Three Records
Whether the Doubles won the championship, or Busan failed yet-yet-yet-again to reach fall baseball — to the rest of the teams, it made no difference whatsoever.
"Ah, you could poach 'em, I suppose."
"Might make decent farm depth next year. That's about the level of interest we can offer."
"Isn't that always how it goes? Move aside — I'm watching our game on live TV."
How to put it — it was like staring at a dead pigeon lying on the sidewalk.
Or, on a more fundamental level, closer to asking, 'Wait, is that thing even employed?'
"Ugh, get lost! Your sorry team couldn't produce a single decent player to save its life! Somebody sprinkle salt on it!"
From a Busan fan's perspective, of course, blood vessels were popping — but what could anyone do?
The guy at the top had just won the title, the one right below him was from the neighboring region and was getting courted, and everyone else was too busy with their own unsettled fates to spare any attention for the condemned.
Meaning: that was how it went, unless you happened to be close enough that you had to fight over the same fans.
Ah, though for the people with oceans of free time on their hands, things were a little different.
Watching someone else burn is, after all, a premium dopamine-delivery service. Peak entertainment.
We rebuild → two years later can't take it anymore and go all-in → catastrophic collapse → luxury-tax-funded last dance → dead.
We're at the 'dead' stage right now, so just start the rebuild next year. Yep.
"Kuk kuk. Go grind away."
Just like that, even a vile baseball player blessed with a day off could savor the sweet pleasure of hormones doing their work.
"Tch. I'm bored of this game already. Maybe I'll head out and grab some food."
And so Noh In-seong finished flushing his latest dump of a forum thread and stepped outside — but on the screens still glowing, a different kind of bait was rolling along.
First, let's survey the teams whose standings had been more or less settled.
At the very top, the Doubles hoisted the trophy. Just beneath them, the Daegu Lions lay sprawled out, utterly indifferent. At the very bottom: the Seoul Superstars, the Incheon Astro, and — as of yesterday — the Busan Marines.
Of those five teams, the only one with any real room for movement was Daegu.
"Well... I mean, technically it's possible, is what I'm saying. They'd need to lose roughly half of the half of their remaining games."
That was the thing — the season was already winding down, and several teams had started promoting their prospects, so 2nd place was quietly cementing itself. The rest of the league wasn't idly flaunting rookie call-ups for nothing.
So what was everyone else doing?
"Hey, let go! I said let go first! Ah! Aaargh!!"
First, the Bear and the Tiger were rolling around on top of each other every other day in the 3rd–4th place death match, separated by no more than a single game.
And then there were the two teams fighting over the last fall baseball ticket, facing off today against a Suwon side that was somebody else entirely.
"Wow. We're in trouble."
They'd just emerged from a soul-crushing war with Daejeon and Changwon, and now — exhausted, drained — the first-place team was waiting for them.
Their ranking was the lowest, and the highest-ranked monster of all had planted itself square in their path.
"...Please. Please. Let the players recover their stamina, manage the second squad...!! Roster management..!! I'm begging you!!"
Other than praying to the heavens to let him call up a few more 2nd-team players, the Suwon manager had no moves left.
Noh In-seong, having spent his day off burning Busan to the ground, was in the middle of preparing for Game 5 against Suwon.
"...Why is everybody face-down on the floor?"
He'd been idly watching the opposing workout, sucking on a caffeine candy, when something strange caught his eye.
"Hahh... hahh..."
"Come on! One more step! I know you're gassed, but you train properly no matter what!"
"Yes, sir! Understood!"
The faces and condition of the Suwon players were not good.
"Well, word is Daejeon, Changwon, and Suwon have been locked in a three-way knife fight over that last playoff spot."
Song Jin-wook offered what he knew from beside him, but it still didn't add up.
Sure, In-seong got tired too, but weren't faces like that something you only saw in the final week of a season? There was a whole month left — how hard were these guys riding their starters?
"They've all got their reasons, I guess."
"Sure, they've been slugging it out recently, but at minimum, after two days off they shouldn't be wearing faces like that."
"...Good grief, In-seong. Don't go saying that kind of thing in front of those seniors. We're the young ones here."
Song Jin-wook scolded him. He had a point — the younger the player, the faster the recovery.
Suwon had come out of their series against Changwon and Daejeon with 1 win, 1 tie, and 1 loss against each.
