The Oil Great Battle (Part 2)
After the miracle of the top of the fourth, the Daejeon Phoenix had more or less come back to their senses.
Well, naturally — it takes a couple of solid blows before the daze sets in, and they'd taken something close to a knockout punch and gone down.
"Dad, get up... no wait, Phoenix, get up!"
"You're Daejeon's pride! You have to get up, right now!"
Dazed and reeling, it was time for them to rise to the sound of everyone's cheering — mostly from the home stands, of course.
If the score had crept from 15-1 to 15-10, then they'd taken one hit, dropped, and managed to drag themselves up at the nine-count.
Bewildered as they were, the rattling of their brains had at least stopped while they lay there on the canvas.
...Of course, that also meant the Doubles had worked them all the way to the six-count, the nine-count.
At the very least, the lucky punch they'd thrown out there — a "forget winning, let's just get some experience" kind of swing — had succeeded in stunning the hell out of their opponent, and they'd gotten plenty of rest in the meantime.
"...Damn it, get the warmed-up relievers in there! We'll worry about the comeback first!"
At the Phoenix manager's order, the relievers who'd been loosening up in the bullpen came sprinting out.
"We have to win this!"
The coaching staff frantically calculating matchups against each opposing batter before the insertion. The battery coaches and bullpen catchers checking today's conditions. And while the Phoenix's precious, carefully hoarded pitching resources were gleefully fed into the wood chipper —
the Doubles just sat there blankly, pressing the mouse button with their toes.
Click.
Fwoong—!
"Strike three! Batter out!"
[131 km/h slider, and he swings right through it! The bottom of the order goes down quietly! Three outs, side retired!]
[Hahaha, here's the funny part. Jeong In-young, today's starting pitcher, was throwing 153 km/h fastballs, and yet...]
[It's Song Jin-wook, today, who's shutting them down at speeds well over ten kilometers slower... haha. So this day really has come.]
Curtain falls. Nothing had changed — the pitcher was still Song Jin-wook. The Doubles, sprawled out flat on their backs, deleted the inning with a press of their toes.
"Damn it, put in a real pitcher! Stop deleting innings with your designated hitter every single day!"
"You should try pressing it like he does. The inning just disappears on its own."
"You little bastard, then why don't you set your uniform on fire while you're at it!!"
An absurdly unfair trade ratio — holding the line without a single proper pitcher to be found. The Phoenix raged at the Doubles' hypocrisy and deception, but —
"Then I guess we really do have to curse at you. Just you wait."
"Wh... what?!"
Since the acquisition of Noh In-seong, this was exactly the sort of response you'd expect from men who'd sold their consciences somewhere beyond the sky. Without so much as the satisfaction of having dutifully deployed their good pitchers, the runs came pouring off the board again.
Crack—!!
[Another hit! This game is not normal, folks! Top of the fifth, and the Doubles are at Phoenix's throat!]
Scattered hits kept raining down.
[Haha... now they're within two runs. Daejeon's manager does not look pleased at all.]
15-13. The Doubles, now truly breathing down their necks, had raised the club over their heads and begun to swing.
Just one more, please, just one more! — the club kept whipping back and forth right around their skulls.
"Come here, come here! Hold still so I can aim at your head...!!"
"GAAAH...!!"
Unlike their own lineup, which had gone completely cold, the opponent kept chipping away, methodical and relentless. Even with a spoon relentlessly tapping away at their skulls, how could they not realize they needed a counterattack of some kind?
'Ooh, I like that fastball!'
Jeong In-woong, the highest-paid man on the Phoenix roster this year, ripped into Song Jin-wook's pitch with everything he had.
CRAAAAACK!
[High! Way up high—!! Yes! It's gone! That's the sixth home run of the game between these two teams already!]
[A home run festival is underway in Daejeon right now! Neither pitching staff can contain the opposing lineup!]
He'd been holding up admirably, but Song Jin-wook's essence was, at the end of the day, that of a stopgap inning-eater.
"Aw, and I was doing so well, too..."
He was disappointed, but honestly, even up to that point he'd been pitching absurdly well. Deal with the remaining batters cleanly and he'd finish with three innings, one run — an ERA of 3.00, a genuinely respectable line. Compared to the other pitchers who'd spent all day getting bludgeoned like stray dogs, he was an absolute angel.
Separate from all that, however, Song Jin-wook's fatigue was climbing at an alarming rate.
Maybe it was because he hadn't pitched in so long — his shoulder was heating up fast, aching and stiff, and the muscles being overworked for the first time since high school seemed to be screaming.
"Hey, Song. Hurry up and finish the inning. I don't even want to stand here anymore."
