Korea's Best Second Baseman
Today, once again, I stood back behind the mound, staring blankly at the ceremonial first pitch.
A female actress in jeans and a white T-shirt boldly stepped onto the rubber and leaned her body toward the catcher.
These days, most people who came out for the first pitch at least wore the team jersey on top, but…
Was she an actress Ko Mandeok liked? That would explain why Ko Mandeok was enthusiastically flashing signs, fully committed to whatever plan she had in mind.
The sign Ko Mandeok sent her was for a knuckleball.
Was he out of his mind?
The actress received the sign, gave a little nod, and rose into her set. Then the windup.
It had been Senior Sang-jun who taught her the pitching form, and it showed—her windup looked surprisingly similar to his.
After the long preliminary motion, her slender arm finally whipped the ball forward.
"Wooooooah!"
I was genuinely shocked. I had fully expected the ball to leave her hand on a high, looping arc, float up into the sky, and then drop limply to the ground.
Instead, the ball traced a pretty decent trajectory and settled cleanly into Ko Mandeok's mitt.
It wasn't a knuckleball, of course.
Apparently the unwritten rule for female first-pitch throwers was that after releasing the ball they had to hop up and down while laughing. The actress beamed, waved to the crowd, took the ball back from Ko Mandeok who had come up to the mound, and then stepped off.
Should I start hopping around like that every time I throw a pitch?
People would probably just call me a lunatic.
The tedious pregame ceremony finally ended and the real game began.
The Dolphins' leadoff hitter, Oh Ju-yeong, stepped into the box and began his routine.
The first pitch was set as a slider.
Marte had once seen my slider and raised his voice insisting it wasn't a slider at all—it was a sweeper. When I answered that a sweeper was just one kind of horizontal slider anyway, he gave me the most incredulous look and said no, they were different.
They had to be distinguished, he claimed. Just like four-seam and two-seam, cutter and sinker were different, so slider and sweeper were different too.
Can't all of those—four-seam, two-seam, cutter, sinker—just be lumped together as fastballs?
I still didn't understand why the distinction mattered, but I said fine. Honestly, I just couldn't be bothered to argue about something that trivial.
Ever since then, my slider had become a sweeper.
Slider or sweeper, whatever—today's first pitch was this one.
"First pitch of the game—it paints the outside corner."
"Ah, what a beautiful pitch. Oh Ju-yeong had no choice but to watch it go by. It broke from outside to even farther outside. From the batter's perspective it must have looked impossibly far away."
"There's a funny story about this pitch of Kang Hajin's inside the Savers clubhouse, isn't there?"
"Yes. Marte saw Kang Hajin's slider and raved that it was an incredible sweeper. He said it was good enough to play in the big leagues right now."
"Kang Hajin himself seemed to have a different opinion."
"The grip location for a slider and a sweeper is different. So Kang Hajin kept calling it a horizontal slider… but in the end he conceded it was a sweeper. Marte insisted it wasn't a slider, so he just went along with it."
"Haha. So that's what happened."
Ko Mandeok's second sign was for a splitter. This time the batter didn't bite—ball.
I followed with a curveball to grab another strike, then threw another curve for the fourth pitch, but that one missed for a ball.
Then the fifth pitch.
"Slider again! Just like the first pitch, the batter can only watch. First out of the inning is a strikeout."
"Hmm… something feels off."
"What do you mean?"
"Kang Hajin still hasn't thrown a single fastball-type pitch today."
"Ah… you're right. Slider, splitter, curve, curve, slider."
I had recorded an out, but it felt frustrating.
Ever since I started taking the medicine, my pitching style had shifted to standing my ground and winning pure power battles. I used to enjoy painting the edges and freezing hitters who couldn't move a muscle…
But in the pregame check today I had noticed that the life on both my four-seam and two-seam was a little flat.
The pitching coach said it would come back once I started throwing in the game, but for that reason we decided to attack the first inning mainly with off-speed stuff. Now that I was actually doing it, I felt like I had slipped back into the old me.
Of course I was still throwing a slider and splitter that both topped 140 km/h—faster than my old four-seam—and the curve was a power curve, but still…
"This is driving me crazy…"
I was dying to just rear back and fire fastballs.
The second hitter stepped in.
The right-handed batter crowded the plate, practically hugging the black.
Ko Mandeok clearly didn't like it and wanted a four-seam jammed inside. Velocity might be the issue today, not command, so it was more than enough to use as a purpose pitch.
I didn't like the guy either—standing that close and even leaning his upper body in a little. It felt like he was daring me to hit him. So of course I nodded.
I threw the ball tight inside…
"Ugh!"
It hit him.
"That son of a bitch?"
My pitch had been deep, but not deep enough to hit him if he had simply stood still. Instead the batter spun away in exaggerated surprise while deliberately shoving his hip toward the plate.
In other words, he leaned into it on purpose.
Whether the home-plate umpire would buy it was the question… of course he did.
The umpire's arm pointed toward first.
"He stuck his body into the pitch!"
I came off the mound shouting in irritation and injustice, only to see Manager Park already emerging from the dugout. Ko Mandeok hurried over and held me back.
"Stop. Manager's coming out, so cut it. You get unlucky and you'll get tossed."
