Runaway Train (Part 2)
But Jang In-ho was not the kind of man who gave up the moment he got rocked.
A man like that could never summon the mentality to come back from a decisive injury that cost him velocity.
He'd been slapped around by two batters and given up a run, but he struck out the next hitter, Jo In-soo. Sung Hyun-tak followed and managed to barrel a deep fly ball — only to be caught at the warning track, to his visible dismay.
"Ah, Joo Hyeong-min hauls it in! It carried all the way to the fence — a shame, truly. Two outs."
"You can see how much it stings Sung Hyun-tak... haha, sounds like he had a feeling it was gone. He swung at the slurve."
While Noh In-seong carried Sung Hyun-tak's glove out of the dugout, the next batter swung at the very first pitch, and the inning ended in a razor-sharp three-up, three-down.
"Ugh. Sure, they say this isn't the era of waiting for your pitch anymore — but this guy could at least *try* to wait for one."
Were there really this many humans single-handedly dragging down the team batting average? An impatience worth agonizing over. Noh In-seong, halfway through debating whether to kick Song Joo-in off the roster, gave up and handed the first baseman's glove to Sung Hyun-tak instead.
"Good job out there. For you, anyway..."
"...What do you mean, '*for me*'? You're making it sound like I've got no power."
Noh In-seong gave Sung Hyun-tak's physique a slow once-over, top to bottom, and smirked.
"Do you not own a mirror? You've lost even more weight. You're down to only marginally less svelte than your second-base days."
"...Hey. Don't say that, it stresses me out, you punk."
Mitt in hand, Sung Hyun-tak trudged off toward first base in sullen silence.
And so Noh In-seong, the Doubles' first pitcher of the second half, took the mound.
"Call it a new pitch, call it whatever. What actually matters is how well you *wield* the pitches you've got."
Rather than pay the price for throwing an unrefined pitch in live competition — walking around terrified the moment a runner reached base — this was a pitcher who believed in wringing every last vicious drop out of what he already threw. And the well-rested Noh In-seong stepped up there with something else entirely on his mind.
Noh In-seong threw his slider in two distinct varieties. One broke horizontally. One broke vertically.
It matched, precisely, the slider classifications he'd mapped out long ago. And on top of that, he could throw a curveball — which naturally made him one of the pitchers theoretically capable of throwing a slurve.
But for Noh In-seong, a pitch like the slurve was simply unnecessary.
"Strike!"
"Wait — you're calling that a pass through the zone?!"
A 135 km/h curveball grazing the very bottom edge of the strike zone — the kind of pitch that made you feel like a beggar just from watching it. For a man armed with a 12-6 curve of such overwhelming vertical drop that any ordinary slurve couldn't even hand him its business card, the diagonal-breaking slider and the glove-side slider were simply the better weapons.
Two desperate, flailing whiffs at sliders that never so much as entered the zone. Strikeout. The leadoff hitter, Kim Taek-gyu, trudged back to the dugout hollow-eyed, right back to the hole he'd crawled out of.
After Kim Taek-gyu's vacant stare came the two-hole hitter — and waiting for him was Jung Jin-gi's blank, thousand-yard gaze.
Vicious, merciless pitching that refused to throw a single pitch anywhere near the zone a free-swinging slugger craves.
Jung Jin-gi already had poor pitch recognition, and his bat-to-ball ability was among the worst in the league. A hitter who locked his focus onto the zone he was hunting and swung from his heels. And naturally, for a pitcher who'd scouted every hitter's most-hated zones before the game even started...
"This is the best. A guy who *dies* if you just drop three pitches right where he hates them most."
Today's biggest sucker flailed away at nothing until his own lungs gave out, and trudged back to his cave.
Jo In-soo — a similar breed of hitter — watched Jung Jin-gi go with eyes full of pity. But there is a vast gulf between a hitter floating around .250 and one scraping by at .220.
The next batter, though, was a genuinely tricky customer. A man who could carry a big-league bottom-of-the-order lineup even today. Jong Min-soo.
"Ugh, this is the guy I hate facing most..."
