14. The Next Move, or the Next SIU
Park Tae-jung had been ejected from yesterday's game for protesting the umpire's biased call — which had, in fact, been a perfectly fair one.
Choking on his frustration, he'd gone alone to a pork belly joint to drown it in soju, and his fatal mistake was flipping on the sports news while he drank.
"'That so-called manager'...? So-called manager? What an insolent little son of a bitch!"
BANG! Clatter...
He slammed the table with insane force. The soju glass toppled and its contents splashed across his shoe, but his attention was somewhere else entirely. Losing today's game was insult enough, and now his reputation was being dragged through the mud by a kid who wouldn't even show an elder basic respect. He couldn't begin to fathom what kind of punk this was. He was so livid he doubted he'd sleep a wink.
"He's straight-up playing the media like a fiddle, is he? Fine. Then I'll just have to play a little media game of my own..."
Right there at the table, he dialed a reporter he knew. An hour of calls now, and he'd be all over the morning news tomorrow.
Tok, tok. Fiddling with the pad left in the hotel lobby, In-seong pulled up the sports section early in the morning. Nothing beats a big screen.
Don't tell me this is about me.
It was 7 a.m. Yesterday he'd been treated to jokbal and noodles to celebrate his first win as a starter, so his mood had been great — right up until he woke up and was informed that another million won would be docked from next month's paycheck. That soured things all over again.
Sons of bitches, why exactly am I being fined for stating facts?
Apparently, once he pressed the matter, the answer was that the injured player was still injured, and phrasing it that way violated sportsmanship. If they weren't going to treat him like some self-harming extortionist, he'd have happily said far worse.
"Hm, this article's decent bait, isn't it?"
'Sometimes an adult must swiftly offer an untaught child the chance to own up to his mistakes.'
'Even for a rookie fresh out of school, this went too far. If he has a conscience, apologizing is his duty.'
So basically, if I show up at the ballpark today and apologize, he'll let the whole thing slide. And why exactly would I do that? The man isn't my manager — he's just some geezer from the neighborhood.
"...Did that kid show up?"
"No, sir. Not yet."
Park Tae-jung had been quietly, secretly looking forward to the pregame. Even a lunatic, when an article came out swinging like that, would get nervous and come crawling. Or so he'd believed.
What a colossal misunderstanding. Articles? People stopped caring about those ages ago — not just in 2051; even back in 2021 the country was crawling with people who couldn't have given a damn.
Ring-ring-, ring-ring-, rrrring-ring-
Alarms began pouring into Park Tae-jung's social media account like a dam had burst.
Naturally, all that actually went up were articles slathered in every variety of sick joke, from "zero apologies in one plate appearance" on down.
In-seong had concluded that as long as he never crossed into actual crime, he could make his living on baseball skill no matter what anyone said about him. Park Tae-jung's failure to grasp that was his second defeat.
And then the game itself was a defeat too. The price of losing his starting and backup center fielders simultaneously was gruesome. Four straight losses to open the season — the time to start worrying about the safety of the team bus was fast approaching.
In-seong, meanwhile, took a full day off, did everything he felt like doing, and even played the board games he usually enjoyed on a screen against an actual human being. Having indulged in a hobby considerably healthier than playing people, he wandered in to find the team down big.
"Whoaaa, the Butcher of Busan himself, the Worst Man in Busan's taverns, sunbae In-seong...!!"
"You saw that? THAT'S me! Seoul's premier OPS machine...!!"
He left the idiot over there — mouth crammed with leftover bread, spouting nonsense alongside his little sidekick — to his own devices, and went to study the lineup card taped to the wall for today's position.
"Huh? I'm playing third today?"
Seriously? I handed the shortstop job its peace of mind on a silver platter, and this is the thanks I get? Is this right? The Doubles were not the sort of adventurous club that filled its infield with rookies. The roster was overflowing with position players — it just so happened they were oddly bare at third and short. Never mind short, a position where the concept of "offense" simply didn't exist. Third, meanwhile, was anchored by a starter who sincerely believed that baseball consisted entirely of taking a hard grounder off the body, knocking it down, and scooping and throwing.
