Busting the Users' Heads Open
Starting with Game 5 in Changwon, the Doubles' rookies evolved one whole step in every conceivable way... or, naturally, that wasn't going to happen.
Manga-style level-ups don't occur in the real world. If anything, the more precise explanation was that the guys on the receiving end had simply blown their composure to pieces.
Because the baseball Noh In-seong passed down was, at least until a tolerance built up, a guaranteed one-hit kill.
"Of course, some people never build up a tolerance at all, and others evolve in weird directions instead..."
In other words, a literal virus. The veteran's explanation didn't have a single thing wrong with it.
"You put it like that and it sounds like I lost. Whatever. Doesn't count."
Each of them had simply found their own special way of making people's blood boil, with a fresh layer of aggressive, take-charge daring stacked on top. Nobody had actually grown dramatically beyond their existing abilities.
Conversely, there had been exactly one person who achieved growth bordering on true evolution in every respect, the way Noh In-seong had.
The only problem was that this wasn't strength gained from surviving a brush with death — the man got stronger after dying outright.
And as a side effect, his soul operating as an infinite potion that kept his condition permanently topped up, he'd had to accept that too.
"Hearing it put that way really does make me feel like I'm from a completely different genre than everyone else..."
Well, whatever — I can play baseball, so that's a win!
The moment he handed his body over to instinct instead of thought, Noh In-seong spread open the hologram screen he'd folded away and began reading a column.
[The Doubles' New Team Color: 'Taunting Baseball']
— By former manager Jo Ho-yeon
The Doubles are not playing filthy baseball. That brand of baseball is somewhat more famously associated with Incheon.
No — strictly speaking, it used to be famous.
Before Noh In-seong appeared, games against Incheon were serious, stress-inducing affairs.
Now Incheon lies in its hospital bed as a rehab patient who can do nothing at all,
and the Doubles' rookies have multiplied, trading 'injury-risk baseball' for 'taunting baseball.'
A certain player (hereafter Mr. A) testified as follows:
'When we last faced them, there was a rookie standing right there trembling and making mistakes.'
But with barely a month left in the season, he testified that those days now felt like a dream.
'A while back I actually said to him, how does a man with a swing that pathetic put food on the table as a professional?'
Mr. A, who despite posting a nearly identical batting average himself, said he could not understand how the kid worked under his skin so effectively...
"Wow. So this guy's been making a living off this ever since he stepped down from the national team."
His results must have cratered so badly that no team would come calling — so now he shook his jowls for a living instead. So a manager really is judged by results... And with that thought, Noh In-seong skipped the rest of the column and slammed a dislike onto it before closing it out.
With the hologram switched off, he was standing there blankly, wondering what he ought to do next —
when suddenly a baseball community he'd left open in another tab began erupting.
"...? What the hell. Why is the post regen rate like this?"
The address of the board detonating in real time was...
"...What on earth did these guys go through to be talking like this? Weren't they supposed to be a corpse of a team?"
It was the Seoul Superstars gallery.
"Dragging things out is meaningless at this point. If we want to start shaping next year, it's time to sort the players — separate the jade from the stone."
"...You're announcing it?"
"Yes. Blow the whole thing up at once, in a single stroke."
The people who had been working beneath the surface finally stepped out into the open.
The Seoul Superstars had suffered no shortage of drama this year. Fans abandoning a club that plainly could not endure any more. A life sustained by selling off players. Profits funneled entirely into operations with no guarantee they'd stay there. And then, right on cue, one issue-maker flipped them all off to their faces — igniting every single bomb simultaneously.
The fans no longer trusted the existing leadership. No — it would have been a blessing if they merely didn't trust it. If not for the law, the executives would have been found dead already.
"An opportunity has arrived, and you can't simply refuse to take it."
The most terrifying creature in the world is a defected ally.
And the harm wrought by someone holding that defected ally in his hand, aimed at an enemy who still trusts the defector?
"I feel no particular regret. It is simply that... you were no longer of any use to my club."
Take whatever you imagined, and multiply it. It will be exactly that, squared.
The 'Superstars Crisis,' which detonated out of nowhere on a Monday, stunned everyone in Korean baseball playing the item-flipping game — but the most stunned of all were the teams that had to start running from next year onward.
"Hold on — why does all this hell break loose at the exact! moment we finally finish rehab?!"
"Aigoo! Our honeypot's been smashed to shards...!! This is an outrage, an outrage!"
"Yeah~ don't sell your players~ just rebuild all over again, it's fiiine~"
Daejeon, Changwon, and if you stretched the view a little further, even Suwon. All of them had been treated as a 'second farm system,' stockpiled for the day their own run would finally begin.
