The One Who Can't Do It Is the Villain
Noh In-seong's defense had left Caleb James so impressed that pure delight was spreading across his face.
He'd put up decent numbers last year as a mercenary arm, after all — and now, thinking back on how his finer stats had been dimmed by that damned defense, it was enough to make his blood pressure spike.
"Ugh, my head...!!"
Get out of Korea right now, you crazy illegal immigrant bastard! — that was what they'd screamed at the previous mercenary pitcher before he'd been replaced by Andy.
Caleb, meanwhile, was the guy people said there'd be no third-place finish for the Doubles last year without him!
His greatest strength was his ability to eat innings — largely because, even when balls were put in play, he could coax most of them into harmless grounders. On the strength of the 198 innings he'd swallowed last season, he'd single-handedly denied the bullpen — already shaky as it was — its chances to set the stadium on fire.
Which was exactly the material Noh In-seong used to mock the Grizzlies so mercilessly — that, at least, the man had gotten a taste of fall baseball.
"...I did shit defense, so I suppose I deserve my reward, huh?"
And his greatest weakness lived on the flip side of that same coin: the barrage of ground balls that fueled his innings-eating.
"You son of a bitch! Get back here right now!"
"In-seong! In-seong! Somebody talk this lunatic down!"
You could tell just from watching Caleb, veins bulging, absolutely working over Sung Hyun-tak after the inning ended.
For all his gratitude at good defense, he was a pitcher whose sensitivity to garbage defense bordered on the pathological.
"In-seong, damn it. Thank you, you magnificent bastard. Next time, I'd love it if you'd stand at second and play defense in place of that dimwit."
Caleb grumbled through the tirade he'd just finished subjecting Sung Hyun-tak to, then started lamenting to me.
"You're thinking of one thing and not the other two, that's why I'm not playing shortstop."
Did he think I was two people? Splitting yourself for doubles tennis is the stuff of manga, not reality.
"Shit. Can't the world just make one more of you?"
He looked plenty irritated, but whenever he addressed me or Dustin, he was all warmth.
Through four innings, the only baserunners we'd scratched out were a single — me shooting a first-pitch attack swing right back at the pitcher — and one deep fly ball off Dustin's bat.
The opposition's baserunners came from the play just now, when Sung Hyun-tak laid an egg, plus a single that made it first-and-third before we barely managed to shut the door.
0-0. A battle of pride between two stubborn aces, grinding on.
Pitchers dueling this well? Anyone but me and Chun-sik could take a bat to Caleb's car and walk away innocent.
As for the other side — whether You Hong-jin hit well or not was his business. Different team, not my problem.
"Hey! Get me that data, now, chop chop!"
"Jesus, how is that guy even better than last year?"
The manager and bench coach both kicked into high gear.
How were the pitches? How much bite on the breaking stuff? Share the data to the tablets, find the pinch hitter whose swing mechanics match up best...
"...!! !!"
Ah, 2051. So technology really had advanced. Even scouting analysis couldn't escape the eyes of AI anymore...
"Noh In-seong! Get over here! Why doesn't this brat ever listen?!"
Oh, that's me?
"Yes sir, coming~"
Picking at my ear, I ambled over to the manager. Found some kind of opening, did he?
Do this, do that. Annoying as he was with the orders, a manager was still a manager...
"No one on this team is hitting properly except you."
Oh. Never mind. So he was telling me to dribble past everyone, deceive the keeper, and finish it myself. Jesus, what kind of manager IS this?
Just as I was weighing whether a revolution was in order, the manager finally started making sense.
"Therefore, after you reach base, I'm giving you discretionary green light up to one strike, and to prevent the sacrifice bunt—"
Move at will until two strikes, assume the bunt and hit-and-run are on the table... Aha. He's going squeeze.
"Heh heh. Understood, sir. If you say squeeze, I squeeze."
Not bad at all. If the hitters behind me couldn't back me up, then winning by whatever means necessary — I didn't hate it.
"Ugh, you insufferable little punk. If you had no talent, I'd have you rotting on the bench."
Well, if I had no talent, I wouldn't be insufferable, would I.
...It was the same in my last life, after all.
"Aww, don't lose heart for nothing, Coach. Just sit back and watch what I do."
"Ugh, cocky little... Miss on the scoreboard, and it's fungo drills for you."
Fine. It hadn't been long since I'd decided to live a life that exceeded expectations, after all.
"Heh heh. Say there, skipper. How are those legs treating you these days?"
Time to show him a villain's true colors.
Top of the fifth. My turn at the plate came around.
