Caleb and Choon-sik Vanish Without a Trace
While Noh In-seong was thoroughly demolishing yet another game...
...baseball itself, in another corner of the world, was being demolished by his hand as well.
"...You break things all the time, why the act all of a sudden?"
"Ah, come on. A guy's gotta keep up appearances."
Song Jin-wook grumbled at the sight of Noh In-seong hoisting a breakable styrofoam panel over his head, but honestly, there was nothing to say about a man who had been gleefully smashing the league ever since his debut.
At the final game against Changwon, Noh In-seong had accepted his league Monthly MVP award with a grin.
"Good thing I could cover my fine with the prize money."
In a certain sense, the utterly pathetic acceptance speech was a bonus.
Ever since reporters had been removed from the voting process, the Monthly MVP was calculated from hard metrics instead. Pure WAR, plus bonus points for records set — that was all that remained on the scoreboard.
"Tepid popularity contests are now banned across the board! From this point forward, only efficiency reigns supreme!"
And in the middle of all this, one new metric turned against Noh In-seong.
'If a player has a main position, WAR from secondary positions is calculated at half value.'
In other words, monopolizing awards through two-way play had just become much harder.
And no wonder — if you tallied up the WAR settlement for another two-way player on his own team...
"Top 30 in the league?! That guy's a backup fielder who throws out of the bullpen?!"
Jin Seong-min had been spending a lot of time in the outfield lately, and his numbers were, quite frankly, absurd.
The new voting panel had apparently looked at the numbers and thought, 'Even this is too much.'
Well, still, the only real competition for Noh In-seong remained his own teammate, Song Jin-wook. A monstrous batting average, an even more obscene on-base percentage, and a slugging percentage that defied belief.
"Once again — a monthly batting average of .444!"
"Damn it, I figured you'd be hitting over .500 every month. Turns out you do have some humanity in you."
"That said, an OPS of 1.6."
But Song Jin-wook, Noh In-seong's in-team rival, simply couldn't keep pace on oWAR — a month of slugging that could be carved into the history books.
"Goddammit...!!"
A long, unyielding club utterly devoid of humanity had painted the early summer in its own colors.
After the forced-restraint devices that had been so diligently applied in March and April got dog-piled into oblivion by his stolen bases, an era began in which every team in the league was forced to cram mustard and wasabi up their own noses.
Back when he first started refusing to swing, nobody understood what was coming.
"Why on earth did you bulk up, anyway? You were going to take every pitch whether you trained or not."
It took a month for that question to get its answer, but Noh In-seong eventually made himself emphatically clear to everyone wondering why he'd spent the whole winter bulking up.
"So I can beat you. And beat you. And beat you again!"
Unless a pitcher wanted to watch his fist or his stolen base get shredded, he had no choice but to challenge Noh In-seong head-on. And if he did that, he'd get walloped by high-efficiency, deliciously punishing hits from a man whose average slugging percentage sat north of 1.1. An easy choice, really.
At this point, the pitching half looked like an afterthought — though he'd also quietly banked 1.5 WAR on the mound.
"Well, it's a six-man rotation, and he threw fewer games this month, so comparatively he looks weaker."
In a rotation where he could only eat so many innings, this month's workload had been especially light. His runs allowed had also crept up one or two at a time, sapping the last month's near-immaculate dominance. Add in the fact that he'd been on the receiving end of a mercy-rule loss, and the pitcher side simply couldn't be the victim here the way the hitters were.
"...Hey! We weren't exactly thrilled about it either?!"
Suwon and Incheon each produced a winning pitcher off his battering and filed their protests, but what could anyone do?
"You're all rebuilding teams."
"....."
If it stung that much, they should've aimed for a fall playoff run.
It was 2052 — a year in which the gulf between weak teams and strong ones had grown embarrassingly wide.
The news that Noh In-seong had monopolized the Monthly MVP for two straight years (...) naturally became a worldwide talking point.
Former baseball players were coming out of the woodwork to heap praise on this young player.
HAHAHAHA....!!
No one in history had ever possessed talent so far above league average and remained in a subordinate league like this.
And starting brawls and stirring up various controversies wasn't even a flaw — American-scale baseball did it bigger anyway.
Meanwhile, here was this man, yesterday's starting pitcher, quietly watching TV from the locker room.
"Every hitter should slump now and then. Every hitter should zone out and take a beating once in a while."
Instead, he was watching his former teammate's meteoric rise in genuine astonishment.
The guy was absurd. How could anyone possess skill so infinitely above league average?
"He probably could've come to the Majors ages ago, right?"
Though even he probably couldn't put up numbers like that in this league.
"Still, by the end of the season, I'd say he'll have put up numbers worthy of an MVP somewhere."
