This Place Makes Some Fine Mandu (Part 2)
The fallout from those two insane games rippled out across nearly the entire world.
National dignity took a serious beating, of course, but it happened often enough that everyone waved it off with a shrug. Crazy games like that pop up every now and then, and that's true of every league on the planet.
If anything, the foreigners who specialized in watching the Korean league turned their attention to the Superstars' player pool.
"That team doesn't have a single national team player, does it?"
"The WBC is coming up too, and while the rosters aren't finalized yet..."
Even the preliminary lists had Major League Baseball drooling over the names at the very top. A rock-solid No. 3 starter — or, if his potential fully bloomed, someone with the ceiling of a league-elite No. 2. There was also a third baseman who would come off free agency and reliably bat .270-something with double-digit home runs.
"The latter, some small-market team will probably throw money at."
"Every so often there really is a team missing a few screws when it comes to offense. Makes sense."
There'd be some financial pain involved, sure, but if the man wanted a taste of an elite league, an introduction could be arranged.
But the biggest fish is never caught with bait like this.
"There's one absolute lunatic."
"Terrifying, because there's no telling what he'll pull — but the return is flat-out absurd..."
The risk was an MLB bust; the reward, a league-average ace plus a league-average home run champion. On the flip side, a player who lived from scandal to scandal and whose odds of drawing suspictions were even higher on American soil.
Noh In-seong was already a managed asset, with scouting reports on him firing off to dozens of clubs every single day.
"We can fix his head! Sure, incidents keep happening, but he'll calm right down once he's in our big market!"
Some general managers were running their happy circuits at full speed, while others muttered:
"...No, honestly, one wrong poke and it feels like the entire organization would detonate from the inside..."
One team had even bribed internal staff to dig up evidence of him beating his own teammates. And yet, every single one of them agreed on the same thing.
'We have to land him!'
Better to keep him as an unstable ally, they reasoned, than to ever meet him across the diamond as an enemy.
That was why, once again today, Major League scouts were circling a small peninsula on the far edge of the East.
'Shit. Feels like this is going to drag on for years.'
'Help out when it matters, huh? Not like they're even covering decent lodging costs.'
For the scouts, meanwhile, this was the grueling part. The trip to this country was long, and the stakeout — filming that one player, over and over — would last until the posting.
"Ugh, come on, hurry up and move already... It's a lovely place to live, but I want my promotion!"
If he could be the one to bring him over, a promotion to supervising scout was all but guaranteed.
And so, drenched in the scouts' tears, the gates of the ballpark opened once more.
Before the third game between the Doubles and the Superstars began, the mood in the visitors' clubhouse was simply silence.
There was no grief of men turned to corpses, no burning anger to be found anywhere.
"......"
Which was fair enough — they shouldn't have been that bad. When the team posts a record-shattering error count, it's everyone's fault.
Even Jeon In-soo, the most seasoned veteran in the room, found it impossible to break that silence. He was a Doubles man to begin with, and he'd had no part in yesterday's carnage, so opening his mouth wouldn't have helped anyone anyway.
"...Let's go."
"...Yes, sir!"
The whole team carried the air of men who had already lost before first pitch. It took the manager — truly, truly barely — hauling them up out of that mire and herding their bodies out to the field.
The fans waiting for them there were absolutely furious.
"BOOOOOOOO---!!!!"
Nobody was even blaming anyone in particular. They were just booing on principle.
The fans wanted this team, win or lose, to just finish the damn game already — before they were subjected to yet another pathetic display.
"Fuck, I don't care if you win, but at least lose like a rational human being!"
"Am I seriously expected to sit through this?! Hey! What is it, you planning to set every record in the book?!"
"My father collapsed! Collapsed — in admiration — at your garbage-brand baseball!"
The Superstars were supposed to go out and appease these enraged fans before the game.
But that was a task scheduled strictly for after the third 'Jamsil' game. For today, and today alone —
no such thing as an ally existed for them.