Naturally — I'd been the only one to reach base last inning. Leadoff duty was the law.
"Look who's back, the punk."
Seeing the opposing catcher, Jeong Gu-young, open his mouth — was this an attempt to get in my head?
Our captain, In-soo hyung, had told me, 'At least have the decency to use my actual name, for my sake...'
"I'm here to catch a sucker. Looks like the pitcher finally got his body right, huh? Your at-bat ended in a single, after all."
Best to greet an old acquaintance warmly, no?
"...No, why are you talking like you're some legend of the game?"
"You're obviously getting tagged for another hit. Don't you know one loss makes you the loser, no matter what?"
One at-bat, one hit, a 1.000 average — of course I was the one on top. What was he even saying?
The umpire, watching the opposing catcher stare at me in open disbelief, finally stepped in between us.
"Rookie, one more word and it's a warning."
"Tch. Understood, sir."
Well, in that case, time to shut my mouth.
Even if the strike zone had been slapped out of their hands by an AI, these were still men fully capable of committing atrocities.
And I, too, riding the momentum of my previous at-bats, was one of those men capable of committing atrocities.
With 'hit' branded into the catcher's brain, the opposition would expect me to unload another rocket...
Tap--!!
What I wanted was one bunt, rolling weakly and ambiguously down the third-base line.
With the pitcher and catcher both frozen mid-brain-fart, and the third baseman having backed up in anticipation of another screamer, there was no one left to make the play.
A push bunt, dropping in perfect no-man's land.
In the exhibition game, in every at-bat before — the corner infielders kept backing up and playing deep. How was I supposed to resist a bunt?
"...Safe—!"
I turned to the shell-shocked face of the opposing pitcher, You Hong-jin, and gave him a full, beaming smile in return. Would you look at him whip his head away.
"Hey, kid! Getting crafty already? Who taught you that?"
Apparently they still hadn't figured out my temperament, because a voice drifted over from first base — the opposing first baseman.
Was he hoping I'd freeze up and lose my focus if he needled me?
"...Whoa, your face is rough. Life's been hard on you, huh."
"What did you just say?! You little—?!"
The man had a ton of meat on him, and a face so pummeled he looked less like a ballplayer and more like someone employed at a very questionable establishment.
Even as he kept muttering 'What is that supposed to mean, you insolent brat...' beside me, there was no obligation to answer.
I was busy proving to the pitcher that I had zero intention of stealing.
Long strides, but not an especially big lead off the bag.
"Hey. Ignoring me? Hey! A man is talking to you!"
Slowly, stealthily, I stretched the distance.
You Hong-jin was watching me from the mound.
Watching his plant foot, shifting my weight forward bit by bit as if... that moment was the chance.
"Learn it from you? You dim-witted pig bast—!"
"Huh...? Huh! Hey! He's going!"
There — got the answer you wanted, didn't you? Then I'm off.
Nobody had imagined the rookie runner would take off without so much as a decent lead — a bolt from the blue.
Noh In-seong's stolen base attempt cracked a fissure straight through the Phoenix camp.
Even their catcher, who boasted a respectable caught-stealing rate, was left too stunned to even make the throw to second.
On a fast pitch, he might have agonized over whether to challenge the runner — but of course, pitch two had to be a slow curve.
Worse, a drooping, bottom-of-the-zone curveball you couldn't fire back in a hurry. That was the killing blow.
A pitcher hardened by every last circus situation imaginable last year.
On the mound, You Hong-jin began taking deep breaths, trying to claw his way back to composure.
They're just three contact hitters without much power anyway. Strike all three of them out and problem solved.
He couldn't trust his own defense to get him outs — but he could at least trust the opposing hitters' stat lines and go for the K.
Fair enough. He had the stuff to do it, too.
--Safe! Safe!
Only if you turned the bat into a sacrifice could a bunt become an out in a ball-in-play situation; whiff it, and it's strike three, and so on.
Sung Hyun-tak, fresh off his defensive howler, laid down a safety squeeze to manufacture first-and-third with nobody out.
"Caleb! You watching?! That's enough beating up on me!"
Then came Sung Hyun-tak's steal of second — possible because the third-base runner now had the defense's full attention.
And what remained was a pair of consecutive squeeze bunts down the first-base line.
Whether the home crowd booed themselves hoarse, whether You Hong-jin hung his head under the creeping weight of defeat — it made no difference.
Without mercy, the Doubles harvested the two most important runs of the ballgame.
The runs this game demanded.
"YEAH--!! That's two thousand dollars--!!"
And, as it happened, the entirety of the runs Caleb needed to collect his victory bonus.
