Season Finale
After sweeping our three-game series against the Raiders, our team climbed back into first place.
It was the top spot the Raiders had held since May—the one we’d been chasing relentlessly only to fall short by a single game every time. That elusive first-place perch finally fell to us thanks to our starting pitchers, the sudden explosion of Park Jeonghun, and the captain’s sheer force of will.
Park Jeonghun most of all.
His spectacular revival—from a prospect who’d been reduced to a defense-only specialist—sent our fans into absolute hysterics.
A guy who’d been stuck in the low-to-mid .100s ever since his pro debut had transformed overnight, so of course every wild theory under the sun was flying around.
“It’s honestly kind of eerie.”
I couldn’t help wondering whether that guy might be a similar case to mine… but it wasn’t like I could just walk up and ask, Hey, Senior, you taking pills too?
I seriously considered asking if he knew the Hooded Woman, then abandoned the idea just as quickly. Hard to keep suspecting him when I knew full well he put in more training volume than anyone else on the roster.
“So all that work finally paid off for real?”
I had no choice but to believe the same thing everyone else did.
“If I’d trained hard enough, maybe I wouldn’t have needed the pills either?”
Yeah, right.
Park Jeonghun had gone and hit four home runs in a single game. Me? I’d started out throwing 141 and that was that.
Next up was the weekend road series against the Hawks.
Riding the momentum, our team never let up. Lee Yong-hun and Hwang Chan-young took the Friday and Saturday starts in turn, holding the opposing lineup to six innings and three runs, then five innings and two. Solid work from the back end of the rotation.
While our starters kept them in check, the bats poured out ten and twelve runs and completely demolished the other side’s pitching. On top of that, Kim Seok-hwan—coming in as the second pitcher both nights—threw a clean inning Friday and two more scoreless frames Saturday, reasserting the value he’d slightly lost to Oh Gyu-shin this year.
Once Saturday’s game ended, people started openly predicting our regular-season title. The reason was simple: the Raiders had dropped both Friday and Saturday.
Their bats, already silent against us, never woke up afterward either. Of all teams, they drew the Warriors—locked in a life-or-death scrap with the Hawks for third place. A Raiders club whose momentum had flatlined simply couldn’t stop a Warriors side throwing everything into the fight for third.
Sunday’s game. After two full days of rest, I… was not the starter.
Manager Park gave Hyeon-bin another shot. It was partly consideration for the workload I’d carried without rest against the Raiders, and partly lingering concern over the hit-by-pitch I’d taken with my body. I insisted nothing was wrong, but when he said there was zero reason to push it, I had to fall in line. He also scratched me from the lineup, though he left the door open for a possible pinch-hit appearance, so I sat in the dugout just in case.
And then there was our own Ko Mandeok, still not free of the aftereffects of that enteritis.
“Isn’t it about time you bounced back?”
“Tell me about it. But I’ve got no strength left in my body. I’m dying over here.”
His cheeks had gone hollow. What the hell had he eaten to still be like this? He himself still had no idea what the problem was. When I asked whether there was something only he and the captain had eaten, he said it wasn’t just one or two things…
“Sigh. The much older captain is flying around like nothing happened.”
Seo Gyeongmin, who’d been sick right alongside him, was starting and playing great. So why was this guy still like this…
“······”
Fortunately Jeong Jong-seong was filling Ko Mandeok’s spot well enough. There were still some rough edges, but overall he was holding things together. Anyway, we were on a winning streak, so I had to call it good work.
“Win today and that’s eight in a row for us, right?”
“Yes.”
“We finally got those Raiders. I really thought we couldn’t.”
“Senior Jeonghun did pretty much all of it.”
“Yeah… can’t argue with that.”
Crack!
“Sigh. I told Hyeon-bin not to throw consecutive fastballs.”
Bottom of the first: Hyeon-bin surrendered a two-run homer and we fell behind first.
Top of the second.
Crack!
Crack!
“…Do they just leave the yard every single time they make contact?”
“Those two are seriously insane.”
Back-to-back homers from the captain and Park Jeonghun knotted it at 2-2. Then the top of the third: three straight hits plated another run for a 3-2 lead.
Crack!
Bottom of the third: another two-run shot and it was 3-4. Lead gone again.
“Why is this game like this? How many homers already?”
Only three innings in and four home runs had already left the park. Our side trying to keep the streak alive, theirs trying to avoid the sweep—neither starter lasted three innings.
