The Magic Sword Forged of Uranium
Song Jung-gu, current manager of the national team.
There was a reason a man who wasn't even an active KBO manager had been handed the national team job this time around.
The biggest reason, first of all, was that the old system of appointing a dedicated national team manager hadn't yet been abolished.
Had it been, the obvious first choice would have been Jeong Im-taek, manager of the Doubles. But—
"You want to make a manager who's barely had a full season or two, and who's still in his early forties, the national team manager?"
"His coaching staff is full of men in their fifties and sixties. I'm sure they'll fall in line beautifully."
His infuriatingly young age was an obstacle far too large to ignore.
The man had literally shared a dugout with Ji Hak-seong, the oldest veteran in the league, back in the day.
Within his own club it hadn't mattered — he was a legend there, and he'd needed a full year just to reassemble the roster. But the national team is a place where seniority still counts for something.
And poaching another club's manager was no easy feat either.
"Then he'd just raise hell demanding we slip in the ones who haven't done their military service."
One troublemaker had already gone public with the appeal that there is no need to stuff draft-dodgers into MY national team, so if they pulled that nonsense now, they knew exactly how he'd respond.
He could turn on a single TV program, drop one line — 'Funny, he DID seem to parachute in' — and two hundred articles would bloom overnight.
Which left exactly one option: hiring a manager from the wilderness.
Among the managers still sitting on the sidelines, only a handful had ever actually managed at the professional level. And dragging back Jo Ho-yeon — a man who had already failed once — would set the association on fire. He'd been cut precisely because he was a proven failure, so he was struck from the list.
"That leaves Song Jung-gu as the only remaining candidate, doesn't it?"
"...Will he be all right? This one's deeply polarizing too."
Song Jung-gu — the manager only certain players would play for. Brilliant at developing talent, and even more brilliant at casting it aside once it was spent.
An authoritarian manager by nature, and of all years, this was the year a lunatic had wandered onto the national team.
Noh In-seong. The biggest madman in the league — no one above him, and every one of you beneath him.
'...Is this really going to be okay?'
Reading the less-than-confident face before him, the staffer hastily added:
"If Manager Song fails to take control of the team, then... we'll have no choice but Plan B."
"What are you talking about? You mean bringing in Jeong Im-taek?"
"Yes, sir. Noh In-seong is worth it."
A weapon that broke every model of strategic symmetry — at least, from where the sabermetrician staffer stood.
"Send him up to a higher league and the league might collapse, but In-seong himself? He's not the one who breaks easily."
In his view, the player the national team needed most right now was Noh In-seong.
"...But if that kid runs wild, our national team could be the thing that explodes. You understand that, right?"
...And the fact that he was also the player most capable of pulling off exactly that. He knew it all too well.
"...I can only pray he doesn't."
"Same here..."
Both men's hopes had snapped on day one — but what could they do? That was life.
Song Jung-gu had held out a reasonable hope that he could bring the team to heel.
'First off, the man who'll be our opening-day starter is someone I coached back in high school.'
He hadn't expected Jin Jung-jae to become this successful, but a teacher was a teacher. He'd hurled the boy into the big pond — even if it meant Korean baseball losing its subsidy money to MLB — so surely, all things considered, the kid wouldn't make noise and would keep the pitching staff in line. That had been the calculation.
The hitters had Song Jung-gu and Seong Ha-jin. Plus Jeong Han-sol, the veteran who'd anchored the team from the start.
"Song Jung-gu may be a lunatic, but Seong Ha-jin is at least a team-first type. And Jeong Han-sol listens well, doesn't he?"
'A little elbow grease, and those three will carry the rest of the squad!'
For the sake of his own return to managing in the KBO, he needed to show, at minimum, that he had this national team firmly in hand.
"AAAAAGH!! AAAAAGH!!! MANAGER!! MANAGER!!! SOMEBODY PULL HIM OFF ME!! PLEASE!!"
"Goddammit, my ears. This little bastard, I swear—"
That was the sound of one young brat having thoroughly wrecked the left arm of the man slated to be the team's ace.
"...Are you gonna let go RIGHT NOW?! Hey! You bastards! Why isn't anyone pulling them apart?!"
"...No, sir. Are you insane? If we step into that, we're out for the season. Guaranteed."
One shamefaced little brat talking back to the manager — no idea what his problem was. Season? Out?
