New Season, New Goals, New Trash Talk

Noh In-seong's personal stream had ended, as usual, as nothing more than a gaming broadcast — which was exactly why the front office had let their guard down.

Technically, he had been playing a game that day too. The problem was that he kept dying over and over, spinning it as "that's how hard I trained," and then launching into a tearful rant about who in this day and age forces people through training like that.

A boy barely out of his teens. Abuse of power by the club. Old, incompetent brass at the top.

Was that not the perfect pile of kindling just waiting for the smell of red to come seeping up from somewhere?

"Because of you, this club's image has been blown to pieces!! Torn out by the roots!!"

"Uwaaah, what on earth did I even do wrong—!!"

Sure enough, over fifty articles popped up on the scandal alone, followed by a fresh crop of opinion columns churning it all into a second wave. The baseball association issued its formal 'concerns,' the labor office was reportedly going 'Hm...?' — a fire so large it was hard to say whether it was a hot topic or an actual blaze at this point.

Whether or not the Doubles' guts were churning over being officially branded as bigger idiots than the association, one thing was certain: the coach's career was a confirmed kill.

Anyone who survived this situation would have to be a god.

"I... I've given six years to this club alone...!!"

"Then get lost!"

No matter how long a coach had served, once an incident ballooned to this size, survival was a tall order.

The Seoul Doubles' longtime sponsor corporation was furious as well. Taking the operating funds and handing back malignant tumor proliferation in return — what kind of ingrates were these? What a blow to corporate image!

"You're not shipping him out right now?! Look at the state this company is in!"

"The chairman himself says our club's discipline is a train wreck!"

"Everyone below me, fall in!""Everyone above me, fall in!""What the hell is with that punk?! Noh In-seong?!"

Naturally, the blame relayed downward in one unbroken chain, a downlink-joint running from top to bottom like a rally circuit.

The result...

"Hey. Seriously, thank you."

"Yeah, when I first met you I figured you were a lunatic. Turns out you're a lunatic who's actually useful."

Here stood the Jeong brothers — the starters sandwiching me in the rotation — and between the two of them, they'd bought me an actual sandwich.

"How on earth did a butterfly effect happen here?"

Noh In-seong, forcing down a thirty-centimeter submarine sandwich in great lumps, had a question mark floating in his eyes.

Fact: this was not the first time the coach had shoved a forkball on someone.

Jeong In-woo, the older brother, had been around five years or so, and since he was so obviously a sinkerballer, the coach gave up on him quickly. It was Jeong In-young, the younger brother, who was the problem.

A lefty. A changeup eunuch forced to get through games on nothing but a 145 km/h four-seam and a slider.

Adding a forkball, on top of that, to a swingman pitcher who was effectively operating on two pitches?

"Seems fine to me? If you've got a ball that runs sideways, you ought to have one that drops too."

It made sense, and it had a defensible rationale, so apparently the coach had ordered the rookie who'd just come up last year to do this and that — including that.

"You lunatic — that wasn't exactly what you'd call special training suited to me, was it?!"

At Jeong In-young's testimony that he'd been ordered to do the exact same thing, my capacity for disbelief evaporated on the spot. No, everything else aside — shouldn't the assignments actually match each pitcher's body?

"Last year there was a stretch when I couldn't even bend my fingers properly because of that thing."

So that was why I'd heard his numbers cratered late last season.

"Well, I dumped an annoying human being and scored a free sandwich out of it, so I'm in a good mood."

"Yeah, eat plenty. And thank you."

With the coach gone, both of their faces were beaming from ear to ear. Must have been rough for them. Poor bastards. This is what normalization looks like.

The winter of grinding it out, round after brutal round, finally ended — only for the last week of March to come back even colder.

Opening day was finally one day away.

And the day before opening day, there was an event where all the managers stood up and talked their heads off: Media Day.

"...But why do I have to go to that? Can't I just hit the buffet, go back, and sleep?"

Apparently tradition said the manager brought two players along. Why me?

"...Sorry, but you were named. Specifically."

