Yo! Douple-Pway! I'll Carry You!
Getting back and forth between the first-team stadium as a minor leaguer was, surprisingly, a real grind.
No car of your own? Take the subway.
The minor league park isn't anywhere a subway reaches? Then take the bus.
Don't have that either? Not my problem. Figure it out!
So then you had to sweet-talk a coach into lending you his car just to get somewhere a bus actually ran.
Borrowing like that was fine for a day or two, but repeat it and the fatigue piled up fast.
Most players ended up buying a used car with their signing bonus, pure and simple.
Because what else were you supposed to do when you needed to leave the minor league dorms without a car?
This was an era when players occasionally made the news for injuring themselves gliding around on hover-kickers while out shopping, after all.
"This is the treatment we get in the minors?! Aren't we your players too!?"
Of course, it wasn't as though minor leaguers demanding better treatment had never existed.
"If it's so unfair, then earn your way up to the first team. The pay's better, the treatment's better — why are you still down there in the first place?"
"Kitsama—!!"
The problem was that pro sports was a ruthlessly competitive fight over a fixed pie, and the front office's response came down to one very simple answer.
'Then fucking blow the minors to pieces and come back up, if you're so bitter!'
A baseball team was short on resources at the best of times, so triage happened constantly.
You say that's wrong? You say it's unfair? Fair enough.
There were certainly players sacrificed to internal politics or connections — I just wouldn't know about them.
"Of course, only a bastard with actual skill earns the right to say any of that..."
Jin Joo-hyuk, the sole survivor, stared at Noh In-seong with sweat dripping off him.
'I'm clearly the senior here... I'm a fourth-year...'
It felt less like a junior looking at him and more like a minor league manager or head coach boring straight into his soul.
Maybe it was because yesterday he'd stayed out of it and merely watched, or maybe because while the others piled on Song Jin-wook, he'd at least pretended to hold them back.
'Why am I fine? Is he sparing me because I kept quiet? I was standing right there too — why was I the only one who didn't get beaten?'
Lying in the stadium's shadow, Jin Joo-hyuk found himself newly terrified of the madman looking down at him.
"What, curious why I didn't beat you up?"
At this bizarre kindness that answered precisely the question he most wanted to ask.
"...H-hey, I have to answer... what the... he passed out standing up."
Quietly losing consciousness, the team's future bullpen slave sank gently onto the grass.
Someone was bound to say this to me someday.
"You must have had hard times too, so how can you be this ruthless, In-seong..."
And then I'd say this to that bastard:
"Kid, does pro ball look like a joke to you?!"
I'll grant that my core bullpen years ran mostly on talent,
but the 'irreplaceable' core infielder I became — that I carved out myself through endurance and sheer grind.
And somewhere along the way — honestly, I couldn't tell you which bastard set the standard —
I'd never quite understood why they'd bother feeding experience to a rookie catcher like Lim Jae-min right away,
but after watching yesterday's garbage defense, it finally clicked.
A veteran pitcher losing his mind over a blunder even a mentally shattered rookie catcher wouldn't commit — what was that even supposed to be.
"This one'd be tough to move even as trade bait. Seriously."
Of course, if a teammate of mine played like that, I'd get criminally charged faster than I could swing. Rejected.
Next, second base. I knew he was another Song, but still.
This one stirred up discord for the team and wasn't even any good.
"Death penalty."
Not merely cutting him — a born troublemaker, the type to poison the entire minor league atmosphere on principle.
Seong Hyun-tak hyung's defense wasn't much either, but he lifted the team's mood. And the bat had always been decent.
A guy with no bat, no glove, AND a rotten attitude didn't get to hold a spot on this team.
If he'd hit like Song Jin-wook, he could at least have stuck around as a pinch hitter, but oh well.
Song Jin-wook at least kept his head down with a 'just give me one defensive position, sir' — which was the only reason he was still breathing.
Had he pulled anything else, there was no way he'd have a pulse right now.
"If you want to be a troublemaker, top-five WAR on the team or I don't spare you. Try not making it next year... hoo!"
Not forgetting to issue a warning to the aspiring troublemaker either, I raised the grip bar once more.
"No, don't kill guys who made it to the minors alive... and what do you mean I'm a troublemaker!"
For a human-equipment rack to talk back — well, it was 2051, I supposed.
Well, I say that, but he knew his own problems well enough, so he'd behave from now on, right?
Game 2 against Changwon, unlike the grinding loss the day before, was a fairly comfortable win.