"I know. Just one word. But damn… first inning already…"
I had been so preoccupied with how my stuff felt that I had briefly forgotten: the Dolphins were definitely going to pull something the moment I took the mound.
"Didn't expect them to take one for the team like that."
"We got played. I should've seen it coming—I was stupid. Haa…"
The argument didn't last long. Protesting wasn't going to change a call that had already been made. At least the Dolphins wouldn't be able to pull the same body-shot stunt again.
Then the number-three hitter stepped in: Park Kang-su, last season's home-run champion.
I had to lock in. One mistake and the ball would leave the yard.
Even Lee Gijun, who was now in America, had hit more than thirty home runs last year and still had to settle for second place in the league—because of this very Park Kang-su.
"Ah… so that's why…"
Now I understood why they had been so desperate to put a runner on in the first inning, even leaning into pitches.
If there had been no one on base, what would I have thrown? Even against Park Kang-su I would have mixed in the unfamiliar, hard-to-time knuckleball at the right moments…
But with a runner on, that became nearly impossible. The moment I threw a knuckleball the runner would take off.
Thinking about it only made me more annoyed.
"So what, every other pitch of mine is just sitting there waiting to be hit?"
'Pickoff to first.'
The instant Ko Mandeok's sign came down I spun and fired to first.
"Safe."
Close. Almost had him.
While I was taking the sign he must have taken a pretty big lead; it had been razor-thin.
The runner edged back toward second, one careful step at a time, looking for another chance. The way he was digging at the dirt with his spikes irritated me so much I threw over to first again.
The next sign that came was, surprisingly, a four-seam.
'Huh?'
It was different from what we had discussed before the game. I looked again, and Ko Mandeok pounded his own chest twice with his fist.
Trust me and throw it.
I nodded and set.
No choice. On days when the ball didn't feel right, the only option was to focus even harder on location.
I tried to keep it as low and as far from the batter as possible while still catching the zone. If it worked, great; if not, so be it. The main thing was making sure it didn't drift back over the middle.
"Striiiiike!"
I glanced at the scoreboard: 146 km/h. Focusing on command had definitely cost me a little velocity.
Even so, I was satisfied. The ball had gone exactly where I wanted it.
I looked down for the next sign at Ko Mandeok's black-painted fingers…
'Huh?'
Once again I was surprised, and once again Ko Mandeok pounded his chest.
"That pitch registered 146 km/h."
"Hmm… Kang Hajin's fastball really does look off today."
"Doesn't seem like a command problem, though."
"Right. It's more the velocity that isn't there. Pitchers have days like this—days when the shoulder just won't loosen up. Looks like today might be one of those days for Kang Hajin."
"And as we speak—Kang Hajin sets. Oh! He throws a knuckleball! The batter swings through it! The runner! The runner is going to second—catcher can't throw!"
"Hmm… looks like the Savers battery decided to ignore the runner and focus entirely on the batter. Personally I think that's the right call."
"Is it? The runner just moved into scoring position."
"True, but Park Kang-su isn't the kind of hitter you can afford to face while half-watching a runner. Even if it gets a little tougher, prioritizing the out at the plate is a solid decision by the Savers battery."
The runner took off for second without the slightest hesitation.
Damn it—how did he know I was throwing a knuckleball? There was nothing wrong with my delivery. I had perfected that part since the off-season.
It wasn't Ko Mandeok either. Early on he had shown a slight difference in setup when catching the knuckleball, but those days were long gone.
And yet the runner broke for second the instant I lifted my leg, as if he had known exactly what was coming.
What the hell?
"Was there something off with me?"
Ko Mandeok came out to the mound, tilting his head. He looked just as baffled as I felt.
"No. Nothing at all. How about me?"
"You were clean too."
"Haa… then what? How did he know?"
"Beats me… maybe he just saw your four-seam velocity was down and took off?"
"That would actually be a relief, but…"
"Whatever. Let's just finish the inning first. Get past this guy and the next one's easy, right?"
"Yeah… true."
"How about a changeup next? With a runner on second they'll figure we won't throw anything slow, so they'll be looking for heat, right?"
"Yeah. Changeup sounds good."
"Okay."
Ko Mandeok settled back behind the plate and Park Kang-su got set. Since we had already agreed on the pitch, I just checked the runner once with my eyes and fired.
Crack!
Our read was completely wrong. Park Kang-su, whom we expected to be sitting on a fastball, swung through the changeup as if he had been waiting for it all along.
But before he could even finish his follow-through after crushing the low pitch, the ball that had been screaming on a low line between first and second suddenly vanished.
"Wooooooooah!!"
Second baseman Jo Chang-jun, who had been playing deep out of respect for Park Kang-su's power, literally took flight.
The ball had been hit so hard it should have been nearly invisible, yet Jo Chang-jun launched himself into the air, fully extended his glove, and somehow snagged it on the very tip of the leather.
The instant he secured the ball he twisted in mid-air and threw toward second before he even hit the ground. The throw, released with no real footing, floated weakly toward the shortstop covering the bag.
"Out!"
But the runner who had already broken for third the moment the ball was hit had no chance of getting back.
Double play.
Jo Chang-jun had just done something ridiculous.
"Chang-jun hyung!!! Nice! Thank you! Holy crap…"
"For something like this? Heh heh."
For today, at least, no one could argue: Jo Chang-jun was the best second baseman in Korea.