"Who on earth beats up his OWN SIDE?! What kind of bullshit is that?!"
A rattled Song Jung-gu swept his gaze over the surrounding players, searching for an explanation.
"Then you go break it up, Manager. I happen to value my body."
"Sigh. How do you talk someone down from a suicide attempt? Count me out."
"My ribs are STILL sore from where that bastard hit me."
The KBO-born players trembled in genuine terror, insisting they wanted absolutely no part of it.
Left with no choice, the coaching staff and the manager moved to wedge themselves between the two—
"You there! What do you think you're doing?! You'll be cut from the national team for this—"
"The hell?! Out of the way, you wrinkled old geezer!"
"KAAAAGH--!!"
"MANAGER--!!!"
His hair seized in a fist, the man was reduced to a two-part scream — his own, and everyone else's crying out for him.
Handle with care. That was the price of never having paid close attention to Korean pro baseball.
"...So let me get this straight. You beat up a senior teammate because you didn't want to carry ONE bag?"
"That's what I'm saying! This kid has zero respect for the chain of command! Don't you know what a senior is?!"
"Senior? The only 'first' I respect is the first punch. Quit whining like a couple of self-employed nobodies. You want another beating?"
Watching Noh In-seong shake his fist in yet another round of intimidation, Song Jung-gu slapped his own forehead.
It was a mercy he'd managed to pull them apart before every last hair on his head was yanked out — but if the ensuing interviews were going to be like this...
Investigating the matter, it turned out the errand had been the kind of thing you could ask a rookie to do, no question.
And of course the rookie's response had been a refusal, delivered with a side of profanity.
The moment the senior grabbed him by the collar in a fit of rage, he'd eaten a full bowl's worth of combo strikes and found himself locked in a submission hold. That was how the interview had come to pass.
"...Let me ask you one more time. Are you actually capable of treating a senior like a senior?"
"I don't listen to bastards who are worse than me or weaker than me. Now get lost, loser."
"...I'm losing my mind. Both of you, out. And don't fight again."
The root of the problem was that this was a special case — a man who did whatever the hell he wanted, rookie or not.
First, an ice pack for the headache bearing down on his skull. Then he resolved to hear out the rest of the players.
"...Right. Let's start with his own teammates..."
Fellow Doubles players ought to understand the man to some degree. Surely.
The first one called in was Song Jin-wook. Second year in the league, was it?
"...Aren't you the guy who was talking about being out for the season earlier?"
"Hello, sir. You saw it, right? You were one second away from going bald out there. That's what I mean by out for the season."
This one seemed a little off his rocker too, come to think of it. And his numbers were that good. Something about that club, apparently.
"...As for you — I hear from your manager that you're being prepped for a conversion to left field next year."
"He says the odds of the error-'cancer' metastasizing are actually HIGHER if you leave me at first base. Isn't that so unfair?"
Unfair, my ass. Second-most errors in league history? Good lord, someone had actually considered putting this bastard in the field.
That thought lasted until he looked at the man's offensive oWAR and promptly turned around.
'...Ah. So he's a Ramirez-type.'
Even discounting the defensive cancer, he was a puzzle piece you simply had to slot in. Song Jung-gu brought up the subject — that he'd personally help with the left field conversion, and defensive drills would begin tomorrow.
"Y-yes, sir."
Next up came Jo In-soo.
"Good afternoon, sir. Is this my interview time?"
"Right. You've come up plenty often anyway... You'll be the backup catcher."
A career year. A catcher with pop — sixteen home runs' worth of slugging potential — was a precious commodity.
Valuable enough to serve as a pinch hitter, a defensive replacement, whatever the moment demanded.
Short of grinding Jeong Han-sol's knees into dust, this was a man the team could not do without.
He felt reassured — the Doubles had sent over genuinely good players... except.
There was still one thing he had to ask.
"...What the hell is that kid, anyway? Is he like this at his own club too?"
The wry smiles on the faces of the two men who answered that question — and the single sentence that followed — carved themselves deep into Song Jung-gu's brain.
"Noh In-seong, front and center! Fungo time!"
"Ugh, dammit. Of course they assign this crap in order of youngest first."
National team assembled, training was the natural next step.
Noh In-seong — a man of many, many more words than one — grumbled his way to his defensive position.
"...Will this kid actually field well?"
Third baseman Seong Ha-jin watched with a flicker of unease.