Setting aside the one defensive jack-of-all-trades on his own team, the strongest hitter in the league right now. Whether it was the planned overseas move next year, or the fact that his own foster club had sold him off, the poison had been rising in him lately. The hitter spun his bat and started into his routine.
A contact hitter batting in the mid-.340s — top three in the league.
"And a slugger with a slugging percentage in the mid-.500s. This isn't a mixed stew, it's a human being. How is one man this versatile at everything?"
True to his title as the most 'ordinarily excellent' hitter alive, there was nothing to do but take him head-on, as straight as possible.
The three fastest pitches of Noh In-seong's arsenal buried themselves in the strike zone. The first, fouled off. The second, a foul tip.
The last — the hardest pitch he'd thrown all day, 165 km/h — sliced through the zone untouched. Strikeout.
A pitcher of a completely different species from the one who'd faced the previous two hitters had appeared out of nowhere, so from Jong Min-soo's side of things, *what did I even do wrong?* was the only thought available.
"Whoa, that's filthy. Filthy. What did I ever do to you?"
They were national team acquaintances who went way back, so he figured he was at least entitled to lodge a complaint with Jo In-soo.
The answer that came back was a ice-cold shutdown.
"It's an immaculate inning. Of course it's you. If you're sore about it, get traded next year."
Nine pitches, three strikeouts. Off the back of that perfect start, Noh In-seong had Busan in a headlock.
Back on the mound with no time to breathe. A single bead of sweat rolled down Jang In-ho's forehead.
"...While we're off learning brand-new pitches that might work on that guy..."
The gnawing suspicion that he had come back having already taken *their* full measure. That anxiety wrapped itself around Jang In-ho and quietly chewed.
In the top of the second, Jang In-ho managed to sweep aside the Doubles' six-through-eight hitters. Nicholas, Pi Jeong-doo, and Kim Jun-soo were dispatched one after another by the slurve, the four-seam, and the changeup.
And Noh In-seong, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, tore right back through Joo Hyeong-min, Jin Dong-ha, and Kim Soo-ho — two strikeouts and an infield pop.
"The way I see it, Noh In-seong being this good almost feels *inevitable*, but Jang In-ho... you really have to take your hat off to him."
"He took a dead arm diagnosis, went under the knife, fought his way back — and now he's going toe-to-toe with Noh In-seong."
The two pitchers traded blows like a rally, each relentlessly shouting *hurry up and get up here. hurry up and get up here.* And of course, the one absorbing far more of the damage in this exchange was not Noh In-seong, but Jang In-ho.
The third inning opened with an ambush on the very first batter. He knew perfectly well it was the course Ji Hak-seong loved — the sin was his fingers slipping, just for an instant.
Ttaaaak—!!
"A base hit! Ji Hak-seong lines one into center! That slurve missed its spot — it came in right on Ji Hak-seong's favorite course!"
"Ball or strike, who cares! If it's a zone where you can do damage, you swing!"
It was a swing path that produced quality contact whenever the ball came in low and toward his body, even off-speed. The aging veteran couldn't lay a bat on the fastball anymore — but the trajectory on which that breaking ball happened to die made all the difference.
From the moment the runner reached base, Jung Im-taek's sign sequence began. As it happened, the two men relaying signs today were the relatively sharp Jo In-soo and Jin Jung-seok — one the starting catcher, a position you cannot hold if you're an idiot, and one a pinch-running specialist who earned his bread and butter through tactics.
Third pitch. Run and hit.
First, he'd calculated the count where Jang In-ho most reliably pumped strikes: pitch three. And factoring in that the swing would likely be a whiff or a badly-missed ball anyway, he chose the play with the higher odds of turning into organized chaos. The run and hit went out as the sign.
The play worked for two big reasons. First: with runners aboard, even a good defense can't afford to feed the opponent the pitch that dives out of the zone. As demonstrated moments ago — if the ball gets away, the runners advance automatically. Nobody believed Kim Soo-ho, blessed with an average-at-best (generously speaking) arm, was going to snag a dirt-bound ball and nail an already-sprinting runner. So the odds were far higher that Jang In-ho would avoid the dropping pitches entirely, or throw far fewer of them. And obviously he'd fire up in the zone — whether he blocked it with his body or whatever else — which made the ball that much easier to hit.