The opposing reliever finally retired the side in order in the top of the fourth. Onto our mound came No Geun-sik, the guy who’d been bumped from the fifth-starter race early in the year and sent down to the second team.
“You haven’t seen that hyung pitch since he came back up, right?”
“Not yet.”
“He’s gotten a lot better.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“…But wasn’t he always good out of the bullpen?”
It felt a little mean to say, but No Geun-sik had always been a bullpen ace. Filthy stuff in the pen; once he entered an actual game he turned into a bland, ordinary pitcher. There are guys like that—command nine zones warming up, then can’t hit two once they take the mound. Mental thing. Unless he fixed it himself, it was always going to be hard.
Still, word was he’d dominated down in the second team… so I held out a little hope.
Crack!
“······”
“Haa…”
Two balls way outside in a row, then the forced pitch to get back into the count got absolutely crushed. The kind of contact that made every head on the field drop the instant it left the bat. Problem was, the heads dropping belonged to us.
3-5.
3-7.
3-8.
By the end of the sixth the score sat at 3-9. The entire chase crew came in and every single one of them allowed runs the moment they appeared.
“Ah~ If we can just hold the rest of the innings and get one real chance…”
Ko Mandeok muttered, smacking his lips in frustration. He’d changed a lot. Just last year, this kind of deficit at this stage of the game and he would’ve cleanly given up. Now, six runs down with three innings left, his eyes were sparkling like it was still doable—against the third-place Hawks, no less.
So in the seventh, when nobody had quit yet:
“Yes!! That’s it! We can do this!”
We scratched across two runs and closed it to 5-9. Manager Park couldn’t give up either; he brought in Oh Gyu-shin, one of the winning-setup guys, and shut down the seventh. One way or another, by the end of the eighth it was 6-9.
Top of the ninth.
“Hyung, I’m going.”
Ko Mandeok stepped in for Na Seung-won—a pinch-hit bet on his on-base skills. Result: a walk. Successful pinch-hit. The second he reached first, pinch-runner Ju Yang-gyu took over.
Against Hawks closer Jo Taek-su, Jo Chang-jun slapped a single into right and suddenly we had a real chance: nobody out, runners on first and third.
“Pinch-hitter!”
Our manager called for one right there. Time for me to grab a bat. One big swing here and we were tied.
“Kang Hajin.”
Manager Park stopped me just as I was leaving the dugout.
“······!!!!!”
The moment I stepped into the box, every fielder took a step back. I felt a little surge of pride—they were clearly conscious of my power. And thanks to that, I had a real shot at making Manager Park’s play work this at-bat.
The pitcher came set and delivered. I gathered every ounce of strength I had—
Tick.
A soft little roller tumbling slowly toward third. The runner who’d already broken from third lightly touched home; the runner from first settled into second. And me, the one who’d laid down the bunt:
“Safe! Safe!”
I got insanely lucky. Honestly I bunt like garbage. Somehow the ball hugged the third-base line and rolled so prettily that pitcher, catcher, and third baseman all had an awkward play. I beat it out.
7-9.
Shane’s productive out moved the runners to second and third with one away. One hit for a tie. Then the trusted Seo Gyeongmin lifted a deep fly to right; the runner from third scored and I tagged up to third myself. Not ideal, but we plated the run.
8-9. Two outs, runner on third.
Then Park Jeonghun stepped in.
Craaack!
The white line cleared the fence in a blink and disappeared into a fan’s glove in the home-run seats.
“Whoa… what is that guy?”
As if he were finally unloading every ounce of frustration he’d ever carried, everything he hit left the yard. He’d hit more home runs this week than in his entire pro career before it.
10-9. Lead retaken.
Bottom of the ninth and the defense got reshuffled into chaos. Designated hitter Seo Gyeongmin moved to first, first baseman Kim Tae-seong to third, third baseman Park Jeonghun to short. And out of nowhere, me to left field. Probably because the DH spot had vanished and they wanted a contingency for anything that might go wrong…
Thanks to Kang Chanjung locking down the ninth, Manager Park’s worries stayed just that—worries.
Just as the experts predicted, we never let go of first place after that.
The Raiders climbed out of their skid and tried once more to challenge for the top, but they couldn’t close the gap on a Savers team still riding full momentum.
And so time passed…
If we won today, even a total collapse the rest of the way wouldn’t let the Raiders catch us.
The Unicorns sat in fifth, locked in a brutal scrap with the sixth-place Stars for the last postseason berth, so they were obviously going to empty the tank for this one. And the starter tasked with stopping them was—
Me.