The Anti-Doubles Coalition
A rest day of such absurd laziness that it somehow left Noh In-seong with a strange sense of defeat had passed, and baseball resumed on Tuesday morning.
The moment he walked into the stadium for work, In-seong felt that winning feeling all over again.
"Mmm. The world is finally right again."
And it was thanks to the large digital panel that greeted him the second he stepped through the doors.
Frankly, the money had become meaningless ever since his two endorsement deals had blown up spectacularly. What mattered was the message.
"Starting today, you will all refer to me as the Straight-Line MVP, March Through July. Won't you, Mr. Song?"
"Has this bastard actually gone insane? Hard pass, you bunt-hitting machine."
"The hell?"
His body moved to deliver immediate retribution, but the target on the receiving end was a man who'd been kicked countless times before. Song Jin-wook dodged the furious butt-kick with the ease of someone who had, apparently, adapted — and privately, he was a little jealous.
'Aigo, I need to win one of those things too...'
Winning even a single one was nothing short of a miracle trophy capable of rewriting his entire salary.
'Next year. Next year, beat some people down all at once. If I take a suspension and rake while In-seong rests, I can carry the lineup.'
This year? He probably shouldn't say it out loud, but he'd already given up on it.
It was plainly visible to everyone that the bastard's targets were regulation innings and regulation at-bats.
"Next year! Next year, I'll accomplish something too!"
Granted, Song Jin-wook had posted numbers like this in only his second season, so the upside was there.
"Yeah, well, I plan on collecting this award every single month until I leave this league~"
But with a full-blooded rookie acting like that, the jealousy could only pile higher and higher.
For Korean baseball, this was the moment the rotating monthly MVP became one man's personal property.
"Is this even right? Setting aside the fact that he's a rookie... the kid can only grow from here."
"From now on he's going to monopolize it every month. Which means the MVP is automatically his, forever."
The complaints came pouring out of players and franchises alike.
A four-month monopoly. People were entitled to vent.
Noh In-seong was in a class of one.
Class of one in what sense? In the accumulation of WAR.
fWAR? bWAR? Didn't matter. Pick any metric you liked — he piled it up at a pace far faster than anyone else.
Pitcher or hitter, even in a month where one half of his game collapsed, combining the two still made him roughly 60% more efficient than any other player.
And this was a month where that freak's potential had fully detonated and he'd hammered everyone? Double the efficiency, minimum.
The price was that his stamina drained, leaving him needing one full day of rest — a cost the team considered entirely acceptable.
"What, are we suddenly short on infield backups? Short on other pitchers?"
Granted, this was a team that had never possessed backups of any kind, and pitchers were people who theoretically threw baseballs for a living. But they'd successfully filled both holes through trades and internal resources, so that was enough.
The Doubles had successfully filled that 'one-day gap,' successfully built a rotation to back up Noh In-seong —
And standing alone at first place, they had exceeded even the recommended specifications printed on the user's manual.
And that 'backup' concept didn't only apply to filling a player's spot on the roster.
This was the club's backup at work on the media front, too.
Not every reporter could be on bad terms with Noh In-seong — but when it came to the Doubles, that was another story entirely.
The so-called 'club's mouthpiece journalists' had, naturally, always existed in the baseball world as well.
From the Doubles GM's perspective, as long as nobody caused a scandal this was the crowning achievement of his career, and he was running around like a madman stoking the fire.
"If you're salty, draft an Outliner this good yourselves~ No crying about missing out~"
The GM who'd nailed the draft was juicing every trade call with shameless taunts down the phone line,
"From now on, I'd like this to be a league where I collect this award all twelve months and I win the championship."
And the player who'd pulled off back-to-back monthly awards announced his acceptance speech with remarks even more outrageous than that.
Naturally, an attitude like that was an open invitation to every fist in the league.
"Tear down that goddamn first-place team!"
"Either way, the fastest way up the standings is beating that freak!"
"Win first, think later! Send the ace out on a targeted start! Empty the whole bullpen into it!"
For the sake of taking down one team, every team gathered — each nursing its own hidden agenda, but opposing him all the same.
Thus was born the Anti-Doubles Coalition.
"...Not that they'll commit anyone forward, let alone pitchers — the second they start squabbling among themselves, those bastards will hoard every arm they've got."
Just as Noh In-seong's caustic prediction went, it was a coalition of pure illusion, born in the dying stretch of the season.
Formed to take down his team, the Doubles — whose conduct came off not merely as arrogance, but as pure bastardry.
"Even if we can't block the magic number, we at least have to lock down second place...!!"
