Thought He Was a Straw Sandal, Turns Out He's Got Basic Implants
Just before the last pinch hitter was retired, while thousands of cheering fans filled the stadium, a very different mood settled over a small cluster of foreigners in the stands.
"So... how much is this kid actually worth?"
"Oh my god. Even if it's only the minor leagues—one perfect game and a no-hitter, just like that?"
"The no-hitter counts as two, actually. The second one, he only took the mound out of pure spite."
"Damn it, I seriously want to send him to an international tournament. Would he even get selected?"
"They still have conscription over there, you know. It's a insane country that drafts even the disabled."
For those few foreigners in that stadium, concern was quickly overtaking any celebration. They knew he was a premier prospect—but he stood out far too much. And not just "stands out" in the normal sense. He stood out like the mushroom cloud of a nuclear detonation.
"God damn globalization. There's already another clip of the record up on the video platforms."
There's a reason the saying exists: the best prospect in the world is the hidden gem only you know about.
"You polish a pearl nobody else knows about, then teabag the whole league—'You guys don't have anything like this, do you?'"
"But this isn't a pearl. This is a diamond sitting out in the open, screaming, 'Why aren't you mining me, you idiots?'"
And yet—not diving into this diamond rush? That would make them even bigger idiots.
"The production you could squeeze out of him relative to the salary cap... I want it so badly!!"
"One pitcher, one hitter, plus elite fielding—a true two-way total package like this has never existed before."
"There have been switch pitchers, there have been two-way players, but this is genuinely a type we've never seen."
A singular irregular who could stack WAR from three directions at once. The longed-for Holy Grail—interest in Noh In-seong was growing larger by the day.
"Hmm... not bad, actually."
"'Not bad'? Are your eyes broken already? That is a madman's talent you're looking at!"
Of course, for the competing teams, interest was swelling in a rather different sense.
'You sons of bitches. Your own teams are falling apart—why the hell are you sending scouts here?'
'Ugh, those scavenging bastards caught the scent.'
'Oh my, look who's here—the morons setting their money on fire.'
Fortunately, everyone was merely cursing each other out behind smiling faces, thinking it and only thinking it.
Ah—with the exception of the rival clubs.
"Hahaha, back again? You pathetic geezers resetting your dynasty clock every decade, cashing in on memories from a hundred years ago, you crippled mutts."
"Hahaha, of course we're back. You tradition-less player-poaching specialist masquerading as an ace franchise, you crippled mutts."
Your players are amazi—POW--!!
This bastard, is he trying to die...? Why is that man's name even coming up... it's been over a hundred years...
"Tsk. Such uncivilized brutes."
These two traded insults face-to-face first and threw punches second.
It was the day two more foreigners earned themselves a place on the Jamsil Stadium lifetime ban list.
With this latest performance, the pile of shattered records had grown by several more.
The only player to throw two no-hitters in a single season? That one went without saying.
A perfect game followed by a no-hitter? Also a given.
First, the record for a left-handed no-hit, no-run start—the long-standing benchmark—had now been superseded outright.
"What kind of nonsense is that? Is this some soy sauce factory manager situation? What was the old standard, then?"
"A perfect game is the flawless superset of a no-hitter, genius. A no-hitter with zero baserunners allowed."
Think of it like magma beating fire in an old cartoon—simple as that.
"...Oh."
"That record was too great to be compared against anything. It simply is the record, all on its own."
Daejeon's legendary, one-of-a-kind left-handed no-hit no-run record was gone.
"Son of a bitch. We handed them a perfect game, and now we handed them this too? Just gut the entire franchise and lay it at their feet, why don't you."
Naturally, Daejeon fans exploded into uproar all over again—but if Noh In-seong had cared about things like that, there'd never have been a dedicated character document created just for him on the fan wikis.
The internet radio shows, too, were riding the wave of In-seong's new records, shoehorning award-season specials into their broadcasts.
"At this rate, Noh In-seong needs his own separate award ceremony. I honestly think he'd fill a whole trophy room by himself."
That's how hot a commodity he was—the panels were saying things like this on air.
Truth be told, now that it had come to this, it was clear: the only thing Noh In-seong had been short on was games played.
"Honestly, even if he sweeps every single award, I think we'd all just nod and accept it."
"He's about to cross the qualifying inning threshold too. As long as he doesn't give up 20 runs in one inning from here on, it's practically locked in."
Call the league ERA title all but official.
"He might take another award on top of that, you know."
"Which one?"