Frankly, the Superstars had never even imagined the possibility of their opponent coming out like this.
"Vicious bastards. Showing up this dead-serious about kicking a corpse."
That was the kind of situation that had a manager saying things like that out loud.
What hit them hardest was that the opposing starter had been suddenly swapped to Noh In-seong.
"Hello? It's been a while, hasn't it?"
The reason he stood on the mound — when he was originally supposed to make his return in the first game at Suwon — was a simple one.
"What? You asked me to pull you, so you could pitch?"
The food-destroying menace who had demolished every last snack in the manager's office yesterday had raised his hand with a proposal to adjust his own spot in the starting rotation.
"If we send them out there like this, won't you end up regretting it?"
"Regret what? They've already been beaten half to death as it is. Have you not seen the public opinion out there?"
"That's exactly why I'm bringing it up."
Noh In-seong gave a standing chocolate bar a light push — tik.
"Knocked over like this, you can just swap them out one by one, so it doesn't do any real damage."
Along the line of that chocolate bar, a biscuit tipped over next, then a small jelly cake, one after another, a perfect domino cascade.
"But if a situation comes along that shakes the whole team — do you really think they'd be able to get back up?"
"...You evil, scheming bastard. So that's what this is..."
Jung Im-taek felt a quiet chill run down his spine. This lunatic wasn't asking to be pulled into the rotation just to win one game.
Noh In-seong was planning to shake the Superstars franchise itself to its foundations and snap it in half. He meant to demonstrate that for a fall postseason run, what a team needed wasn't money — it was morale and roster depth.
And, well.
"Because there's no way in hell players I've marked can go play October baseball."
A snowball that had started rolling over some petty grudge. The curtain on the Targeted Outing had risen.
Whap-!
The Superstars players realized that Noh In-seong's condition today wasn't quite as polished as usual. Well — anyone would feel that way after surrendering a hit from the game's very first batter.
The strain of dropping from a five-day rest rotation back onto a four-day one, all over again, was no small thing.
"Whew. It's rough getting back into this after so long."
Jeong Woong-in, the man behind yesterday's fiasco, wasn't in the lineup, and when Kim Jung-ryul — who had at least contributed to that disaster — laid down a hit, the boos temporarily died down. Then the two- and three-hole hitters struck out swinging, and the jeering started right back up. But when Seol Ho-jin's single put runners on first and third, the sad truth was that the baseball fan's primal instinct lifted its head.
'Fuck. If they strand first and third here, my blood pressure's going through the roof in every possible way.'
Should they believe, just this once? Would that be so wrong? No — that would feel absolutely disgusting. Having been force-fed two consecutive shit sandwiches, the fanbase had all but become professional scatmen, and cheering felt almost obscene.
That whole line of thought evaporated the moment the fifth batter drew a walk.
"Park Myeong-ju! Intentional walk!"
"...I'm sorry, WHAT?!"
Before them now lay two outs and the bases loaded.
"As if I'd ever enjoy a messy first-and-third jam. Bases loaded is clearly the better situation."
The cleanest way to neutralize baserunners completely was to simply pack every base full. In a first-and-third situation, while the runner on first dances toward second, the man on third can break for home — a delayed steal is a very real threat there. Bases loaded, on the other hand? Unless you're attempting a straight steal of home, nobody can so much as dream of taking an extra base.
"Anyone in your lineup past the six-hole who can actually hit?"
"......"
Most of the remaining batters had been penciled into the lineup for their gloves, not their bats.
Noh In-seong smiled, went through his windup three times — and the bases-loaded chance evaporated into nothing right in front of them.
BOOOOOO-----!!!
The fans were angry, yes, but the booing was a touch quieter than before. Some of them had glimpsed a flicker of hope; others had written the team off entirely the instant the rally was torched.
"There's still time! We can still do this!"
"No, you brain-dead moron! How do you not see you're being toyed with?!"
