Baseball Is War
After the game, since I wasn't today's player of the game, I was spared the interview and got to pack up early.
If another interview had come my way, I was fully prepared to strap on my spikes and slide-tackle the reporter while explaining that my head was barely attached to my neck.
"You got it yesterday, I get it today. Whew, would you look at our Jae-min climbing the ranks."
Yesterday had been a rest day, and today he'd gone 2-for-3 with a home run.
Then again, next to a starter who'd thrown eight innings of one-run ball, it was bound to look pale. Good starting pitching had become such a rare sight these days.
"Tch, and I thought I'd be the one interviewing today. I did have the game-winning RBI, you know."
"Hey, when the starter goes dominant from the first pitch, the pitcher takes it. You know that. Damn, you've got no grace at all!"
Even with this kind of WWE routine going on, the team atmosphere was genuinely fantastic. We were on a five-game winning streak, after all.
No team had been able to poke their head above ours. The Grizzlys, sitting in second place, had lost today.
We traded jokes back and forth as we boarded the bus. Tomorrow was a day off. The question was how to spend it.
"No such thing exists. A day off is just morning practice followed by an evening with no game."
Mwahahaha. Well, if I put in a little work after lunch, the afternoon opens right up. A rare stretch of free time, coming my way.
"Huh, you're surprisingly diligent? It's a day off and you're already here working out at eleven in the morning?"
Lim Jae-min. Had this kid forgotten my temperament, what with him mostly coming off the bench or warming up with the bullpen?
"Excuse me? Since when does someone who can't even crack the starting lineup get to review a player?"
I immediately added the weight of love, dog-style. Who's spotting the bar for you, kid? Your own muscles are!
"AAAGH! Stop! You maniac! I did weights yesterday and barely slept!"
Guess not playing in a game leaves you with energy to spare. In that case, I'll just be repeating hyper-breaks on you all evening.
"Kyaeeeak...!!"
"Remember this pain, you punk! Pro ball waits for no one! Learn it through evil, learn it through brute force!"
"AAAGH!"
Hm, that was quite the battle cry... Huh? It wasn't? He was asking me to put it down?
I'd been planning to crank the weight up to his absolute limit and run him through his one-rep max. What a shame.
After dumping a half-corpse Lim Jae-min back in his dorm room, I was mulling over what to do with the time that still wouldn't leave me—
Shhhhhhhhhhh...
"Ah, dammit. It's raining like a monsoon out there."
Spring rain, and the Awakening of Insects hasn't even arrived yet. Ah! So THIS is how serious global warming has become!
"This idiot's performing again, hey. Why are you here at dorm meal time?"
"In-seong does this every single day. Something's wrong with his brain."
In walks Sung Hyun-tak with Andy. Well, well. The two of you getting friendly, are we?
"What's with you two, exactly?"
"What do you think? We're dorm-meal thieves."
"I live alone and cooking's a hassle. Show up at the dorm and it's a buffet."
These deranged outside interlopers, at it again... Guys with their own homes are always the worst offenders.
From the coaches' perspective, apparently this beat letting the players wander outside and shovel garbage into their bodies, so they turned a blind eye.
"Hey, how come the stuff you pull out there and the stuff you pull on us are always so different?"
"...? Huh? Wait, that's fair. You've been pretty tame lately? I genuinely thought you had something wrong with your pituitary gland, all through high school."
What is this lunatic even saying. This deranged punching-bag duo. And I was enjoying that galbitang, too.
"Alright, listen up. Go crazy inside the lines, and that's a glimmer of star quality—or you're just a dirty player."
Either way, it's an extension of baseball itself. Nothing more, nothing beyond.
"But go crazy outside the lines, and the odds are good you've crossed the line into being a criminal."
"...? No wait, you lunatic. What about that interview you did on TV, or what you pulled on the Phoenix fans after dropping the first two games of the season..."
"No, that's different. That's me playing WWE as an extension of baseball."
Bench-clearing brawls, outrageous statements, even treating people who aren't my fans that way—it's all still an extension of baseball.
It's the opposing team reacting to the villain known as baseball player Noh In-seong, and baseball player Noh In-seong merely returning fire.
Even when I deliver extreme fact-bombings to rival clubs, I only ever attack on baseball matters—that's what makes it baseball.
"But messing around within actual moral codes, or worse, within the bounds of the law—that's not being a villain. That's just a criminal-in-training."
The moment you stop being the villain or the hero of a beautiful drama built on this game of baseball, and degrade into just a plain bad person—that's the moment it's over.
"Like, uh, you know that famous former villain on the Grizzlys, our neighbors next door, that son of a—"
"HEY! Somebody shut his mouth!"
"Aigoo, you burn-victim bastard! Why would you say the forbidden word!"
It annoyed me how Lim Jae-min frantically smacked my mouth with his spoon, but I'll let it slide this time.
Truth be told, if I'd finished that sentence, there were quite a few things my current club could never live down either... So. Moving on.
When it rains, there's simply nothing to be done.
Eat well, rest up, prepare for the next day's training and game.