"You know... the one named after the statue standing in Busan..."
An award given to the pitcher who best fulfilled the conditions set by a great legend: 25 appearances, 180 innings, 12 wins, 150 strikeouts, 15 quality starts, a 3.00 ERA, and 35 saves.
Noh In-seong could not possibly check every single box.
Saves were a matter of role; the innings and start requirements were out of reach simply because he'd appeared in so few games.
"But wins, quality starts, and strikeouts—he's got all three. ERA's basically locked too."
"...Huh. You're right."
If anything, he was so far ahead of every other pitcher in the categories that actually counted—his odds of actually winning it were genuinely high.
"...How ironic."
"Why? What's ironic about it?"
"That award was created in honor of a Busan legend... and the man who hates Busan more than anyone on Earth is going to take it."
"...!!"
Well—forty-plus years of glorious history, and never once had a Busan player won it.
Karma for a franchise that failed to uphold the greatness its founder had left behind, no?
"Well, I'm a Busan legend too. In a different sense."
Noh In-seong murmured quietly to himself while getting a massage, the internet radio droning in his ear.
A legendary draft bust, that much was true.
The magic number had dropped by three with the two-game sweep of Gwangju. Three remained.
Daegu had gone 1-1 over the same stretch. Now, truly, the pennant could be decided in the very next series.
Monitoring whether every player's condition would hold up or break down—that, too, was the club's job.
"Alright, Noh In-seong. Right side..."
"Nngggghhhh..."
There was a very good reason In-seong had dragged himself to the stadium's massage room on his day off.
Yesterday's records meant today's ruin.
Granted, since the records hadn't been intentional, the muscle expenditure and stamina drain had been relatively modest—but still.
"119 pitches is a lot, honestly. The number alone is a bad omen."
Setting aside the creeping sense that something was about to be carried off in a body bag, his shoulder felt numb and heavy, like it had gone to sleep.
"This spot hurts when I press, doesn't it?"
"AAAAAHHH!!! Gently—please, GENTLY, I'm begging yaaargh!!"
"Of course. Here's some more pain. Knead, knead."
After enduring a massage from a therapist who seemed to savor his client's agony,
"...Nope. Still completely wrecked."
In-seong was staggering around the vicinity of the stadium, barely upright, when—
"Whoa, hey! Congrats on the record!"
"What are you two doing lurking around the stadium? Today's a full no-practice day."
He'd run into the dating couple: Song Jin-wook and Jung Soo-jung.
"You're thinking of finding a place around here? How big of a loan are you planning to take out?"
"...Hey, obviously we're not jumping straight to an apartment or a house. A two-bedroom. A two-bedroom."
Astonishingly, the two of them were already house-hunting for their life after the wedding.
They were holding the ceremony this very winter, which meant the newlywed nest needed to be secured beforehand.
"This is what sucks about being a Seoul team—housing costs are absolutely brutal."
"I know it's a bit personal to ask... but you're not going to borrow money for it, right?"
Jin-wook shook his head firmly.
"I already uprooted my entire family's savings for baseball. What face would I have, reaching out for more on top of that?"
"Yeah. Figured you'd say that."
Baseball is an expensive sport. No matter how much support and subsidy gets poured into growing the player base—
"One bat costs how much? One ball costs how much? The price tags are no joke."
"Student players get the low-rebound aluminum bats these days, thank god. If we'd still been on wood, my family would've gone bankrupt."
"...Hm. Fair point, actually."
In-seong closed his eyes and reflected on his past life.
'...Wait. Come to think of it, I barely ever held a bat properly at the plate when I was actually trying to produce results, did I?'
In his previous life, Noh In-seong had been drafted as a pitcher.
One glove, one uniform, one cap, and a ball in his hand.
He'd owned exactly one bat and babied it like a treasure. His hitting potential had been mediocre to begin with, so he'd stuck to bunts and sacs.
He'd almost never needed to understand the plight of hitters, whose equipment bills piled up sky-high.
To think this was why a penniless orphan could still pull himself up by his own bootstraps—it hit him anew, that shock.
"...You must've burned through a ton of bats back then, hyung. If you'd been on wood."
"Argh, you little—! Your hyung was called a genius among geniuses in high school, okay? Minus the defense."
"...So you were self-aware. Good to know."
"Hoho, oppa's still getting roasted over his fielding, I see."
But keeping that quiet, not volunteering it—now that was classic In-seong.
"By the way, Soo-jung, you must've been bored out of your mind listening to us go on like this."
