If I had, would you have just gone, 'Oh, okay,' and left it alone? You would've tried some half-baked adjustment."
"……So that's why you didn't tell me?"
"I was thinking about it too. I was going to start the fix the second the season ended."
"Ha! Since when are you an analytics coach? What makes you think you can overhaul a pitching delivery?"
"I can handle that much, okay? Or did you forget I fixed your delivery back in high school?"
"……"
That part was true. Sophomore year, when my command had gotten a little shaky, Ho-min had given me advice and I'd adjusted. But that was then. Now we had a pitching coach on the club, and Taeseong had offered to help during voluntary workouts — so why him?
I didn't answer and just sat there, which he took as me conceding. He looked pretty pleased with himself. Unfortunately for him…
"I already went back. To the original."
"What? The hell?"
"Hm? Did you just swear at me?"
"Ah… I was going to put you through a proper wringer…"
"……Wait. Was that the real goal all along?"
It clicked. This idiot had been planning to use "fixing my delivery" as an excuse to thoroughly torment me. The look on his face was pure disappointment, like he'd just watched a huge score slip away.
At this point I had to wonder. Why was he like this? Did he actually enjoy getting hit?
"You little pervert…"
"What? Per— hey! Ow! Aagh! That hurts! Ow!"
Turning disappointment into pain didn't take long at all.
Time rolled on to November 30th. In a few days I'd be starting individual training with Taeseong, Ko Mandeok, and Ho-min, so lately I'd been giving rest my absolute, dedicated best.
After dinner I was back in bed watching a drama I'd just gotten into when a crash came from the living room. I knew Ho-min well enough to assume he'd been doing something idiotic alone and knocked over a dining chair —
"Hey! Hey! It's done! It's through!"
— until the door flew open like he'd kicked it and Ho-min burst in.
"Have you lost your mind? Just because this is your aunt's place doesn't mean you get to start demolishing it. If you're going to smash something, smash your own door~"
"You idiot, this is not the time. Internet! Check the internet, now!"
"Ah, what is it this time?"
"Posting! The posting system, man!"
"What about it?"
"They shortened it!!"
"Huh?"
Suddenly what…
"The posting window got cut down! To five years!!"
"……What?"
The words were so out of nowhere that my brain short-circuited for a second.