"We're closing up shop, you bastards. Get lost. Your internal free agents? Count on them."
-- No money? No players? Then close the trade window. We are officially out of the charity business.
A coalition of conglomerates and law firms — the sort of entities that could comfortably operate at a loss — had bought the farm system out from under them, wholesale. Thus was born the brand-new 'New Superstars,' cracking the skulls of every Korean baseball user who had treated them as a farm.
Meanwhile, the Doubles players — beaten in the first game by those very 'New Superstars' — were in a foul mood.
"...So. Why do you think we got spanked like this?"
"What else? Purely a difference in starters."
The final nuisance of the second team — a starter who was pure waste material — had packed his bags and gone home. A pitcher who either couldn't find the strike zone at all, or performed the miracle of dropping every pitch dead center of it.
Granted, even then, if he'd just ground out innings somehow, slogging through them one at a time, it might have been forgivable.
"A man whose mentality crumbles the moment he gives up a few runs has no business handling first-team mop-up duty."
This wasn't meant to run down So Dong-yeop — that man's mind and shoulder were both forged of indestructible iron. Continuing to throw pitches while getting shelled, purely to buy outs, is a feat of madness no sane man can perform.
One and a third innings, eight earned runs. Followed by the bullpen-shuffling shit-show that came after.
The sole silver lining was Jin Joo-hyuk, who once again ground out three innings while surrendering a grudging two runs, proving that—
[Even from somewhere close to a mud pit, one might say — Jin Joo-hyuk still came out of it. Harsh, but fair.]
[Honestly, with so many rookies being fielded, it may be better to assume every good player has already been called up.]
[Haha... well, there are three of them in their first year alone, after all.]
Aside from demonstrating that the farm system wasn't entirely dead, this game was a total failure in every respect.
13–6. Walking out of Gocheok Sky Dome with the Game 1 loss behind him, Noh In-seong's face was twisted into a scowl.
No, he'd known the second team was a mess — but not this much of a mess.
"Is this franchise even sustainable?"
Noh In-seong's question hung in empty air.
Meanwhile, the winners — the Superstars players — couldn't exactly laugh either.
Why had they been so desperate in Game 1? Because they wanted to survive!
"...This means a mass trade or an FA exodus next year, doesn't it?"
"You're one of the lucky ones. What about the poor bastards leaving via free agency..."
Once an acquisition goes through, large swaths of the team get overhauled in a single stroke — it's the most routine thing in the world. The result of being told 'we can no longer walk this road together': a board seat at somebody else's company.
If you survived even that, good things might follow. But who really knew?
What's the first thing a development-focused club does when it decides to run for the top?
"Anything that isn't obviously visible? Cut it. Fill the hole with outside signings."
Plenty of teams attempt to develop prospects, but teams that actually turn that development into a money machine are rare. An organization whose growth philosophy differs from the new regime's — how much time would it grant you? Would its development methods even help?
"Damn it, I want to survive... I want to stay here!"
"Don't relax just because it's a second-team game! Hit harder and run harder!"
"Throw until your shoulder pops out!"
They feared a changing environment — and every one of them had a reason.
In truth, the one who felt it most keenly of all was the Superstars' manager.
"...I'm a last-place manager."
A team determined to contend within a year or two needs strong, commanding leadership. Nobody keeps a developmental manager on the payroll, do they? If he didn't show something starting now, getting fired was the least of his worries — who was going to pick him up afterward?
He'd have no choice but to endure a long stretch in the wilderness before crawling back into yet another rebuilding season.
"So — squeeze everything out of them! Pitchers pitch, hitters hit, plays get executed, and we take two straight off the first-place team!"
And so, 'doing absolutely everything that could be done,' leaving the rest to the heavens, he hurled himself desperately into the fight.
"Do you know what a weight class is, you little shits? Seriously."
Noh In-seong and his friends picked up their bats and personally bludgeoned that fighting spirit to death.
From the very start of Game 2, they took a beating so complete there was nowhere left on their bodies to be hit.
If the starter had been even marginally competent, they'd have scraped out a narrow win yesterday too — where exactly had he found the confidence to charge in like that?
Caleb was unavailable, but Andy was still very much alive and snarling.
"Strike three — batter out!"
[Andy's velocity being renewed yet again today--!! A 145 km/h four-seamer skims the top rail of the strike zone!]
[Whoa — Kim Soo-ho is just staring at it right now... that pitch sat in that gray space between ball and strike.]
"...Unbelievable."