Nobody plays poker to win the hot corner in Boston, but strictly speaking, defense had never been his strong suit.
Mediocre glove, mediocre arm — a hitter who lived and died by his bat. Which meant what he needed was a shortstop who could actually field.
'No matter how I look at him, he's young...'
Fielding experience isn't built in a day or two, so this kid was probably another offense-first shortstop.
'Ugh. The comment sections are going to tear him apart all over again.'
He was halfway to resignation — brace for the errors — when—
CRACK---!!
A hot shot ripped between third and short — the kind of ball you don't even chase, the kind that's an automatic hit.
The instant Seong Ha-jin charged forward, determined to field harder for the sake of his offense-first shortstop—
"Move!"
Noh In-seong barked the order at the mass of humanity standing in front of him.
A burst of speed from out of nowhere, a barehanded grab instead of a glove, and — without so much as looking — a silken throw to first.
Had there been a runner, the out would have been recorded three-quarters of the way down the line. It was that perfect.
"Beautiful! That's defense!"
The infield coach praised him with complete sincerity.
He hated watching players loaf — but show him this, and suddenly the laziness made sense.
'From the kid's perspective, it must have felt like "ah, more time being wasted."'
If you could produce this, a certain amount of slacking became forgivable.
The same went for the players standing around him, and the ones watching even when it wasn't their turn.
Whoa...
The men gathered here were, at the very least, the best baseball players in Korea.
Every one of them felt it instinctively as they watched Noh In-seong field.
'Nobody's beating him at short. That bastard doesn't get called up unless it's as a pitcher.'
'He's played second before, right? He could cover third too. Kid's basically a utility infielder.'
And the man who felt it most of all—
"...You want to come to Boston?"
"...What the hell kind of nonsense is that? Where did THIS come from?"
Seong Ha-jin — the man who routinely ate a heaping plate of abuse for his shaky glove — was out here desperately pitching a sales job.
Shaking out his still-stiff left arm, Jin Jung-jae stepped onto the mound.
Time to knock out his live pitching session.
"Damn it all. At least the bastard didn't break my throwing arm."
Had it been the right one, the submission hold would have cast a very real storm cloud over next season too.
The MLB grind was brutal, but the moment that bastard got one hit on him, he'd seen God.
He was the type to throw down fair and square when a bench clearer broke out — but still.
'With a bastard like that around, inside pitching might actually go extinct.'
Taking that one hit had shifted his thinking, just slightly.
He'd watched the guy curse out a manager to his face, after all. With lunatics like that, the only answer was to never share a field with them—
'...Huh? Why is that bastard standing in the batter's box?'
"Hey! You one-armed cripple who got bent by ME! You gutless piece of garbage! Throw one!"
In place of an apology, a second blow to the head — and Jin Jung-jae saw red.
Apparently, the time had come to demonstrate the proper order of things.
"You little punk! You make a little noise in Korean ball and suddenly the Majors look easy to you?!"
Jin Jung-jae's thunderous rebuke reached Noh In-seong—
"YOU look easy, you unsolid fourth-starter trade-chip filler bastard!"
His standing on the team, his current position, the blunt force of facts, and the future that awaited if he couldn't rebound — all of it came back at him, evenly mixed into one verbal grenade.
Noh In-seong's Fact Strike! It was super effective!
"...Fine. You clearly need a few knocks to wake up to reality."
Words didn't reach that guy anyway. Which left exactly one option: settle it with baseball!
To teach the little punk the dignity of the Major Leagues, Jin Jung-jae accepted the duel.
"How's this — you win if you get a hit within three outs?"
It was a pitcher-friendly rule, by any measure — a hit in three tries was a .333 average, top-of-the-league territory.
"Three outs against YOU? Doesn't sound like much of anything."
Noh In-seong said it lightly, like a man strolling up for batting practice — and it needled Jin Jung-jae all over again.
160 innings, a 4.01 ERA. Not solid, but a young arm who'd shown promise — that was the treatment he was used to.
And in front of that godforsaken rookie, he was apparently nothing more than rubber clay to be played with.
'I WILL strike him out three times, and I WILL teach that cursed bastard what hierarchy means!!'
Jin Jung-jae steeled himself.
Naturally, with the national team assembled, a pissing contest like this was premium entertainment as far as the players were concerned.
'Yo, I hear the MLB guy's going up against that bastard.'
'Whoa, fifty grand on the kid.'