Unlike himself, currently scraping out survival with a 3.79 ERA and five wins, this guy was going to become one of the greats.
Caleb James, the current fourth starter for the Cincinnati Reds, sat lost in memories as he watched the news.
After all, there had been a time when he and Noh In-seong formed the Doubles' de facto one-two punch.
Back then, at least, he was pretty sure the reporters had been the ones handing out the awards...
"Now the experts analyze the numbers themselves and vote purely on WAR."
Word was that as the times changed, the reporters had been blown up and replaced by analysts in their seats.
What on earth kind of scorched earth had that young teammate of his gone and made of Korea this time? Everything he did was on an enormous scale.
Thud, thud...
"Hk. Jim, you watching that tabloid junk?"
Caleb had been staring so intently at the screen that he hadn't even noticed someone walk in.
Timmy — freshly returned from a ballpark being drenched by a relentless downpour — shook out his hair as he came over.
"Well, if it isn't last year's batting champion. So, what's the weather like out there?"
"How do you think? Today's game is toast. Better start prepping for tomorrow."
Timothy Carrier, the youngest hitter on the Reds, grabbed a towel and gave up on the game entirely.
The tragedy of open-air stadiums, and a state that had been suffering one freak weather event after another lately — Ohio's skies had swallowed up their game today.
Under normal circumstances they could've played through a little rain, but this was closer to a localized deluge on top of a localized typhoon. Unless they felt like flying up into the heavens, a cancellation was the only answer.
At least it had given them something to argue about.
"Huh. There's a two-way player down in Korea?"
"That's right. A rookie who'd just debuted with my old team."
Before the cancellation was made official, they'd been glued to the screen watching a Noh In-seong special. Caleb called it tabloid trash, but Timothy — the one watching it most rapturously of anyone — kept firing off questions, and Caleb happily sucked down every piece of premium intel from the year they'd spent as teammates.
"Hk, you think he couldn't?"
That was the consensus of people who obsessed over the gap between league levels. But Caleb was quietly certain of one thing.
'Considering how soundly he hammered us during the Korea-Japan club friendlies, he could hold his own against at least a fourth starter in the Majors.'
He knew it instinctively — this kid was a better hitter than the gap between leagues suggested. In an era where hitters who truly saw the ball were vanishingly rare, this was a guy who stared a pitch's full velocity dead in the eye and then crushed it.
And as for his pitching... opportunities had been rare, but Caleb had caught him throwing once when the DH slot was scrapped.
"He wasn't that scary. It didn't feel like getting hit by him would kill you, anyway."
"See! So it's just a matter of adjustment! Batting champion my ass. That kind of thing's for geniuses like me."
Caleb noticed the kid's condescension wasn't landing on a receptive audience, but he didn't particularly care.
'Well, he's young and American, so he'll probably get the nod too.'
He'd go to the WBC with Team USA and come back with that much more experience. Unlike Caleb, who was slowly sliding into the veteran column, the kid had the talent — his selection was all but guaranteed.
"...What were your minor league numbers again?"
On paper, Timmy looked like a hubristic idiot swaggering around after hitting .390 in Double-A. But this was also the genius who'd hit .300-plus in the Majors and taken home Rookie of the Year last season, and who'd already smashed fifteen homers this year while boldly declaring the sophomore jinx dead and buried.
Timmy puffed out his chest, too busy showing off to Caleb to notice the trap he'd walked into.
"You think that guy could come up here and do what I'm doing?"
"Honestly? I think he'd do it a hell of a lot better than you."
A bucket of ice water to the face — Caleb's verdict came down cold and unvarnished.
"Excuse me?"
Into the dazed blankness of Timmy's face, Caleb landed the follow-up blow.
"I played on the same team as him. Right now he's a rock-solid starter sitting in the high threes ERA-wise."
The difference in league level had taken an early-2.00s, 200-inning ace and turned him into a "solid" fourth starter. That was the reality of it.
"...And your point?"
"That guy, in his rookie season, went 20-and-2 with a 1.12 ERA."
Put that way, unlike Timmy with his mere Rookie of the Year, Noh In-seong had been a Cy Young race contender.
Timmy's jaw dropped wide open.
'What kind of moronic accounting is that?!'
None of it made sense, but this was the Majors. It looked like a meritocracy with no seniority nonsense, yet somehow the old-boy culture ran thick anyway — push the argument further and he'd only catch heat himself.
"Ugh, I'm showering first!"
Watching Timmy slink off toward the showers, Caleb let out a quiet chuckle, then glanced absently out the window.
The rain was pouring from the sky like a firehose.
"...They did say a typhoon was coming. I wonder how that guy's holding up."