"Please, please let somebody else get pounded first — we'll take our win later, against their backups...!"
"One win...!! Just one win...!! Give us one win, that's all..."
Different thoughts, same friendship — the remaining teams banded together, declaring they were all comrades.
Ah, except for two teams. Those clubs were too busy preparing for next year to worry about winning anything now.
The two teams at the vanguard were Daegu and Daejeon.
Daegu sat in a virtually guaranteed second. Daejeon was a club bouncing erratically between fifth and seventh.
This week's three-game series, which included the makeup games from rainouts, was a massive opportunity for both.
Daegu had given up on the championship, but they could put another game of distance between themselves and third and fourth place.
Daejeon could pull ahead in the vicious dogfight — not for third or fourth, but for fifth.
Both teams, somewhat overloaded in their push for October, had inserted rookies into the bottom of their rosters —
But at least their top three starters and every key hitter were in the lineup, full force, to face first place.
"We are going to win. We will win, and we will cement second place beyond all doubt."
"Daejeon has waited far too long. This year we build experience. Next year, we challenge for the crown."
Both teams, declaring this the moment to secure their place, threw themselves at the Doubles with everything they had.
But their opponent was a man with more personality disorders than a locust with three asshole daddies: Noh In-seong.
"That guy only hits well on day one — he went cold on days two and three last time. So pray for bad conditions, I guess."
The opposing managers clasped their hands and prayed to the heavens — 'Please, please let that cursed bastard go hitless...'
"I will stand in heaven's place."
CRACK—!!
Prayers held no power over a madman who'd once founded a cult declaring himself a god inside the stadium walls.
Daegu's manager, Song Jun-ho, took the leadoff home run dead in the face, and his sanity ascended to the heavens right along with the baseball.
That slump at the tail end of the Incheon series? Nobody can rake in every single at-bat.
Quite a few of those outs had been well-struck balls — it was simply a day where the baseball gods had screwed him over.
His thirty-third game of the season. A man who never went ten games without landing at least one hit, Noh In-seong opened the series by beating up on second place.
"Should I go, then stop, then go, then stop? Or not go? Go, no-go, go-no..."
"Aigo, you absolute lunatic!"
Seething, a Daegu relief pitcher whipped a pickoff throw to first with everything he had.
He could only pray the ball would brain the insane bastard whose mouth and legs never stopped moving for a single second —
But then the freak would just go 'Whoa, what's this? Are you offering me second base for free?' and pull that whole circus act from second instead.
After the home run, manager Song Jun-ho's decision to order intentional walks one after another wasn't actually bad.
It was just that every pitcher who came out of the bullpen afterward walked back to the dugout with his face stained crimson.
Said clumsily, it sounded like a generational purge; in reality, the only mercy was that nobody had yet died of hypertension.
Last month he'd barely run at all, and people wondered if something had gone wrong with his legs —
Unfortunately, he simply hadn't felt like running in the heat. Now, whenever a chance to run appeared, he didn't hesitate for a heartbeat.
"He goes! He goes! He GOES! Noh In-seong's twenty-fourth stolen base—!! SAFE!"
Noh In-seong was diligently rubbing salt and sugar into the wound, working his pre-season marinade with care.
There he was, sprinting into second while conducting his own personal PR campaign, shamelessly milking a celebration for all it was worth.
The pitcher grimly decided he would at least win this inning himself and went after the next batter with everything he had.
CRACK—!!
It was only because Noh In-seong had piled up nearly double everyone else's total that things looked that way — but a machine gun and an assault rifle kill you just the same.
This year's Doubles lineup was one that ground opponents down on average, but from spots one through five, every single one of them hurt.
The results of trying to pitch around the beast had not been pretty. If it wasn't Song Jin-wook, it was Dustin. If it wasn't Dustin, it was Jo In-soo.
Each of them greedy for his piece, they ravenously walked, singled, and sent the runners aboard right back home.
"Aigo... hey. Could you maybe go a little easy on us...?"
All his usual eccentricity vanishing, a visibly worn-down Jong Min-soo wheedled from third base.
"Don't worry, teacher. You gentlemen I'll beat with full honors and ceremony."
Third and fourth place just happened to be Gwangju and the Grizzlies.
For Daegu, that those two particular scumbags were the ones taking the beating was small consolation.
"Right... aigo. Well then, at least pound those two into the dirt extra hard for me."
Jong Min-soo's sorrow dissolved into the countless beads of sweat soaking the sweltering Daegu ballpark.
The next opponent to walk into the Doubles' home was Daejeon.
