You Can Hit It Just by Looking?
I got through the third without much trouble. In the meantime our batters scratched out two more runs, and Ko Mandeok’s RBI was right in the middle of them.
He swaggered back after driving in the run, and as he strapped on his gear ahead of the fourth he leaned in and muttered,
“Let’s switch the signs again.”
“Huh?”
“Just to check. Whether our signs really leaked or we simply got beat by a good guess.”
“Ah—so we go back to the first-inning set?”
“Exactly. We start over from number one. If the same thing that happened in the first happens again this inning… then yeah, we’ve got a sign problem.”
“What if they’re just hitting well?”
“Then we mix pitches so we can tell the difference.”
“Mm… all right. I’ll throw whatever you call.”
“Good.”
I climbed the mound, watched Ko Mandeok’s fingers flash through a dazzling sequence, and couldn’t help a little snort of laughter.
Changeup for the first pitch…
Had I ever thrown a first-pitch changeup since joining this team? Probably not. Most clubs sat on a fastball or slider early against me, so a changeup looked like a pretty sharp idea. If the bat came out on changeup timing… well, that would settle it.
The changeup ran away to the outer half against the left-handed Oh Ju-young. His bat followed it—and missed clean.
Timing was completely off. He was sitting dead-red fastball…
From that alone the signs looked clean. A relief, sure—but it was only one pitch.
“Foul!”
Another changeup. Again Oh Ju-young’s bat jumped out early. He tried to check it at the last second and barely nicked it.
Two straight fastball timings…
I threw the third pitch with a little more ease.
“Stri-ike! Batter out!”
A curve that started outside and finished further outside. Oh Ju-young just watched it go by and turned for the dugout.
Ko Mandeok flipped the ball to first, then looked straight at me and gave a single nod. I understood perfectly.
Just a lucky guess. Yeah… that’s all it was.
Kang Ho-young stepped in—the same guy who’d leaned into a pitch and reached base in the first. He was grinning like an idiot as he crowded the plate again, as far inside as the box would allow.
“Gonna take another one off the body?”
Be my guest.
Before Ko Mandeok could put down a sign I flashed one of my own. He hesitated a beat, then accepted it and shifted a hair toward the hitter.
“This isn’t the first inning anymore.”
I spun the ball inside my glove until I had the grip I wanted.
“Hup!”
A lot of pitchers grunt when they throw. I’m not usually one of them—I’ll clench my teeth before I’ll make noise. This time was different. Maybe because I meant it, the shout just ripped out of me.
“Whoa—!”
The crowd’s startled gasp exploded the instant the ball smacked the mitt. A 155-kilometer four-seamer that bored in chest-high on the inner half. Kang Ho-young tried to lean back, lost his balance, and went down hard on his rear.
He stayed sitting there and glared at me like he wanted me dead.
“You would’ve been fine if you’d just stood still. What do you want me to do about it?”
I said it behind my glove, so he couldn’t have heard the words.
A quick glance at their dugout showed every last one of them hanging on the rail, ready to pour out. One more word with the glove down and the whole bench would have been on the field.
I had no intention of starting anything. It was only the fourth—if I was going to cause trouble I at least wanted five innings under my belt. So I tipped my cap in a half-apology.
If he still wanted to make a scene after that, it wouldn’t be on me.
He muttered something at Ko Mandeok, then stepped back in—just a shade farther off the plate than before.
“Should’ve done that from the start.”
With the hitter giving me a little room, the zone suddenly felt huge.
Four-seamer away.
“Stri-ike!”
He edged closer again.
“Ball.”
Another four-seamer inside, and he backed off once more.
“Stri-ike!”
Then another four-seamer away. He cocked his head and glared, pure murder in his eyes.
“Time to get lost.”
I finished him with a high fastball. Kang Ho-young took a big cut and walked off.
When the game starts going the way you want, the mood lifts. Especially when the four-seamer that had been giving me trouble starts living exactly where I put it—confidence comes flooding back.
So I went right after the next hitter, Park Kang-su, with another four-seamer and got the strike. Second pitch I decided to steal his timing with a changeup—and the second the ball left my hand I knew.
“Shit.”
The feel off the fingertips was wrong. I knew exactly what that sensation meant.
“Please…”
The changeup didn’t drop. It was supposed to run from middle to outer half, but the ball betrayed me. And a changeup that does that is nothing more than…
CRACK!!
A batting-practice pitch.
“Ah—”
The moment bat met ball, everybody knew. The crowd let out a collective groan as they tracked how far it was going to travel. I didn’t even need to turn around.
“Hoo… this is driving me crazy.”
Another changeup. Pure mistake pitch this time—no room for doubt. Still, a corner of my mind stayed uneasy simply because it was a changeup again.
“He sat on it and crushed it. Like he knew the changeup was coming.”
Perfect timing. The ball had drifted over the heart of the plate, sure, but the timing had been perfect too.
“Did he come up looking for nothing but my changeup?”
He hadn’t even flinched at the first-pitch four-seamer, which only fed the suspicion.
But…
“How many changeups do I throw in a game that he’d sit on one? Does that even make sense?”
I had no idea.
I gave up another hit to the next batter, Simon Ferza—a soft blooper that just cleared the third baseman’s glove. The pitching coach came out to the mound.
“You tight?”
“No.”
“A mistake pitch getting hit is just baseball. The one before that was a broken-bat single too.”
“Yeah. I know.”
That was all. Just a reminder that we still had a lead, so throw free and easy. The coach left. Ko Mandeok stepped closer.