"Ugh, I guess skipping out isn't an option, then."

I tried the whole "it's a hassle, there are plenty of other guys, right?" line. It didn't land. Damn it.

I couldn't stream anyway, so the plan had been to mooch a free meal, head back to the hotel, game until I dropped off. But then it hit me.

"...Well, if you're naming me, that means I'm cleared to cause a scene, doesn't it?"

You're all dead.

Media Day, held at a hotel in Seoul, was a fairly pleasant affair — no international tournament had just wrapped up, after all.

Normally, the more dismal the national team's pre-season international results, the more the mood at these things sagged.

But this year there was none of that — well, aside from Busan setting some new record. By all accounts, a perfectly ordinary year.

"Yes — manager of the Doubles, Jeong Im-taek."

Jeong Im-taek's stomach hurt. Media Day itself he'd done last year too, so he wasn't especially worried about that.

The problem was the one lunatic he'd brought in this year.

One of the two players was naturally the team captain, Jo In-soo — a perfectly sane man, so he could be written off as no concern.

The other one — the reporters were openly anticipating him. 'You'll be taking him with you, won't you?' they'd asked, grinning.

'Agh, Noh In-seong, that absolute lunatic...'

His brain operated on a frequency entirely alien to normal human beings, and the scariest part was that nobody could predict what would come out of his mouth.

He'd begged him, for the love of God, to just behave during today's interviews.

But when the man's response was 'Oh, the Busan kids are coming? Then I definitely have to go,' the outlook was, predictably, hopeless.

'Please, just let nothing happen before this event is over!'

A man who, since his professional debut, had never once been unacquainted with scandal and incident — Jeong Im-taek's prayer rose toward the heavens.

Was heaven a sadist, then?

Time for the 'season goals' announcements, where every manager and player took turns throwing out their personal battle cries.

"We'll put last year's heartbreak behind us — this year, we're not chasing fall baseball. We're chasing a championship."

Jeong Im-taek, whose team had finished third last year and fallen in the playoffs, agonizingly short of a Korean Series berth, threw out his usual battle cry — the declaration of intent for this year's target, the goal of a championship.

"This year, I'm hoping to make contact a little more often."

"""Bahahaha—!!"""

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Jo In-soo, who spent his days praying that the fans' thundersticks would swat at him with no more force than a folding fan, delivered this year's wish with a wry smile.

"I'll try to do better than Busan's first-round pick... huh? Wait, he's not even here?"

The problem child, Noh In-seong, showed up to the time-honored tradition of warm, convivial harmony carrying a personal time bomb in his mouth instead.

The old proverb supposedly went: the mouth is the door that invites disaster, and the tongue is the blade that carves the body.

The proverb, freshly patched for the modern era, ran considerably spicy.

The mouth is the door that declares war, and the tongue is the bullet that buries itself in your flesh.

The atmosphere abruptly froze over.

Whether he'd read the room of the Busan contingent — who'd just taken a sledgehammer blow — or simply didn't care at all,

Noh In-seong, microphone still in hand, began walking toward the Busan manager.

"Why didn't you bring him out?"

Microphone in hand, eyes locked on the Busan manager, the words came spilling out of my mouth cold as ice.

He'd delivered his battle cry rather elegantly, to be fair.

'This year will be truly different. We are assembling the puzzle that will secure us fall baseball.' Kya. Beautiful.

"So where exactly is that centerpiece puzzle piece of yours standing right now?"

Whether he had no intention of dignifying my question with an answer,

"....."

or simply had nothing to say, the Busan manager's silence stretched a beat too long —

"Uh... Noh In-seong-ssi? Jang In-ho withdrew from spring camp due to a labral tear, a SLAP lesion."

Only then did the moderator cut in.

Ah, so the dead arm arrived. No wonder — he'd broken the grand tradition of rushing every promising rookie straight onto the mound until something tore.

"Dead arm... dead arm..."

Ha, that's hilarious. The kid they drafted over me has a dead arm... a joke just surfaced in my head.