And if those two happened to be friends, then somewhere out there was a wise third friend telling them both to hurry home and stop subjecting themselves to this hideous spectacle.
CRACK---!!
It's only ever after the score reads 1:0 that the foolish friend who tags along finally shows up.
"Ugh, goddamn it. Figures... fine, you were right. Hey! Start the car! Let's go get drunk today!"
"Already packed my bags. Let's go!"
And so the fool followed the wise man, who was already stuffing his belongings into a bag.
The good news about this game: all the way through the top of the seventh, both teams traded outs at a brisk clip with nothing stalling. The bad news: not a single run crossed the plate besides Noh In-seong's home run.
"You lunatic lumbering bastards! I'm not even asking for home runs — just bunt me over or wave me home when I'm on base!"
The tyrant was raging, and even the manager had to tread carefully around what he said to today's starting pitcher. But the Superstars hitters, as if atoning for failing to join yesterday's error catastrophe, finally caught their belated hot streak.
Seol Ho-jin was so slow — a glacial, heavy-tank-class human being who, short of a genuine blunder, would plainly block the basepath ahead of any runner — that his reaching first base alive came courtesy of first baseman Sung Hyun-tak's botched catch. And right on the heels of that came a golden opportunity to erase it all with a double play.
Whap-!!
"This motherfucker, slippery as watery jjajangmyeon...!!"
BANG--!!
"GUAAAAAH---!!"
The rally shot sky-high and vanished, courtesy of the shortstop's error. He did manage to wring one out, barely, striking out a pinch hitter — and then:
Whap-!
Perhaps that earlier intentional walk had done wonders for the man's pride — Park Myeong-ju slapped a clean base hit. Once again, a crisis came knocking at Noh In-seong's door.
One out, bases loaded.
The only reason this jam hadn't already cost runs was that Seol Ho-jin, the slowest man alive, happened to be leading the charge. The difference from last time was that the pinch hitter at the plate came out swinging with real intent.
"Umpire! We're sending up our pinch hitter!"
While the Superstars manager, giddy with excitement, held his substitute on deck, Noh In-seong closed his eyes and banked his fury.
'Phew... Fine. These bastards and I have reached a mutual agreement: I kick the living daylights out of every last one of them after the game...'
The moment the mental reset was complete, the opportunity revealed itself instead. All he had to do was strike out two more and walk away. He'd already held them scoreless through seven — go three up, three down here, and his day was done.
Every psychological brake that had been holding Noh In-seong in check came off all at once, and the first pitch came in hot.
FWOOM--!!
The second pitch was just as vicious. A 166.6 km/h fastball sliced through the dead center of the strike zone like a beam of light. Watching the batter's utterly demoralized face, Noh In-seong delivered the third pitch.
Pwoong-!
"S...Strike. Batter out."
The true identity of the offering that ended the at-bat so anticlimactically: an utterly ordinary 120 km/h four-seam fastball. So slow it almost appeared to drift, and the pinch hitter slashed through empty air, manufacturing the second out all by himself.
The next batter, apparently having profoundly misunderstood the old adage about jumping on the fresh pitcher's first pitch, swung from his heels.
Whap-!
Noh In-seong hauled down the pop-up sailing against the sky. Three outs.
That was the last chance the Superstars would ever get to score.
Cho Hyo-jin and Kim Jin-hong came in and each swallowed an inning whole, and just like that, the game was over. The Superstars fell 1:0 — offered up as the sacrifice for the most flawless of shutout victories.
As the price of fumbling two bases-loaded rallies, the team this time had a very different kind of mandu stuffed into its mouth. And when they next appeared before their home crowd...
"...We are so utterly fucked."
— that was the kind of foul language coming out of their mouths, because the atmosphere inside the stadium was poison.
When some lunatic hurled an LED torch that landed in the gap between the stands and the foul territory, it felt less like a ballgame and more like the beginning of the franchise's funeral.