- Doubles win the opener 2-1! Caleb goes 8 innings, 1 run, takes the W!
- 2-for-3 for Noh In-seong! First hit AND first stolen base — both in his debut game!
- The problem child is a problem for his own team AND the opponent... blazing speed, outrageous defense, and even more outrageous trash talk!
"I won you the opener and my nickname is 'problem child'? Wow. Incredible..."
I'd come back to the hotel after the win and plopped down on a lobby sofa to search the articles — and the smearing campaign had apparently already begun.
What exactly did I do wrong, I wonder... let's see here.
"What's the problem? Every word of it is fact."
All I did was give interviews grounded entirely in truth. Why does that make me a problem child?
As I sat there blankly chewing over the injustice, someone came clomping over from across the lobby.
"Hey, they're asking over there when you're coming to apologize."
Lim Jae-min — today, once again, the backup catcher who'd pinch-hit in the eighth to protect senior In-soo's hamstring and hemorrhoids — had come over to chat.
Judging by how this guy, looking suspiciously pleased with himself, suddenly blurted that out...
Somebody over there had apparently told him to pass along a message.
"Apologize? To whom?"
If I'd messed with one guy, I'd know who. I roasted three of them simultaneously — how would I know which one?
"The first baseman. The, uh..."
Oh. That pig bastard. Did they seriously expect an apology from me? Someone must be craving a Potato Fist.
"Tell them I'll deliver it in person at tomorrow's game."
Grumbling, Lim Jae-min trudged off once more to relay my message to the Phoenix camp.
The next day, in game two, instead of an apology, I delivered the first baseman a message straight from the bottom of my heart.
"Apologize? Eat this instead."
Having worked a four-pitch walk, I strolled over to first and, fair and square, planted a Potato Fist right in his face.
"...This absolute maniac...?!"
He'd been counting on an apology — but thanks, perhaps, to the fresh zing of all that extra vitamin C?
Watching his face pucker and contort with sourness was genuinely entertaining.
"You want to know what's really crazy? It's the performance you're about to witness. That's what's crazy."
Yesterday, I'd proven I could steal. Which meant pickoff throws were coming.
And from this moment on, I was going to run my mouth without stopping for so much as a breath.
"What the hell did you eat to get this fat, huh? Heard a mobster say dog food packs on the pounds... is that it?"
"If you got like that, how do you even walk around? Amazing your hamstrings held up."
"Think you could wedge a glove between your rolls? You'd never need to carry a bag again."
He couldn't swing at me no matter how angry he got, anyway. All I had to do was keep his head spinning.
A rookie punk, unloading a torrent of abuse on a man who'd been hitting near-veteran level for years now.
His focus was already hanging by a thread, and unlike yesterday, my stride stayed huge — perpetually on the verge of stealing, never resting my legs.
Damn it, damn it! This lunatic's mouth is infuriating and the way he moves is infuriating too!
He'd never been a first baseman for his glove in the first place. Narrow defensive range, mediocre hands.
Their starter, meanwhile, was a righty sitting in the mid-140s, breaking-ball heavy.
Apparently I was still getting under his skin, because the pitcher kept trying pickoff throws.
"You think I'm getting caught with throws like that? Huh? Yeah, I'm talking to YOU, genius."
I mouthed a fresh round of curses at the pitcher staring at me, and his face went crimson.
Then, the seventh pitch. Full count, after one foul ball.
When the next pickoff attempt came, Noh In-seong — who'd been moving nonstop — finally got the situation he'd been fishing for.
A throw to first always carries the risk of the ball skirting past the runner's back.
By the time they'd scrambled to retrieve the ball off the wall, Noh In-seong was already midway between second and third.
A man whose Achilles' heel was defense commits a cataclysmic error — and thanks to it, the runner advances not one base but two?
If your mentality survives this, are you a Buddhist saint? Maybe the front office should recruit some old monks from the stands.
"I told you! I said the crazy plays were coming!"
And not just this game. What I'd planted in him was a wound that would fester for weeks at minimum.
"Apologize?! I'd DIE first! Come find me the day you can field a ball properly — maybe THEN I'll consider it!"
From third base, Noh In-seong bellowed at the top of his lungs.
Loud enough for the man with his head hung low to hear every word.
He's not even on my team, and his free agency is right around the corner — why would I care about his career? If it stings that bad, come play for the Doubles.
The deeper the cut, the more likely it would surface, before he knew it, as full-blown trauma.
Doubles versus Phoenix. Game two of the season.
Noh In-seong successfully injected his venom into the Phoenix,
and walked away with an 8-1 victory.