"That's enough. The inning's over — what are you still doing out there? Go put your catcher's gear back on."
Lim Jae-min, needling him with exquisite gentleness, came back into the dugout while praising Andy.
'The minor leagues are survival of the fittest' — that's the popular image, but the reality is a shade different. There is no league anywhere in the world that withholds pitch repertoires, tips, and knowledge from its prospects.
Because players are expected to drive their own training, misunderstandings pile up far more often than not.
Back in the days when Andrew 'Andy' Cage was rolling through the minors in search of any personal edge he could find — he swore it to God — he had never once stopped trying to improve.
Fastball too slow? Learn a two-seam sinker and attack from a different angle.
Can't buy outs with the four-seamer? Tune the slider, curveball, and changeup all up to big-league average (40).
Average stuff can't reach that monster's festival? Then perfect the command to dial it in and take it off at will.
His command improved by leaps and bounds. Now the only thing genuinely missing was velocity.
But even that fell short of the monsters' festival, and at twenty-seven he stood walled up in AAA, slowly withering away.
Only after piling up innings he had never once been allowed to throw in AAA — trapped behind more talented arms — did he finally open his eyes to his true gift.
"There it is. I don't have a single fast pitch, but..."
"He's a slave."
"I was the slave... what the hell, you punk?!"
180-plus innings, with 200 practically guaranteed by season's end. And rather than declining, Andy's velocity had actually ticked up a notch. His true talent was, in the end, 'the ability to throw a very great deal.'
It was the moment Andy's name got inked, permanently, into the Doubles' contract plans for next year.
These bastards took one hit yesterday and now they're running people over with a car, aigoo T_T
Every single pinch-hitter and defensive sub they've sent up so far has a base hit T_T
Today the Superstars' hit count: 28.
No stolen bases, no walks — not even the chance to earn them. The instant the ball came in: crack—
[Between short and third--!! It sneaks through, and Noh In-seong on second rounds hard for third while the runner on third comes home!]
[The extra-base hits are barely coming, but the singles just keep flowing. Soo Byung-jin — are you running on empty?]
After the sound rang out a few more times, a hollowed-out pitcher trudged off the mound. Then came another crack--, and the catcher shuffled out to burn time on the mound...
And once the interminable inning finally drew to a close, Andy came in, casually dispatched three batters, and walked back down. Occasionally he'd surrender a hit, or even a home run, but—
[Ah, he isn't bothered in the slightest. He goes straight back to the very pitch that just got homered.]
[That's the nerve to throw it again wearing a face that says, 'You swung at it — what did I do wrong?']
The second-most hits in a single game in league history had been recorded.
In the end, the game closed out at a miserable 20–2 — a wretched tenfold scoreline.
But even that record ended up buried beneath an even bigger story.
Four administrations had come and gone — with enough spare change left over to redraw a riverbed. Korean baseball had, once again, watched a team change owners.
"How long did you intend to remain a pitiful weak-side franchise, exactly?"
To the old fans, the words dredged up PTSD — while justifying the new administration.
"Look forward to next year. First, we sharpen the blade. Within a few years, we will be chasing a championship."
To the fans of every other team, it conjured the old era when championships were bought with money — an inaugural address engineered to spread fear.
And the crowning touch was a single reporter's question.
"There are voices saying that tolerating losses to acquire players amounts to saddling the clubs with debt!"
"Debt? No. Weren't you all doing the exact same thing anyway? Operating your clubs at a loss?"
On that smirking face, naked malice was on full display.
"We will be the inflation of the FA market. We will be the spark that ignites the great prospect exodus."
We refuse to simply absorb beatings forever — after all, the rest of you have been quietly tiptoeing out of the sports market for years now, haven't you.
Thus Jeong Jae-yoon declared, for the record, that in the coming owners' negotiations, every regulation accumulated until now would be smashed to pieces.
After the game, Noh In-seong boarded the team bus in Guro for the ride home.
— Or bring in a sugar daddy...
"Wow. There really is another human being out there who talks like that."
"Well, the players do it — why on earth wouldn't a CEO?"
While everyone else on the bus was still reeling from the inaugural address, Noh In-seong alone stared blankly at the broadcast, lost in thought.
...How are these guys going to move next year? The ripple effects are going to hit every other team, too.
Three teams that had to run. Teams swearing they'd never be farmed again. An echo of pure chaos reverberated through Korean baseball.
"Sigh. First things first — I'd better delete some contacts before I think about anything else..."
And since that echo was scheduled to sound again next year, for now he had to prepare to leap the ravine standing right in front of him.
The fifth game against Gwangju was drawing near.