'I'll buy a round of drinks. Meat and whiskey, the works...'
Most of them didn't care who won — In-seong or Jung-jae — as long as the show went on.
Song Jin-wook, Jo In-soo, Cho Hyo-jin, and Kim Jin-hong, as the only Doubles men present, tried to brief their teammates—
"I know enough. That guy doesn't know my numbers properly either, does he?"
Fair's fair, Noh In-seong declared, and refused to hear a word of it.
Jeong Han-sol crouched behind the plate.
With a coach behind him who could actually call balls and strikes properly, the match began.
"...Strike!"
A natural, sinking four-seamer at 157 km/h buried itself in the upper corner of the zone, glove side.
"...Hm. Not bad."
Seeing Noh In-seong give a lazy nod, Jin Jung-jae stared back with a twisted expression.
'Is this bastard nodding because he actually READ it, or nodding because he whiffed and is bluffing...'
It didn't matter either way. He'd thrown it inside to force a quick decision — that was the plan.
A breaking ball tumbling toward the far outside corner would force either a whiff or a frozen bat.
'That makes two strikes. Buried, and done.'
The ball left his hand, dropping perfectly toward the bottom corner exactly as designed — and the smile was just beginning to spread across his lips when—
CRRAAACK---!!!
"...What?!"
The ball had vanished — clear over the wall of the practice stadium, far into the distant sky.
A see-it-and-hit-it type. For a hitter like Noh In-seong, a pitcher who overthought things was a five-course meal.
All that careful deliberation, all that intricate pitch design — it had turned out to be pure poison.
"Impossible..."
"Oh, it's very impossible. Your pride just flew out there too — you won't be picking THAT back up."
Noh In-seong delivered his verdict to a Jin Jung-jae whose mental state had shattered on contact.
"From this moment on, your name is my boredom-killer batting practice machine."
The guy threw genuinely good pitches — very Major League of him, after all.
And the thought of parking him right there and grinding him down for the rest of camp put Noh In-seong in an excellent mood.
Grinning ear to ear, he issued his next command.
"Hurry up and throw me another one, you pitching vending machine."
That day, Jin Jung-jae threw thirty more pitches.
Half of them were hit. Half of those were hit for extra bases.
"...Heh... heheh... I'm trash... Majors, whatever... a rookie just took me apart..."
Watching a man's modest store of superiority evaporate in seconds, every single player present learned to fear Noh In-seong.
The sacrifice required to bring the national team under control had been exactly one man.
That said, Noh In-seong himself did not exactly bust his ass in the practice games.
"You think I'm gonna run around like a dog to fatten somebody else's wallet?"
One inning of defense, one at-bat, one inning of pitching. That was the entirety of his contribution.
Granted, the insufferable bastard still managed to bank one web gem, one home run, and three strikeouts along the way.
"Brrr, it's filthy cold out. I'd love five minutes face-to-face with the lunatic who scheduled an outdoor stadium in this weather."
Sluuurp--!!
Rich, piping-hot cocoa in hand, feet up on a chair regardless of whether the manager stared at him in disbelief or not — that was Noh In-seong, busy staying warm.
"...The Doubles boys were right."
Song Jung-gu recalled the words of the two men from those interviews.
'If you come at that kid with force, the first thing he'll swing at is the manager's face. Just leave him be and let him do whatever he wants.'
That was what the team captain had said.
'Um... you know that old game where you carry monsters around in little balls?'
That was what the four-dimensional one had said, by way of analogy.
'Now imagine having to handle a level-100 Noh In-seong when you haven't even cleared the first gym.'
In the game, disobedience ended with self-inflicted damage or outright refusing to fight. In the real world, it meant attacking the trainer — the manager — or your fellow monsters. The teammates.
"...Jeong Im-taek, was it? That young manager of theirs is looking more impressive by the minute."
To make that lunatic follow you out of genuine devotion — was this man a saint, or Liu Bei?
And so it came to pass that Manager Song Jung-gu, young beyond his years, found himself offering quiet reverence to a manager who was younger still.
"AH-CHOO!"
"...Have you caught a cold, sir?"
"Ugh, dammit. Winter is winter."
Jeong Im-taek, blissfully unaware that he was being worshipped on the regular in the strangest of places, was resting at home.
The whole farce existed only because nobody else knew that, deep down, he had already given up — halfway, at least — on controlling whatever Noh In-seong chose to do.