"...What exactly is so funny?"

The Busan manager asked, his face thunderous.

...If I say what just popped into my head out loud, a fist is probably coming my way. Would claiming self-defense hold up?

"Oh no, an acrostic just came to mind."

"You find this situation FUNNY?!"

BANG!

Out of all the opening-day Media Days past and present, this was one where fist-shaking and table-smashing were practically unheard of — so that first-round pick of theirs must be in serious shape.

"Why are you getting angry, sir? Can a man not think freely? And if it's funny, so what? I'm the one doing the laughing."

Since when did Korea become a nation of extreme thought control? What a genuinely hilarious gentleman.

Ignoring the Busan manager, who was trembling from head to toe, I stepped toward the cameras and stared straight down the lens.

"Starting now, I'll be doing an acrostic on 'dead arm.' No need to wish me luck — just do your job and write the article properly."

"...I'm... sorry? Sorry?"

I brushed past the dazed camera director. Oh — red light on? So this is a live broadcast.

Meeting every horrified stare in the room, watching the chat window detonate in real time,

"Thank you."

With that, and a deep, immaculate bow, arms folded politely, I closed the performance.

"Well then, shall I go see to my main objective? Stay well, you old fossils."

And Noh In-seong walked clean out of the hall to go eat.

It was immaculately courteous and, at the same time, so insufferably smug you wanted to strangle him — it called to mind a certain orange rat in a suit.

It was a bow so polite it almost made you pity the Busan manager, red-faced with rage, shrieking 'Get back here right this instant?!'

"Man, these galbi are unreal. Who knew they'd be this tender."

I was shoveling braised short rib into my mouth by the forkful when someone had somehow appeared and taken the seat across from me.

"...You sure you're allowed to show your face after that?"

Jo In-soo, back after the whole thing had somehow been smoothed over, asked me point-blank.

...Word was the manager had a genuinely rough time handling the cleanup. If he got burned this badly, he probably wouldn't drag me along next time. Small mercies.

Anyway, a question deserved an answer, so I flipped my phone open and pulled up the hologram.

"What do you mean? That the acrostic already hit three hundred thousand views on Shorts?"

Impressive, if I do say so myself.

"It hit three hundred thousand already... no, not that."

The short titled A Man Worth His Salary at Last, blowing past 300k — this thing would probably out-earn my monthly paycheck.

I swiped the video away, and the season schedule scrolled up.

"Of course I know, Captain. That dimwitted team is our opening opponent, aren't they."

And the opponent for my first official start as a starter in the pros.

"But what does any of that matter? That's future-me's problem."

Our opening opponent was Daejeon, and naturally Daejeon would hand the ball to their homegrown ace on opening day.

Tap the Daejeon team logo, and the first name to pop up was the face of the franchise.

"Their problems can wait. What we've got to deal with is this gentleman."

You Hong-jin. The Phoenix's homegrown ace.

"Wasn't he something like six and fourteen last year?"

Whether it was a curse or a tradition at this point, he was an ill-fated pitcher with not a gram of win support to his name.

"Sure. But it wasn't bad pitching that produced a record like that, was it."

The very gentleman I had so kindly asked during the exhibition games, 'Still haven't gotten your body in order?'

His ERA sat in the low twos, but a league that had blown past hitter-friendly into full-blown worship-the-bat-demonize-the-arm had crowned him its undisputed King of Pity.

He'd scraped together single-digit wins, and for his trouble got meme'd into oblivion under the mocking nickname "One-Dub" —

but his ERA-minus — that is, his run prevention adjusted for league context — sat just under 69. Translation: a bona fide top-five-percent pitcher.

"Whew. Fine. Like anyone's worried about who, here."

Jo In-soo looked at me and heaved a long sigh, wearing the expression of a man watching something hopeless.

"Exactly what I was thinking. The man's basically a walking piñata for me, isn't he?"

As a token of my gratitude, I drove the knife deep into the chest of a fifth-of-nothing facing his own personal grim reaper.