That damned, leisurely voice drifting over from behind was a bonus, too.
'How the hell does this guy do this for nine full innings?'
The madman's ability struck him anew. Feeling hardship at a mere two and two-thirds innings, Song Jin-wook squeezed the ball with whatever strength he had left.
Pop—!
[The shortstop gloves it... and he's out! Three innings, one run — Song Jin-wook does his job and closes out the frame!]
[Oh, you can hear applause from the stands. The fans clearly know what they just witnessed.]
Disappointed as he was, when he'd nonetheless completed all three innings assigned to him —
Clap clap clap...!!
applause erupted from the visiting stands. Gratitude to the batter who'd done the job nobody wanted to do. And at the same time, encouragement for the pitcher who'd somehow laid the foundation for the comeback.
"Thank you! Thank you! If we win this, it'll all be thanks to me!"
WOOOOO—!!
He went out for the curtain call, spouted nonsense about his own brilliance, and the fans in front of him started booing.
"Get off the stage. Seriously."
Thwack—!
Song Jin-wook's first-ever curtain call was concluded by a kick from Noh In-seong.
So this was a man with no situational awareness even toward his own fans — Noh In-seong marveled that he'd somehow managed to get married at all.
***
And so Song Jin-wook came down off the mound without having secured the requirements for a winning decision.
[Well, then, that means the Doubles lose their designated hitter slot.]
[Naturally, right? You moved the DH straight onto the mound.]
The designated hitter was now the pitcher, which meant, logically, the pitcher had to come to the plate. The problem was that in this situation, a pitcher who almost never hit — a man whose batting experience had ended in high school — was due up.
Most teams would have to go through the pointless ritual of pinch hitter–bullpen shuffling to escape this bind, but the Doubles held the key to it.
"Seong-min, you're in. Looks like you'll be throwing a while today."
"Yes, sir!"
Jin Seong-min. A "relief pitcher" signed this year, and also an outfield backup. He could hit, and if needed he could shuttle back and forth between the mound and the field, throwing from both — an all-purpose puzzle piece. Granted, his hitting was hopeless, a slap-hitting .200-something, and even if his outfield defense was solid, you couldn't exactly call his baserunning good. Half a ballplayer, all told.
Fwaaang—!!
"Swinging strike three, batter out!"
[150.1 km/h, buried in on the hands! Called out on strikes! Ah, that was crisp and clean!]
[Yes, he was sitting slider and changeup the whole way and got burned by the fastball instead.]
That versatility was, in the end, just a bonus. His essence was a 150 km/h left-handed overhand fastball out of the bullpen.
That rare left-handed fireballer shut things down for two innings like that, and in the meantime, the Doubles finally completed the comeback.
A three-run blast from Seong Hyun-tak. Thanks to all the weight he'd packed on, the man who'd been spraying doubles all game at home — in the comparatively cozier confines of Daejeon — managed to sneak one barely over the wall.
16-17. The watershed of today's game. Ahead by even a single run, the Doubles were confident they could close this thing out.
"That's it. We've won."
Jeong Im-taek looked out over the mound with a smile spreading across his whole face. By the time every other game had ended, Daejeon was still heading into the bottom of the seventh. As every team in the league replayed this clownshow of a game trying to figure out how on earth it had come to this —
"Argh, I've got nothing left."
A straight walk to put a runner on. At last, Jin Seong-min was so spent he couldn't grip the ball properly.
It was his first multi-inning relief outing since turning pro, so it was only fair.
"Good work out there."
Jeong Im-taek took the ball from Jin Seong-min's disappointed, grieving hand.
***
Even as the utterly gassed Jin Seong-min walked off the mound, some of the Daejeon fans watching were so full of hope they couldn't stop cheering.
We can still do this! Even if they bring out their best relievers, as long as we can burn through their pinch hitters, we win!
LET'S GO! DAEJEON CAN DO IT!!!
The other teams' fans — the Grizzlys faithful above all — were so thoroughly accustomed to situations like this that they spent their time tormenting these dewy-eyed newbies still clinging to hope.
And the man who had chosen his own entrance music specifically to trample that hope underfoot —
accompanied by grandiose classical fanfare, music so majestically villainous you half expected him to be wearing a black mask —
"Hhhh—hoo... Careful not to get too choked up about the comeback, Fatty."
"You bastard, I can hear every word of that!"
Teasing Jeong In-woong — the man who'd homered earlier, now standing on second base — while pulling a black glove up over his face from his position at shortstop, Noh In-seong climbed the mound.
[Ah, that's right. Noh In-seong is taking the mound in this situation.]