Second. The reason the run and hit is usually a boneheaded play comes down, in the end, to the sheer number of hitters who lack the ability to put bat on ball.
So then — what if the man at the plate was hitting .424 on the season, and had *just* punched another single to bump it to .427?
Ttaaaak—!!
"The runner's already in motion! He swung! A scorching smash toward third—!! It's through! The runner's already rounding third!"
"The left fielder fires it to second! And now it's first and third!"
"...No, hold on — what the hell is with a team that never *once* used signs suddenly running plays like their lives depend on it?!"
As the opposing catcher erupted, and Noh In-seong looked over at Jang In-ho — who had just coughed up yet another futile base hit — the man who had logged his 100th hit of the season flashed a wide grin.
His average had climbed again, to .429 — which meant the odds of the next play working had climbed right along with it.
"So. You can't throw the pitch that dives. Which means from here on out, you've got nothing but fastballs for Song Jin-wook, don't you?"
--So what exactly can you throw now? A changeup at best — and there's a runner out there ready to take off the second you so much as glance at him.
Hell was only just getting started.
Needless to say, simply stuffing the strike zone was not going to get Song Jin-wook out.
Song Jin-wook, after all, was a .370 hitter with 30 home runs — one of the most dangerous bats in the league. He was not a man you could subdue with two pitches: the same heater over and over, with the occasional changeup mixed in.
Another single dropped in front of the right fielder, and the Doubles manufactured first-and-third all over again. Ji Hak-seong, the runner on third, had already crossed the plate — 2-0. And in the middle of all this, Jo In-soo exercised a patience rarely seen from him, working the count until the bases were loaded.
"Guhhk—!!"
Ah, granted, that patience was mostly him enduring agony. But still.
With the situation now critical, Busan manager Park Tae-jung naturally jogged out to settle his pitcher down.
"Hey! Get your head on straight! Bear down! That punk's whole game is pop-ups anyway! Relax!"
*The stuff is still there. Just chip away at the outs, slowly.* It's a common thing to say, painfully obvious — and yet pitchers, surprisingly, really do draw comfort from it.
There is a world of difference between thinking, *Shit, it's all falling apart. Whatever. The sooner they drag me off this mound the better* — and thinking, *He's getting hit around regardless — fly ball, whatever, let them score if they have to, just pile up the outs first!*'
"Let's go! One, two, three — Marines, fighting!"
The infield gathered around, the Marines players huddled up for one more dose of solidarity and —
"And there we go — Jang In-ho has gathered himself once more. First things first, he needs to grind out the outs slowly."
"It's bases loaded anyway — windup or stretch, do whatever he likes... Ah! They're going! Every single runner is going!"
'First pitch — just roll it over somehow. I already walked you through it. Mr. career-high .325 Ttogi.'
'Argh, this absolute lunatic... In-seong hyung wouldn't even let this bastard within a mile of a sign.'
As if every one of them had predicted the hard four-seam fastball would find the strike zone on pitch one, the runners exploded off their bases in perfect unison.
A crushing pressure situation in which a strike simply had to be thrown. He was free to use his full windup, so there was no control anxiety from the less familiar set position. And on top of it all, the scouting said this opposing pitcher went straight at hitters, head-on, more often than not.
And the man stepping into the box boasted the third-most precise bat on his team.
"Plus the actual intelligence to understand a sign — unlike certain people whose brains are made of muscle too."
There were reasons Sung Hyun-tak — not Song Jin-wook, not Jo In-soo — was the man the play chose.
Ttaak—!!
"This ball! It sails beautifully over the head of the charging shortstop! Base hit! The runner from third — second base, he's home!"
"The runner from first was slow, so he's back at second. A two-RBI single for Sung Hyun-tak!"