In the meantime, Changwon and Daejeon had each gone 2–1 against everyone else, shaking Suwon off their tails.
Unfair? Sure. But what could you do — nobody had shoved them into extra innings.
One extra-inning game is draining enough on its own. And they'd gone to extras once against Changwon and once against Daejeon?
Meaning the pitching staff had been ground down to the dregs, and the hitters had stood in the box for six, seven plate appearances a game. Of course they were dead on their feet.
And trailing every lengthening game comes the one thing a baseball team must manage above all else.
"It's an injury ward down there. A straight-up injury ward."
"Us groaning in chorus, them groaning in chorus. Honestly..."
Much like the Doubles, who'd lost their two-way cornerstone, they too had lost the heart of their team — Kim Jin-il — to injury.
With the road ahead already long enough, the comfort of facing an opponent missing its core slugger rang as hollow as a prayer muttered at an empty altar.
"We are a rebuilding team... we are a rebuilding team... rebuild... rebuild..."
He chanted the word rebuilding over and over, hammering it into his own skull, but a face cannot lie.
Even as the Suwon manager clung to his delusion, he couldn't hide the regret.
After the Doubles and Suwon had settled their two games.
"We survived...!!"
Barely — by the skin of their teeth — the Suwon manager was still alive in the race for that last ticket to October.
One win, one loss.
With the championship officially clinched, Manager Jung Im-taek had begun easing other players into the lineup.
He'd been riding his starters to the edge of abuse, so it was a natural measure.
It was also a measure he could take, because the team happened to be stocked with players versatile enough to slot in anywhere.
"We should give Jun-soo and Hak-seong a look up the middle, let Jin Joong-seok try out a defensive position..."
He gave his fourth outfielder real playing time, tried Noh In-seong at third base as well. With the playoffs a lawless zone where anything could happen, he started his experiments slowly and deliberately rather than in a panic.
"Expanded rosters are coming anyway. Let's keep rotating the kids and testing things out."
"Yes, sir."
Whether the fans understood the plan, or simply figured the all-time wins record was a foregone conclusion either way —
New record for most wins? We'd hit that even if we win only half our remaining games, no?
The overall mood stayed remarkably mild, even as the team ran one bizarre experiment after another.
And above all — so what if the team slumped a little?
"We've got a GOAT with a completely busted personality, remember?"
As a pitcher: 20 games (including relief appearances), 16–2, a 1.17 ERA. 139 innings, 18 earned runs. 175 strikeouts.
Innings a little short? Doesn't matter. He'd already banked a full 5.0 fWAR.
He'd have to cough up something like 14 runs over 5 innings just to drag his ERA back up to 2.00 — and this was a league where, outside of Noh In-seong, not a single starting pitcher owned an ERA in the ones.
The pitching double crown — wins and ERA — was all but engraved.
As a hitter, it was even more serious.
"We're really almost there, huh. Fifty-three more plate appearances, give or take."
What remained was the arduous final march for Noh In-seong's numbers to be certified as true records.
The distance to the qualifying plate-appearance threshold had genuinely shrunk.
And this despite all the games he'd sat out — the dugout brawl suspensions, the mandatory rest days after his pitching starts, and the rest. Just as Jung Im-taek was breathing a sigh of relief at how close the kid had crept to 400 plate appearances, he pulled up the line.
393 PA · 315 AB — AVG .400 / OBP .451 / SLG .870 — OPS 1.321
39 HR – 29 SB — 139 RBI — oWAR 9.40
A month still remained. He held no all-time record in either category. He hadn't yet reached the innings minimum, or the plate-appearance minimum. And yet.
"...Good Lord."
Only now did it dawn on him what kind of card he'd been playing this entire grueling regular-season odyssey with.
It was like sitting down to a poker game holding two jokers — wild cards that could become anything.
"That's just flat-out busted."
A first-place team typically claws its way to the top on the strength of roughly 30 WAR, all told. Which meant his ballclub had effectively been playing every single game with half a team's worth of extra talent stuffed into their pocket.
Stealing other people's snacks on the regular, spouting absolute lunacy, giving dumpster-fire interviews, racking up fines like parking tickets — smacking teammates, smacking opponents, picking fights, antagonizing pitchers, getting plunked...
...Hold on. Thinking about it was just making him furious. How does this kid even play baseball?
"...That damn brat. The day his bat goes cold, I'm pulling him the instant he logs his third plate appearance."