[Thirty-nine innings pitched this season, just two earned runs allowed, an ERA of 0.46 — Noh In-seong.]
"I've come to end this game!"
"Argh, just get your arm ripped off already, you bastard."
One-armed was a distinctive look, and since he was a man who could flat-out deal, the result would have been identical either way.
The Phoenix hitters were swept away like autumn leaves in the wind.
And aside from one ball Noh In-seong buried in the backside of Jeong In-woong — the man who might have been the Phoenix's final batter in the bottom of the ninth —
"UGH...!! This bastard holds the grudge to the very end...!!"
"Be grateful I settled for that much, what with what I promised you earlier. You got lucky."
Without sending a single batter to first base by free pass, he brought this long, long Great Battle to a close — driving a three-inning, zero-run nail into the coffin of every Daejeon fan who'd been hoping for a longer, extended slugfest.
And so the villain's triumphant return came to its end.
***
Of course, even with all that in mind, today's MVP was, without question, the man who'd thrown three innings of one-run ball while smacking two home runs and driving in five — the man who'd built the foundation of the entire comeback: Song Jin-wook.
Surrounded by reporters and journalists, the team's third two-way player (?) had become the story of the day. And the question that came out of the scrum was a slightly pointed one.
"Do you have no ambition toward the Monthly MVP award?"
"Sorry — me?"
"On a day like today, when you're eating garbage innings, or if Noh In-seong's suspension runs long... you never know, do you?"
"Ugh, I knew it. The second we get some traction, the mind games and probing start coming at us from every direction."
Song Jin-wook cut the interview short, declaring he couldn't do any more, and headed home. But —
'Honestly? I do kind of want it. It's just that nobody's beating Noh In-seong this month.'
Deep down, he was tempted all the same. Naturally, the March-April MVP was all but locked up for Noh In-seong. Combining pitcher WAR and hitter WAR, he sat alone at the top of the season WAR race at nearly 5.0.
Because he'd laid off so many pitches early on, his pure batting numbers had taken a hit —
"On the other hand, he's made up for it massively on the bases. The man hasn't failed a single stolen base attempt."
39 stolen base attempts, 0 caught. A 100 percent success rate. A man on pace for 40-40 by early May, missing only the home runs. Enough said.
And as a bonus, he'd shoved aside the one player who'd been matching him home run for home run all month.
"Second place, alone. Thirteen home runs for the month."
Since his debut on Opening Day last year, Noh In-seong had monopolized the Monthly MVP without interruption, so the reporters had no choice but to seethe.
'If this keeps up, that guy won't even glance in our direction. He'll just show up whenever he pleases and demand we hand it over.'
'No, seriously — what's the point of our stake in the coverage if this is how it goes?'
'Are we nothing more than an award ceremony where we chant "Noh In-seong, magnificent, truly magnificent" on repeat?'
What they wanted, desperately, was for somebody — anybody — else to take a Monthly MVP. And mixed in with that was a more private wish: that in the process, their own standing in the industry might improve.
The power of the journalist: the power to manufacture public opinion.
- Same MVP, every single month... Is a teammate our only hope of a check on him?
- Forget the two-way gimmick — fairness demands he compete in just ONE discipline, pitcher or hitter!
- Looks like we won't be seeing any real rivals going forward... Is this okay? What about competitive balance in the league?
Reframing a man who was simply, purely good at baseball — Noh In-seong — as an obstacle that had to be pushed aside. This was the method the reporters had chosen.
"Don't you want to be stars?! Then get on board with the narrative: knock that guy off his pedestal!"
Not to the players who were already stars, but to the other, younger players. Whispering that that man was the greatest enemy of their generation. The reason they'd poked at Song Jin-wook, too, was that Song Jin-wook was Noh In-seong's peer.
'He's a star, sure, but they're on the same team — maybe being pushed out of the spotlight by his own teammate stings a little? Might be worth a shot.'
Worth a shot was break-even; a solid poke counted as a win. The problem was that Noh In-seong was a man hypersensitive, to an absurd degree, to any malice directed his way. The attempt to weaponize Song Jin-wook's ambitions into internal strife was, to Noh In-seong — who already had an insider among the reporters —
"That's how it happened, right? Now, the next exclusive goes to me again, yes?"
"Oh, of course, of course. Reporter Jeong. What are we to each other, after all? We're kkambu, aren't we? Partners in crime."
"...It's 'confidants.' When you phrase it like that, it sounds like something completely different."
It had been a long time since everything had been exposed.
"Hmm. Feels like it's about time I put these bastards in a line and straightened them out..."
Once again, Noh In-seong's malice was turning its gaze toward the press corps.