“I got it.”
“…Got what?”
“It wasn’t the signs.”
“Huh? Then what?”
“The knuckleball.”
“……?”
“That crazy bastard was sitting on the knuckleball.”
“What?”
So Park Kang-su had come up hunting the knuckleball and waiting for that exact timing?
“Right after he hit it he grinned and said something.”
“Said what?”
“‘Got lucky again.’”
“……”
“I couldn’t figure it out at first, but that’s the only thing that fits. He was looking for the knuckleball and caught a break.”
I had nothing. I’d never once imagined someone would step into the box deliberately hunting a knuckleball. Yet someone had done exactly that—and of all people, I’d thrown him a changeup that ran at almost the same velocity. Then the pitch sailed over the middle…
“Just pure rotten luck.”
He tapped me with the mitt and headed back, leaving me still half-stunned.
“Rotten luck, huh… Is that actually the better explanation?”
Maybe it was hearing it put that way. The idea that it had simply been an accident settled my nerves more than I expected.
“Out!”
The first pitch I threw with that lighter heart turned the fifth hitter, Kim Hyeong-gu, into a foul pop.
My day ended after six innings. I could have gone one more, but the moment I finished the sixth our manager yanked me. It hadn’t been a shutout anyway, so I didn’t feel much regret—just nodded and headed for the ice.
“I think we overthought the whole thing.”
“Right?”
“Manager Yoo Jae-jung of the Dolphins is famous for messing with guys’ heads, so we were sure they had some scheme cooked up…”
“They did try to rattle us. Honestly we almost gave up runs in the first.”
I finished icing and returned to the dugout just as Ko Mandeok came back from his at-bat and started buckling on his gear again.
“I was positive they were going to pull something…”
“If they were, they wouldn’t have pulled their starter in the fourth.”
“True…”
“Or at least tried some dirty trick before they took him out.”
“Why the hell did they start Do-kyung in the first place?”
“No idea… Maybe because he’d already worked with our pitchers?”
“And that’s why they yanked him the same time they pulled the starter?”
“Could be. Just a guess.”
“What about the rest?”
I shrugged. No clue.
In the bottom of the fourth, after I’d come out having allowed one run, our hitters completely dismantled their starter, Choi Geun-ho. Sitting exclusively on the two-seamer, they strung together hit after hit until he was chased after giving up three more runs. At that point the Dolphins manager also replaced the starting catcher, Kim Do-kyung.
Then in the top of the fifth they even pinch-hit for Yoon Hyo-jung. Every last one of our three drinking buddies had been pulled.
Ko Mandeok and I, who’d spent days fretting over whatever the Dolphins were plotting, could only stare at each other in confusion.
The final score was 8–1.
Hwang Chan-young took the mound in the eighth and closed it out with two scoreless innings, looking sharp again.
Then came the interview. As the winning pitcher I had to do one. Different network today, so it wasn’t Han Song-yi—just the usual bland questions and bland answers until it was over.
As everything was wrapping up I spotted Park Kang-su lingering near home plate. Before I knew it I was walking toward him.
“Excuse me, senior.”
“Hm? Oh—hey. Your stuff looked good today. Congrats.”
Said the guy who’d just taken me deep…
“Thank you. Um… mind if I ask one thing?”
“Sure. And drop the formal stuff. Why so stiff? Heh.”
He was friendlier than I’d expected.
“Did you… by any chance sit on the knuckleball today?”
I couldn’t leave without asking.
“Huh? How’d you know?”
Park Kang-su looked more impressed than anything.
“Y-you really did?”
“Yeah. Last time I watched you, you threw the knuckleball to the tough hitters. Figured you’d throw me one too.”
“……”
“And I got a look at it on the second pitch. Thought I might be able to catch up to it.”
You can hit it just by looking once?
“One more thing. How’d you know to steal on the second pitch?”
“That? Beats me—I didn’t call it. But your four-seamer was off today. I could tell from the first pitch.”
You can tell just by looking at that too?
“What?”
“So of course you weren’t going to throw two in a row. That’s probably why they ran. Or the bench spotted it and put on the sign.”
“Ah…”
So it had just been off-speed timing and they’d taken off. Ko Mandeok and I had completely overcooked it.
“Got all your answers now?”
“……Yes. Thank you.”
“Then let me ask one.”
“Sure.”
“Was it just a bad day? In the first?”
“Yeah.”
“But you got it back?”
“Yeah.”
“How so fast?”
I wondered whether I should answer, but he’d cleared up my own questions, so I told him straight.
“I think it was mental. Once I sorted that out it came back… I think. Not totally sure.”
“Mental? Ah—those guys? So that was it.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. But kid… don’t go telling the other team everything like that. What if they use it against you?”
“Ah—right.”
He was the one who’d asked…
“All right. Good work today.”
He seemed like a decent guy after all.
Park Kang-su started toward his dugout, then turned back and called out.
“Ah, what the hell. I’ll just tell you. Those guys? Yeah, we sent them out specifically to rattle you. So our plan kind of worked. You just pitched too well and we lost anyway.”
“……”
He said his piece and walked off for real.
So they put them all in just to make us paranoid? Hoping we’d start second-guessing ourselves and fall apart on our own?
It was… different from any baseball I’d known. A strange mix of wonder, surprise, and a little unease that tactics like that even existed.
“But why tell me all of it? Is this another mind game?”
He’d been so open about it that even that started to feel suspicious.