Sure, the man had never once cleared .300 against basically any pitcher alive... but dipping into the .050s was beyond brutal, even for him.

"...Hey! That was just bad luck, plain and simple!"

"No, Captain, you're hitting .157 against him on average, and that's after clawing up from the .050s—"

Shouldn't this man be spending an entire day, start to finish, on targeted tee work against one single pitch of his tormentor's?

Jo In-soo's furrowed face furrowed a little deeper.

"Hmm. I'd better go grab more galbi."

"You lunatic. That mountain is nothing but bones at this point... haaah, fine, eat it all, go ahead."

Noh In-seong, feasting on a free meal for the first time in ages, couldn't have cared less.

The hunger of a body still lingering at the tail end of its growth spurt wasn't even half satisfied yet.

At long last — not exactly a tear-jerking moment, mind you — the first start of my new life's first full season.

Slightly annoying that the opener was on the road, though.

Today I was starting at shortstop, batting fifth. Not a bad way to open the year.

"Hey. In-seong."

A face that looked a bit like a mafia don's — our number-one starter. Tijuana–San Diego born and raised, Caleb James, came over to me before first pitch.

"You know I'm the kind of pitcher who lives on balls in play, right?"

"What kind of fielder shows up without reading the scouting data? Sinker and cutter out of the same slot — no four-seam — with the changeup mixed in, right?"

I glanced over at Jo In-soo for a 'that right?' — and the thumbs-up he fired back confirmed it.

The sinker and cutter, thrown with near-identical arm action, deceived hitters through horizontal movement in opposite directions. The sinker and the circle changeup, both carrying that heavy, sinking tumble, deceived through velocity alone.

In a park where a ball could leave the yard at any moment even off an imperfect barrel, that approach would get a pitcher's skull split open instead of his pitch count — but this was the Korean league. The bulk of those balls in play would be grounders or quickly-defended hard liners.

"Most of those balls in play are going to come at third or short."

"Right, In-seong. The defense you showed there in camp left an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠impression. Just keep doing exactly that."

Word was Caleb had blown his top plenty last year, thanks to the offense-only no-gloves the team kept stationing at the hot corners.

"Don't worry. Roll one to my side, and I'll grant you inner peace."

"Inner... Peace?"

That's the spirit, big man. Inner peace.

The walk-up song played. This was definitely what being the away team felt like — back home, we just pumped one stadium announcement over the speakers and called it a day.

Standing at short, I glanced toward the battery, caught the sign the catcher put down, and turned my eyes to the batter.

According to the scouting report: a man who loved swinging at the first pitch, quick on his feet, and more than willing to trade away power for it. Last ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠year's average hovered around .270, so roughly speaking — a hapless slap hitter who needed a pitch he could pull inside to scrape together a base hit.

Then I'll just have to kill it dead. I began drifting, slowly, deliberately, toward third.

Tak!

Caleb buried the sinker, the batter swung and got bleached-wood end of the bat on it, and the ball dribbled toward second.

I shut off my thinking brain and charged forward.

The ball carried no steam at all — a lazy roller, which meant that even from where I'd started my break, it was still a good stretch away...

"Then I'll just sprint in and take it myself. Problem solved!"

Field it with two hands, or with the glove? Oh please. That's the recipe for an infield single.

Drop the right arm, snatch the ball up barehanded, firm in the palm — and then, without so much as a glance, unleash a full-arm running throw to first.

"Out!"

I could see the runner — Gyu-cheol? Gyu-jeh? whichever — protesting furiously at the first base umpire, face contorted with the sheer injustice of it all.

Caleb, awestruck by the play, raised his glove in a salute.

"Goddamn, that was some god-tier defense!"

Confirming that face of pure gratitude aimed my way — and with that, the first defensive scheme of my pro debut was complete.

"Inner peace, my friend. Inner... peace."

Skadoosh.

In any era, pitchers handed over liver, gallbladder, and everything ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠else to the beast who strangled their would-be hits in the crib.

Well, look at that. Made myself a friend.