Or go wander around outside getting soaked, catch a cold, and swallow every curse word in the dictionary. Presented with that choice, obviously the former.
Even if I'm extroverted, aggressive, and a walking bundle of pride one step short of full-blown arrogance... wait a second?
Come to think of it now. My former self was never this kind of person at all.
Even back in my pitching days, when everything was going well at the start of my career—confident, sure, but not this kind of person.
Could it be that Jung In-seong's spirit, blending into Noh In-seong's body that I'd descended into, is what produced this?
I nearly became something far worse, but instead I settled at the level of a big-mouthed, insufferable villain.
Or maybe—and this is possible—I'd simply forgotten, as I aged, how I'd gradually become a worse person all on my own.
Why am I thinking about this?
"Come on, come on! I see those feet! Feet!"
"Ugh, son of a—. Adding extra fungo drills just because the next game's in a dome? That's a first."
I'm thinking about it because I'm currently in excruciating pain. Ah, the mellow taste of dirt!
Today was supposed to be a free afternoon, but our little crew, snickering around the dorm, just happened to run straight into the manager.
Setting myself aside, Lim Jae-min—the kid who needs every rep he can get—started with "Oh, a chance?" and proceeded to "Oh... ohhok..." right over there, throwing up.
And Kim Jun-soo was already face-down over there, having taken a ball to the back of his head. Damn it, he's lying on his side just like that Phoenix meme.
Argh, all because of these two burn victims. Next time I'll just go out and get rained on.
The next day dawned.
Rain across the whole country, huh. A day off, perhaps?
Not a chance. With this opponent coming up, resting is absolutely off the table.
"Everyone else gets to rest~, and we're actually headed to a dome so we can't rest. Is this real life?"
"Why do we alone get stuck with an honest-to-god six-game stretch? Next series is away at Daegu, and they say it won't rain there—not all week!"
Cho In-soo and Sung Hyun-tak grumbled away in the lobby where we'd gathered. In-soo, fine, I'll give him a pass—his hemorrhoids had flared up again recently.
"And you? You've got nothing wrong with you. Why are you whining?"
"Hey. The whole point of rest is resting when everyone else does."
"Keep that up and you might get to rest permanently, Sung Hyun-tak."
The manager had crept up unnoticed and delivered that line while squeezing the man's head with his fist. Wow. I remember seeing that in comics when I was a kid.
Watching Sung Hyun-tak tap out like a man possessed, we confirmed that Dustin (who lives farthest away) had finally reported in as the last to arrive.
And the team bus departed for Gocheok Sky Dome.
The Seoul Superstars.
The last of Seoul's three teams to arrive in the capital.
Their results climbed and fell every season, much like any other club's—except for one thing.
In the regular-season pennant race, they had never once finished first. Not a single time.
They did, through some miracle, win a championship once in the forties. So no, they weren't entirely title-less.
But they were famous for one thing above all: for a team that always hovered near the top of the standings, the returns were astonishingly empty.
"You're awfully quiet before a game today?"
"Well... hard to find anything worth saying, isn't it?"
In the pre-game interview, did they think this was out of character for a man who usually basks in the adoration of every reporter in the building?
"I don't know a single player on their roster. They've all been shipped elsewhere, and the new guys get sent straight down to the minors anyway, right?"
"Everyone already knows they'll trade off whatever players they have left in two years to pocket some cash. Who's supposed to remember anyone?"
Of course not. This was merely the warm-up act.
"This place is nothing but a waystation for players, plain and simple. Frankly, I think it's kind of impressive."
"Even Major League front offices would probably confuse their business model—can't tell if it's for club revenue or just a permanent rebuild."
Because this is the kind of franchise that makes even the infamous rebuilding fire-sale artists of Major League Baseball look restrained.
"Personally, watching them hoard draft picks through trades like a lunatic collects stamps fills me with despair in a whole different sense. They love their cash, too."
"This is a different circle of hell from Busan. Kids, if you get drafted here—run."
Back when I was a Busan player, at least management tried hard before pressing the button at the very end.
These bastards press the button constantly, just to cover operating costs. A tanking team in the purest sense of the word.
"Ah... ah, yes. You're Noh In-seong, the player."
A front office so stuffed with thoughts of money that, in this beautiful league built for the players, they alone refuse to develop talent of their own?
Then get the hell down to the minors. Or sell him to someone willing to actually spend money.
Woooooo—!!
"Come on, In-seong. Couldn't we have started things on a quieter note today? Your classmate's making his debut, you know?"
"Uhh... uhhhmm..."
No, damn it. The kid couldn't withstand even this, and now he's reverted right back into a robot.
This is bad. Of all days, today's starting pitcher had to be one of the most tightly wound human beings alive.
"...Oh, Fucking Hell..."
Caleb, pinching the bridge of his nose. Cho In-soo, watching him with uneasy eyes. And an atmosphere, most likely, of all-out war.
On the day Lim Jae-min donned a catcher's mask for the very first time—filling in for the starting catcher, whose rear end was metaphorically ablaze—the air hung cold and foreboding.