Thus did Jung Im-taek declare a policy of close monitoring on Noh In-seong.
The Doubles' next stop brought, at long last, the sixth meeting of the season.
Arriving in the opponents' home city for one final dance with Daejeon, Noh In-seong wore a grin that stretched from ear to ear.
"You may applaud me now."
The placard planted in front of him was the reason for that smile.
"One more month of this, and I become the god of this league...!!"
So boasted Noh In-seong, proudly hoisting the placard for all to see. And so,
"What a plague he is. A walking plague. Watching him wipe out everyone else while he alone survives — is he the Black Death or something?"
"Filthy like that? Sounds more like typhoid to me."
"No plague ever looked like him. He's just a disease, plain and simple..."
Perhaps it was thanks to teammates whose personalities had degraded every bit as much as his own — every last one of them having evolved into a mini Noh In-seong — that instead of congratulations, he collected a fresh, heaping serving of abuse from his own draft classmates and the senior ahead of them.
"You bastards, seriously?!"
WHAM--!!
"Ki-yahaha...!!"
"Scatter!"
"Aargh, can't you people take a joke?!"
Intending to kick their backsides in return, Noh In-seong hurled the placard aside and gave chase.
"...Um, your, ah, thoughts on the award?"
"Later! I'm busy beating the crap out of those bastards first!"
A first in recorded history: a player for whom the inequality acceptance interview < beating up his own teammates held true.
Noh In-seong had come to fight his last battle against a Daejeon team too busy with its own fifth-place scramble to care.
After leaving a pair of black footprints stamped across the backsides of Lim Jae-min and Yeom Dong-goo — the two who'd been badmouthing him — Noh In-seong began fielding the bottomless barrage of questions that came his way.
"You're chasing 40 home runs and the 30–30 club. How do you feel about it?"
"I want bread. Daejeon's famous for its bakery, so I plan on picking some up after Game 4."
Most of his answers were unhinged, but a few of the questions were genuinely useful.
"People are saying the .400 batting average is within arm's reach. What would you say is the secret to maintaining it?"
"Intentional walks, sir. I'd guess the secret to my stolen bases is intentional walks too. They're so scared they just let me fly, you see."
There was his open declaration that any pitcher who dared put him on base was getting punished, full stop.
"We're hearing your next start against Busan has been canceled!"
"They've got no hope of fall baseball left, so I don't plan on pitching against them. Gwangju and the Grizzlys — those are the only ones I'm aiming for."
And there was his pledge that he would not take the mound in any game feeding the fifth-place scrum.
"Thank God we don't have to face that natural disaster!"
"We can still do this, boys!"
Today's opponent, Daejeon, allowed itself to reclaim a sliver of confidence.
"Last question! What about the complaints that you're monopolizing the Monthly MVP for an entire year?"
"Monopolizing? It's mine in the first place."
Every reporter in the room went slack-jawed at that.
"...I'm sorry, what?"
The reporter who'd asked the question froze solid for a beat, then thawed out and stared at him — but Noh In-seong was unbothered.
"It's mine, I'm telling you. The moment the league goes 'aaaand begin!' it's simply a thing I collect on my way in."
He said all this while jabbing a finger at his half-crumpled placard.
"...Aren't you being a touch too brazen? You can't possibly know what might happen in September."
The reporter pushed back. The sheer gall of the man — talking as if the award had been handed to him in trust.
"It's an award the press votes on. If the numbers are close, you might not win it at all, you know?"
The Monthly MVP was decided by reporter ballots. What exactly was this man trusting when he insisted the thing was already his?
"Aha. Then wait until the games are over, Mr... Kim... Dae-seon, was it?"
I'll make sure you understand exactly why I said that.
Precisely three hours after that interview hit the camera drones, Kim Dae-seon was silently drafting the article he was about to file.
— Noh In-seong: 40 home runs, 30 stolen bases... 3 more RBI banked today... now just 8 shy of the all-time single-season RBI record —
'How about it? You're still not giving me the Monthly MVP after seeing what I've stacked up? Do you have any idea how monumental the symbolism is?'
"Goddammit. Fine. Filthy as it is — give the man his award."
Whatever Noh In-seong wanted, he seized through sheer, undeniable skill.
Grinning ear to ear at the thought of claiming the Monthly MVP all twelve months of the year, Noh In-seong began preparing for tomorrow's game.