Word was that Japan was to Korea what a breakwater was to the open sea — two nations that had traded respiratory health for a higher chance of death by storm.
And suddenly another mercenary besides himself came to mind.
Caleb's worry was dead on.
The typhoon that had banked into Korea like a slider breaking late came ashore in Tokyo in full force!
Though compared to a Korean typhoon... well, no, it wasn't in a different dimension.
Korea got hit by typhoons hard and painfully too. The only real difference was the frequency.
"Goddammit, what the hell is wrong with this weather?!"
Dustin Springfield — the cleanup hitter for the Chiba Lotte Marines, a man who'd spent years playing under a dome only to transfer to a wide-open stadium — staggered into the dugout.
The man Noh In-seong called "Choon-sik" ducked in, dripping wet.
In the dugout next door, a young starting pitcher stared blankly up at the sky with an expression of utter incredulity.
"Baseball's done for in this weather... You might as well wrap it up, no?"
Was it mercy toward the opposing pitcher? Or was the kid simply too dazed to move?
"...Tch. We were almost there. We had the win."
Hamashita Jiro had to force down a bitter smile as the victory that had been clenched in his own hand slipped out of it, mocking him as it went.
Yokohama's ballpark was small. Small, small, small.
If anything, it was the perfect definition of a stadium that reminded you of Busan's home park.
...Which made sense, given that Busan had more or less modeled its stadium after Yokohama's in the first place.
This was exactly why Dustin, with his elite power, ran rampant in this ballpark. A hitter who could mash double-digit home runs in Jamsil was never going to fail to go yard in a bandbox like this.
The twenty home runs he'd hit last year? Already matched this season.
A power hitter who'd reached the twenty mark in a mere three months. Yokohama fans practically worshipped him.
His contract belonged to Chiba Lotte, sure, but when a man came into your home park and beat you senseless every single year, he stopped being a rival menace and started being a plague god, a god of calamity.
"Bring that damned man back next year!"
"Dustin = our team's future Hall of Famer! He should retire HERE! Get out of here!"
Chiba Lotte fans had even written personal cheering chants for him, so the moment he stepped into the batter's box, the stadium erupted.
"...The truth is it only got this bad because everything I lined kept sailing over for doubles."
This was a league where the pitcher-friendly, hitter-punishing imbalance had always been severe. Yokohama's park was small enough to offer some protection, but even so, in a league where pitching talent ran deep, a slugger good enough to maybe even challenge for the Majors was worth his weight in gold.
Dustin had become exactly that kind of big star — and only gave up when the umpire's voice called the rainout.
Today's starting pitcher, Hamashita Jiro, walked over to him. Even though they were opponents, it was a gesture of respect for a hitter who swung that frighteningly hard against him.
"...As I understand it, Mr. Dustin, you were with the Doubles. In Korea."
"That's right. Played there two years, until last season."
When Hamashita himself had debuted in Japanese pro ball, Dustin had still been a Triple-A player. By the time a year of polishing turned him into a shining new star, he was the Doubles' mercenary slugger.
But last year — when the man who'd inflicted a lifelong trauma on him finally made his debut — Dustin had been a player like the sun. Overwhelming numbers that made it feel as if his own development had been erased outright. Even accounting for the difference between leagues, Dustin got the unmistakable sense that this player stood above him.
"...No... In... Seong."
"It's pronounced 'In'-seong. Though I doubt it matters — that guy barely ever got my name right either."
The villain who, back in their U-18 days, had cracked his ribs and then wet himself laughing about it. His own body's suffering aside, Dustin had wanted revenge and faced him again in the final — only to watch the guy gleefully launch home run after home run while mocking the entire Japanese national team.
And this winter, they would meet again, on the list of enemies he'd have to face.
But he was no longer the old version of himself — the one who'd dismissed him with talk of league-level differences and underestimated him.
"I've become, in fact, a better pitcher now."
He was no longer the crybaby who'd bawled after taking one hit to the ribs back in his youth national team days.
Trial had made the boy into a man.
Like today's typhoon — no matter how furiously it raged, he would hold his ground on the mound to the very end.
Hamashita Jiro's eyes burned with resolve as he pictured himself as the last man standing.
'...Knowing that guy, he'd probably smack you in the ribs one more time and laugh about it.'
The words rose to Choon-sik's lips — and he caught them, reading the mood. Though come to think of it, saying them out loud might have actually been therapeutic.
Meanwhile, Noh In-seong — a man currently drowning in praise of every kind from all corners of the globe — was exercising his true talents somewhere else entirely.
June was slowly drawing to a close.
"You son of a bitch! You think I haven't seen punks like you before?!"
On the field, Noh In-seong was once again driving his fist into an opponent's face.
It was, after all, business as usual.