When that prospect — whose nickname was, fittingly, "Dummy" — finally shipped off to the army, shortstop remained: Kim Jun-soo, a .240/.300/.350 advertisement-manufacturing machine who pumped out grounders while holding a bat. Solid enough with the glove, but utterly devoid of extra-base hits or singles, with only a trace amount of batting eye mixed in — like one of those "flavored" beverages that contains no actual flavor. Kim Jun-soo had barely survived as the shortstop for this three-game set against Busan, and heaved a sigh of relief.
"Ahh... thank god. At least I'm starting this series."
"Ohh, so it's mid-tier Yoo Kyung-soo today, woof woof?"
Sung Hyun-tak — the man who had laid an egg at second base recently but ultimately bought his life back from Caleb with his bat. This senior, who got through life with a light body and an even lighter attitude, strolled in with bread stuffed in his cheeks. In-seong sunbae and that rookie, Lim Jae-min or whatever, had been throwing a bread banquet earlier — did he mooch his way into that too? The man had hustle.
"Yes... well, I figure it beats being sent back to third."
"Fair enough? Nothing beats the stability of playing your natural position."
"...But wait, doesn't that mean the rookie's taking third?"
A faint inferiority complex lifted its head. That kid had the starting shortstop job handed to him from day one — not even a backup role. Meanwhile I get shuffled back and forth. What's the difference?
"Well... he throws right-handed on defense too. Your throwing arm and his are about the same speed anyway."
So the one with the bat went to third, where a man does less running around. Such was the senior's placid analysis. Apparently a bitter smile had crept onto In-seong's face without his permission.
"Hey, you'll hit fine this year too, kid. Attaboy!" — and a hearty slap on the shoulder. Watching this flighty, hands-on senior, In-seong found himself missing that .300-hitting slap hitter of a sunbae even more.
Conversely, there were players watching the grim-faced senior over here, slapping his knee, seething with rage.
"If we lose today, then next week it's special training, all of it — fungo, the works — until discipline is beat back into this team."
It being the start of the season, there was still stamina in reserve — which made this a mental loan. The "borrow against the body, pay with willpower, survive just today" style of conditioning financing. But there was no choice. If the standings didn't move by year's end, everyone already knew exactly whose head would roll first.
"And that damned little brat makes his first start at third today. Any batter who can pull the ball toward third — pull it."
Yes, they'd seen him play third even in his amateur days, but amateur and professional ball differ in the sheer velocity of batted balls.
"Pitchers — don't be afraid to come inside on him. What does a rookie know?"
"Same goes for defense. If a play runs toward third, a threatening slide won't draw a fine today."
Back when he'd been slated for shortstop, In-seong had even toyed with the idea of stealing second and attempting a threatening slide himself. He had absolutely not predicted he'd be starting at third instead. Which meant he'd have to pin his hopes on a third-base slide situation — one with a far lower chance of ever occurring.
Every face in the Busan clubhouse soured. However arrogant the rookie, being ordered to put a man's career at risk sat badly in the stomach. But in the end, the manager's orders amounted to a directive as old as the game itself: play rougher. The plight of a team on a four-game losing streak, tangled up with the players' own sense of crisis, produced the inevitable verdict: it can't be helped! To put it crudely — from the perspective of the cargo riding inside the bus, if the bus goes up in flames, the cargo burns with it.
Ball one!
[Ah, Noh In-seong, making his start at third base today, falls behind one-and-oh. It looks like they intend to challenge him with pitches inside.]
[Come to think of it, Busan's been playing things a bit rough today, no? The base running, and everything else?]
Today's Busan Marines were playing dirty. The kids' whole atmosphere had been stale and brittle from the start — guess the four-game skid had them hearing footsteps. But hammering me inside pitch after pitch? Was that hoping I'd lose my temper? Or did they figure a rookie would never trigger a bench-clearing brawl?
Because something that looked an awful lot like malice was on display.
Ball two!
[Another inside fastball. Noh In-seong leans back slightly and takes the pitch.]
[Ah... if this keeps up, it could become a bit... of a problem. Even granting what happened in Game One...]