For the first time in a very, very long while, Noh In-seong performed a miracle: he displayed consideration for another human being.
"Huh? Oh, no, I'm fine. He knows way more about baseball than I do."
And immediately, a roundhouse kick sailed straight into that consideration.
"What."
"Teehee. Obviously. Oppa's the one playing the games."
"And you're the one running the numbers... Yeah. I know."
Jin-wook nodded and began spilling the story of Soo-jung's hidden history.
Jung Soo-jung had majored in statistics in college.
A prime candidate for academic slavery, fending off love calls from droves of professors trying to lock her into their labs.
Naturally, for a prospective grad student—slavery plus one—her grades had ranked at the very top. But she hadn't gone to university out of personal passion, and she had zero desire to study any further.
"Honestly, I only went to college because of my parents' weird prejudice that everyone has to go..."
What she'd actually wanted to do was work office temp jobs or odd gigs, save up money—
"I was planning to get my tax accountant license and become a VTuber..."
"What kind of otherworldly taste is that?!"
By In-seong's assessment, a completely unhinged concept.
Jung Soo-jung: the strange woman whose long-term career goal was transitioning into a tax-accountant VTuber.
And into her day-after-day life of exactly that plan, her boyfriend—stressed to the breaking point by his minor-league stat line—came into view.
"Ugh, what the hell IS this pile of documents? My head's going to explode!"
"...No, seriously, how does this blockhead not understand basic statistics? What am I going to do with this airheaded oppa?"
She—a woman with a pro ballplayer as her future husband—had tried to help her childhood friend of a dimwitted younger-brother-figure fiancé, and lightning had struck her brain.
"One day, it just clicked. Let's inject the data into him. Statistically."
Opposing pitchers' locations, how to approach which hitters and when, which pitches got punished for extra bases...
At first, Song Jin-wook—swinging on raw talent alone, allergic to studying something his fate had never asked of him—had fought it tooth and nail.
'...Huh?! Wait, he's throwing EXACTLY what I told him to.'
He bombed the minors. Then he started hammering big-league opponents too.
"A man can ignore everyone else's advice, but the woman he's about to live with? Her words, he keeps hearing."
"...Can't argue with that. I really should, but I can't..."
Her own personal analysis, blended with the official output of the Doubles' analytics team.
A husband who, through gritted tears, memorized the previous night's data cold before walking into every ballpark.
So this oWAR monster was the product of one woman's talent, hammered in nail by nail?
"Heh heh."
"Hand back half your salary. Seriously."
"...Aigoo, In-seong, you bastard."
For such rare wifely support, Noh In-seong administered a proper scolding on Jin-wook's behalf.
"And even after all that, he still can't get past you. I mean—statistics just don't work on you or something?"
"Obviously not. I just see it and hit it. What's statistics got to do with anything?"
There was a very good reason his batting line swung wildly depending on how he felt on any given day.
At those words, both their faces twisted.
"Ugh. Insufferable."
"Ugh. Talent freak."
"......"
Was it so wrong to say that this was, in part, the dividends of his past life's hard work?
He compiled and processed his own analysis well enough, thank you very much—and these doomed bastards had the gall to flat-out call him a talent freak.
Noh In-seong gave serious, repeated deliberation to whether he should crack their skulls open.
'Should I spike the bouquet at their wedding?'
The gentleman's revenge was scheduled to arrive by winter.
Game five against Incheon saw absolutely nothing of note happen.
No war of nerves, no verbal abuse or thrown dirt, no punches thrown, no dirty tricks—a genuinely quiet game of baseball.
"Wait, that's possible?! With Noh In-seong out there?!"
It turned out that as long as that In-seong stayed quiet, games proceeded like perfectly ordinary baseball.
Both teams fought a clean fight, and both games went, uneventfully, to the Doubles.
"The starters weren't sharp, the hitting wasn't sharp—nobody was in great form."
"In-seong-ah, you went 1-for-8, you know."
"......"
One player had torched his own stat line pretty badly thanks to conditioning issues—but a win's a win, so all's well that ends well.
The magic number had finally dwindled to one.
And with only one last touch remaining on that magic number—
"We've only got one number left too..."
"Damn it. Tragic, but there it is."
The next opponent: eighth place. Busan.
The bitter feud that had begun at the Doubles' home park looked poised to end at the Marines' home field.
One number, and one number.
Carrying feelings at extreme opposite ends of the spectrum, Noh In-seong boarded the bus bound for Busan.