First, Lim Jae-min — channeling yesterday's blunders into pure fury — managed to do his job properly.
"The ball bounds! The catcher blocks it! Lim Jae-min showing a completely different side from yesterday!"
"A play like that can decide a pitcher's entire day. That's what good baseball looks like."
"I TOLD you I'd block it!!"
"Jae-min, my boy—!!"
Though the team's main catcher and captain was out, the fifth starter Jeong In-young had steadied himself.
If a catcher could put a pitcher at ease, the pitcher could afford to do a little more.
For example, something like this.
An inside slider, buried deep, that sent the opposing batter scrambling away in terror.
"...Whoa! Son of a...!!"
"Sowwy."
The opposing batter's face flushed crimson at the half-assed apology... or whatever that was supposed to be.
"That slider really bore in on him. Quite bold, wouldn't you say?"
"Right? Jeong In-young rarely goes inside with the slider, doesn't he?"
"Here it is — inside sliders make up about... eleven percent of his total sliders?"
The reason you couldn't throw inside sliders was simple: if the batter dodged, the ball skipped to the backstop.
...Wasn't getting hit usually the scarier outcome? Well, today Noh In-seong was standing at shortstop.
He usually pitched in front of his own shortstop, meaning he mostly got rest days on his own starts.
A privilege Jeong In-young had never once enjoyed before.
"Strike!"
"...God, this is insane!"
Today was different. He hammered four-seamers and sliders inside alike, forcing the issue at every turn.
'If you don't want to get hit, get out of the way. Or take it and see what happens to you.'
Unfortunately, both the four-seamer and the slider were fast pitches. Batters unwilling to risk getting plunked kept bailing out, over and over.
"Jeong In-young comes off the mound with his best outing of the year! Eight innings, one run!"
"Haha, he looks absolutely delighted. Walking off arm in arm with Lim Jae-min, no less."
And that was that.
"That kid's got quite the temper during games now, too. He's turning into you, In-seong."
"Ah, screw off. Stop talking about me like I'm a virus."
With the week's final schedule upon us and only the rain-delayed game against Changwon left,
we were eating and shooting the breeze when Song Jin-wook suddenly started spouting nonsense.
"No, In-seong. The young guys. They're definitely under your influence."
...What?
"He's right. The once-sweet kids are nowhere to be found these days."
"Look at In-young — the guy who used to tremble at the mere thought of throwing inside spent all of yesterday living there."
Chun-sik, Jeong In-woo, even Jin-hong hyung piling on to tease me.
No, wait — wasn't he just a catcher who'd had to grow a spine? Why was it my fault?
"Of course he learned it watching you. Who else would he learn it from, you lunatic?"
"What."
Reality was cruel.
The mentor of the badly warped young catcher Lim Jae-min... wasn't In-soo hyung?
"You learn defensive technique and data analysis from the captain. But that's not what he asked you about, is it."
He'd always been good at playing the weakling while picking apart an opposing team's innards clean through,
but lately, when the con got exposed, he simply drilled one inside without a shred of shame and played the 'so what?' card.
"He figures if a bench-clearing breaks out, he's not the one who loses out — so he loves it."
"...Wait, you're enabling each other right now?!"
To think I could change people like this. What was the world coming to?
"...Fine, you, whatever. What about the others?"
Jeong In-young, who'd been doing supplementary throwing beside us after his start yesterday, chimed in.
"Well, Jin-wook hyung said if the other team provokes him he'll cuss them out now... and I throw inside too."
Dustin being a hothead on the field, fine, that went without saying — but Yeom Dong-goo and Jeong In-young as well?
It was real. Every first- and second-year on the active roster had shed their manners. Dustin was right!
"Hah... hey, what are you all planning to do without me, baring your fangs like this?"
"Do what? Bench-clearing as usual."
Meaning: UFC when I was around, WWE when I wasn't.
...Well, good for them. Except once a player got used to this style, there was no going back, ever.
And did they think they weren't going to age? Not a shred of foresight.
"...Don't come crying to me later."
"I can barely survive as it is — crying over what? Save that for when I'm a starter."
"He's right. I'm not even guaranteed the fifth rotation spot next year. In-soo hyung might take it."
Tsk. Fair point, actually. There was Jeon In-soo, rehabbing from his injury.
I'd sensed how desperate these kids were for a while now, so I supposed it couldn't be helped.
The spread of a baseball style with no hierarchy — commonly known as the Noh In-seong style.
Within the Doubles, the ones suffering from this rookie-driven style were the veterans.