The first one, fine, it happens. The second one, from this bastard? And the third — as the old saying goes, by then the blade is already buried before a word is spoken. A man only learns manners when he understands that something could lodge itself in his skull and leave him dead on the street before he finishes a sentence.
Tok!
[Ah, Noh In-seong drops a bunt down the third-base line—!]
[The pitcher— oh! The pitcher can't pick it up! Safe at first!]
It was, In-seong realized anew, the moment it became clear there had never been any need to play nice with these bastards.
"SIUUUUUUUU—!!!!"
Effective immediately, every trivial unwritten rule on the books was hereby abolished. This — right here — was where Noh In-seong, the man who had once bothered to mind society's gaze, officially ended.
[Ah. Is this... is this man a lunatic?]
[A celebration like THAT at first base is the kind of thing you see on walk-off hits! In any case, the home crowd is on its feet cheering!]
"...Why, this little—!?"
The opposing first baseman stared at him slack-jawed with horror, but did In-seong look like someone who cared? The opposing manager was jabbing a furious finger at In-seong's own manager, incandescent with rage, but... what could you do. A manager exists precisely to put a stop to that sort of thing.
"Umpire! How much rosin is he spraying out there?!"
Even after witnessing the spectacular ceremony at first base, the opposing manager Park Tae-jung refused to fold. This time, the core argument was: too much rosin! The bat must be replaced! There was indeed a rule against applying more than a certain amount of rosin spray — but In-seong didn't spray anywhere near that limit.
At this point, it was unmistakably a declaration of war.
"Hey! Old man! From now on I'm spraying rosin on every fresh bat I pick up, so keep those eyeballs peeled!"
Fifteen inches, was it? Recalling the relevant precedent, he sprayed a slow, deliberate line of rosin and stepped into the box. Confirmed: still coming inside. But this time every infielder was playing in — so they'd braced for the bunt, had they.
Losing your cool over this stuff makes you third-rate. Trading punches makes you second-rate.
CRACK—!
But watching the very man who once charged the mound after a home run and picked a fight, sliding into home on your knees while choreographing a full celebration? That makes you first-rate.
[My goodness, Noh In-seong. He's taken his lumps from every direction today, hasn't he...]
[Haha... Manager Park Tae-jung is truly in for a long day. Noh In-seong is, as a matter of fact, an extraordinarily relentless young man.]
[He's been famous since his amateur days, you know. If I recall correctly, they eventually just gave up on him entirely.]
"Look forward to the interview, old man!"
Kneeling on home plate, both arms pumping, he danced with maximum insolence. He'd bellowed it at the top of his lungs, but sadly, the crowd declined to join in a stadium-wide chorus of Look forward to it, old man!
Hm. Still a long way to go.
Park Tae-jung's contorted face smoothed out, briefly and temporarily, in the eighth inning. For the first time all day, a runner stood on second, and at the plate was a cleanup hitter with the team's highest expected run contribution. They were losing either way, but aggressive base running from second to third in this situation was no sin at all. After being humiliated six ways to Sunday, neutralizing an opposing pitcher, a fielder, and one batter in a single stroke wasn't the worst option on the board.
— Pinch runner, Jung Joo-sung...
The pre-arranged plan: in the event of trouble, start something at third. "We'll accept even a bench-clearing!" — that had been the logic. What actually happened next scrambled that plan into something rather ambiguous.
[Ah... Jung Joo-sung is down...]
[Well, pinch runner Jung Joo-sung stole after the swing-and-miss, and him sliding hard into the bag is, I suppose, understandable, but...]
Because the runner's foot came up so high, In-seong had hastily sidestepped and applied the tag blind — pure guesswork, without even looking.
"Kkeuheuheuk..."
Worried the tag might be a beat late, he swung his arm with genuine, full-bodied force. Straight into the runner's splayed groin, opened wide by that raised leg.
The pinch runner keening on his knees, Noh In-seong staring down at him with the expression of a man wondering what species of idiot he was looking at, and the ashen-faced Busan manager. This tableau of contrasts — a portrait of the entire series in a single frame — was chosen as the closing image for the nine o'clock sports news.