Frankly, Daejeon wasn't much better off than Daegu, who'd gotten beaten black and blue before scraping out a single win.
Reading it as a battle to redeem themselves, You Hong-jin took the mound chanting 'Come on, just one round! I'll only fight one more round!'
"FUCK yeah! I'm You Hong-jin! Ace of Team Korea! YOU! HONG! JIN!!!"
It was certainly a good thing — he'd finally notched a win against the Doubles, a two-run complete game that would cement fifth place.
Wearing an arrogant sneer as he glared across at the opposing dugout, there was genuine majesty in that expression.
"That's right. And you're the man who spent an entire international tournament begging me — begging me — to let you score just one run."
"......"
"Never celebrate a win in front of me again."
That is, until the very next day, when Noh In-seong blasted three home runs and rammed the defeat right back down Daejeon's throat.
There was a reason he'd gone out of his way to stand in front of the opposing dugout, look straight into the cameras, and deliver that warning.
"...That petty, spiteful little son of a bitch."
Resting comfortably at home as he prepared for his next start, You Hong-jin felt a cold shiver of dread.
Daejeon currently sat sixth, separated from Changwon by a microscopic gap in winning percentage — one more loss and they'd drop right back into it.
Seventh was only a game away too. Below them was nothing short of a thorn-covered hellscape.
What Daejeon had to cross right now wasn't even a tightrope. It was a single thread.
Be fitting for a popular team, a rare wave of away fans had flooded into Jamsil to pray for October baseball —
But in the seventh inning half of them drained out, and by the eighth, even more.
"Ugh, why did I even get my hopes up... better move the car before traffic hits."
"Ah... if we lose this one... Changwon wins theirs, right?"
"Nothing we can do. We just have to win the head-to-heads, that's all..."
Still, perhaps because some sliver of hope remained, the Daejeon fans' faces weren't all that dark.
"Now that's something I don't like."
And wouldn't you know it — there was a guy right there begging to be bullied. Just as Noh In-seong was pondering what to do in the next game to make his opponents suffer most—
"...Planning more trouble again, are we, In-Seong?"
Dustin, leaning against the dugout rail, tried to talk him down.
Having finally survived the long aftermath of fatherhood, Chun-sik was at last showing signs of life in the dugout again.
"Isn't Alice past the napping stage or something? It's honestly been forever since I've heard you speak in a dugout."
"......"
Only when the baby had finally reached the stage of sleeping solidly through the night did the fog lift — before that, Dustin hadn't managed three consecutive hours of sleep in a single day.
No wonder his away batting average and home batting average were a full fifty points apart.
"...Don't ever get married, In-Seong."
"Why not just don't?"
"Don't, you little SHIT."
— And if you absolutely must, do it after you retire. Or else keep beating people and rack up more days off at home.
On the road, he got fleeced by his wife; at home games, he couldn't rest. Hell, pure and simple.
Such was the hard-earned, reality-soaked advice of a man named Dustin Springfield, professional baseball player.
While Dustin, for the first time in an age, showed genuine fire in a home game and fired the opening flare of his resurgence —
"...Ah, I'm losing my mind. Does that damn brat actually intend to pitch against us? Feels like he hasn't thrown in close to twenty days?"
"...And of course he throws in the final game. Like he can't even gift us a single one."
Their next opponent, the Grizzlies, were sweating buckets.
Because his last start had been a perfect game? Not exactly.
Because In-seong pitched, and the road ahead was a filthy long one? Yeah, that was partly it.
But the real problem was this: sixteen and a third innings, three runs allowed. A 1.65 ERA.
And of those three runs, only one had actually been earned off his own pitching. The rest was bullpen arson.
And the biggest problem of all: going forward, Noh In-seong's innings limit had loosened up considerably.
"Once I've thrown my regulation innings, I intend to crash the Pitcher's Triple Crown race and wreck the whole table."
Because he'd declared, with his own arrogant mouth, that he would smash You Hong-jin's entire awards banquet to pieces.
"And besides — we've still got some unfinished business, don't we?"
One finger folding down at a time during the interview, and every time a team name left his lips, a chill ran down spines.
"Busan. Gwangju. And..."
The little bears.
"Next on the menu is bear. You've got a long road ahead too, don't you? I know all about your little fight with Gwangju for third and fourth."
Head cocked, grinning — he looked for all the world like a man with no reason at all except that he simply wanted to torment them.
"Ha... fuck. Why is reaching October baseball such a goddamn slog."
Every last member of the Grizzlies heaved a long, long sigh.