Granted, aside from Noh In-seong himself, the vets were never on the receiving end of it, but—
"Do you people not MANAGE your kids?!"
Veterans on other teams kept giving them an earful lately, which put them in a strange position.
Since their own team treated them with such care, plenty of players didn't feel anything was odd at all.
"You're here!"
"Aigoo, why are you hauling that bag around like that? Hand it over, sunbae-nim."
Pitchers and hitters alike were reasonably deferential to their seniors, helping with whatever needed helping — warm as could be.
"Ah, hungry. Hope there's grilled meat for lunch today."
"...He's always like that."
There was one guy who scratched his belly, showed up early to demolish a lower-body workout, showered, and strolled out for food.
But he was a special case — the captain Jo In-soo had declared 'under normal circumstances, do not touch him.'
Honestly, comparing how the veterans treated their own teammates versus the other teams' players, it did feel like they were being treated rather well.
'If he were on another team, I might be rehabbing in a hospital right now, if I were unlucky.'
'A bench-clearing could've blown up far bigger, too...'
'Then we'd be finished. Dustin would've been one-shotted and the rest of us beaten to a pulp.'
So they worked out, and nobody complained about pecking order during hitting practice either.
Noh In-seong didn't care when he took his cuts — he only breathed fire during defensive drills.
The outfield he didn't touch at all — that was Pi Jeong-do's domain, so the territories had been divided quite sensibly.
The pitching group was warm and cozy from the start. Everyone loved a pitcher who ate up innings.
Plus a shortstop who hurled his body all over the field late into the season with only two errors to show for it.
With the team running this smoothly, it was only natural the veterans hadn't detected anything amiss.
'Why would a veteran from another team tell us to manage our kids?'
"Why else? Because instead of respect, the other teams' veterans got fucking cussed out."
Noh In-seong finished his situation assessment from shortstop.
"...The inside pitching is getting on my nerves. How about you knock it off?"
"If that's how you feel, why don't you just retire? Why'd you become a player if you only want to hit the easy ones?"
"What the hell is wrong with you, you little—!"
"...Is that a cuss I hear? Do you want a warning?"
"M-Mr. Umpire. That's not what I—"
Says his piece, then clams up instantly. The insufferable little bastard.
Rookie year — 'Nightmare Mouth' Lim Jae-min.
"Do you people not manage your—"
"Do you not manage your batting average? What are you holding instead of a bat? A magic wand?"
"...Argh, this bastard does it too."
Second year — 'Is That Not a Bat in Your Hands' Song Jin-wook.
"Gwaaah!"
"Haha, yesterday we saw Jeong In-young work inside aggressively all game long."
"And today, Yeom Dong-goo, up for the first time in a while, is attacking the zone without a hint of fear."
Do they not check character when they draft rookies? Haha...
Second year and first year — 'Get Hit and Go Tell Your Mommy' Jeong In-young and Yeom Dong-goo.
And the king of every last one of these bastards.
"What are you glaring at? Next game's the Superstars, first time in a while. Want me to take a little vacation?"
"..."
"Nothing to say? Then throw the ball. Or go beg your manager to intentionally walk me."
Rookie year — Noh In-seong.
Craaaaaack----!!!
"That ball's final destination is not the stands! Dead center of the scoreboard—!! Direct hit!"
"Haha, the pitcher just stands there staring in blank disbelief... understandable, really. Who produces this kind of distance in a dome?"
A bat thrown as high as the ball had soared, and a pitcher's pride flying just as high into the sky.
Jogging at a near-walk, high-fiving Pi Jeong-do and Song Joo-in, who'd reached base ahead of him, then turning around.
"Hey, you guys in a hurry to get somewhere? Too bad."
"...What?"
"Lose this one and you're back in seventh place."
—Go get blown up fighting Suwon again, you bottom-feeders.
The Changwon catcher's psyche, thoroughly toyed with by the arrogant rookies, ended right there.
Last time, the Doubles rookie had committed two errors in a single inning; this time, the Changwon catcher returned the favor in full.
As if avenging that first day's loss, the Doubles pounded every last one of Changwon's relievers on the way to victory.
"Alright! Seven to go!"
"Almost there!"
Currently, game 116. Eighty-two wins, one tie, twenty-nine losses. .739.
Magic Number. Seven remaining.
Having survived the leaky, brutal stretch at the start of the season, with successful trades and bold rookie deployment,
nearly every hole now plugged and the core players still to return — the team could only grow stronger from here.
This was the moment the Doubles' generational transition finally and firmly took root.