Kyaah...!! A true-blue Ttogi through and through — that's our Sung Hyun-tak for you~
Before In-seong dug up Song Jin-wook, the ONLY hitter on the team batting over .300 was Sung Hyun-tak, that's what I'm telling you~
Sure, his slugging was .400 so the OPS was tragic, but whatever, he bulked up now anyway~ Drinks on me~
Before Noh In-seong arrived, the Doubles had only reached the fall classic in the one year they'd happened to scout their pitching and hitting mercenaries well. A man who had once fought a one-man war in a bleak, hopeless lineup.
Sung Hyun-tak roared from first base.
"That's it! We won today! I drove in two, so *I'm* the MVP!"
A man's pure joy, both arms thrown skyward as if to say goodbye forever to the long drought without a single interview. It would take him a little while longer to remember that today's starting pitcher was Noh In-seong — and to start grieving.
4-0. A ballgame blown wide open in the blink of an eye. Nobody out, runners on first and second — and no matter how weak your bottom of the order, if you're a professional and you let that slip away, you don't belong in this league.
By the time Busan's half of the third inning finally ended, it was 6-0.
Clutching the worst stat line of his return from injury, handing the ball over to his pitching coach, Jang In-ho was pulled from the game.
"...Haah..."
He'd actually pitched a clean second inning — and then the very next frame rolled around and he got fleeced like a wallet lifted by a pickpocket while the opponent ran him in circles with their little plays. Jang In-ho still couldn't fully wrap his head around what he'd done wrong.
"He genuinely did nothing wrong. They only ran the play with hitters who could actually pull it off."
Jung Im-taek confronted the cold reality head-on. A fool of a manager might have spammed the hit-and-run and pointlessly burned through his own out count — but his team happened to possess one cheat-coded character named Noh In-seong, didn't it?
A player whose 'ability to put the bat on the ball' was overwhelmingly elite — a hitter who guaranteed his runners would keep advancing even in the worst-case scenario. Every hit-and-run, every sign play he green-lit, rested on the bedrock of that absurd bat control.
"And I only approved it because the player Noh In-seong recommended was Sung Hyun-tak."
Had it been Song Jin-wook, he'd have shot it down on the spot; had it been anyone else left on the roster, he'd have dismissed it as idiotic noise. This wasn't a man who 'couldn't grasp that the ball has to meet the bat' or who 'couldn't make contact' — this was Sung Hyun-tak, who would absolutely put wood on the ball even as a Ttogi and turn it into a hard, quick smash or a routine groundout. Maybe managing all those kids had opened his eyes, who knew. Either way, the play-calling was beyond reproach.
"That bastard would probably make a damn good manager too... no. I'll count myself lucky if he doesn't end up trading punches with his own players."
Right now he was only serving as a stand-in skipper for 'the kids' while their high school coach nursed a bad back — but if a professional club ever reached the point where you had to scream, *"Fuck, hit it LIKE THIS, you baseball-hopeless bastards!"* at grown men, that team was beyond saving.
Unable to stomach a future littered with the deep emotional scars of his players, Jung Im-taek shook his head hard.
The game ended 11-0, carried on the shoulders of Noh In-seong's seven scoreless innings.
For Busan — shut out in the very first game of the second half — the whole thing must have tasted like chewing on gravel. But for the Doubles fans watching their club steamroll the second-half opener, and for...
"Kyaaah—!! THIS is what I'm talking about...!!"
Sung Hyun-tak, the hero of the day for the first time in an age, felt like even the air he breathed tasted sweet. The game was going to tilt anyway. He'd eaten his fill of innings. Struck out thirteen batters, too.
"Staying on the mound one more inning in this sweltering heat VS. showering fast and securing the dugout air conditioner with my bare fists."
It was only because Noh In-seong had chosen the early shower and the crisp blast of AC, and retreated, that the stage was his — but still: five at-bats, five hits. No home runs, but four RBIs — a nutrition-packed energy bar of a stat line. At the very least, the man who had tilted today's game single-handedly joined the player-of-the-game interview wearing a smile.
"...Goddammit, this interview is nothing but YOU! How do you even know who's designing the plays?!"
"How *wouldn't* I know? Drone camera resolution these days is unbelievable."
Treated as nothing more than a chess piece on Noh In-seong's board, the interview of sorrow drew to a close. It was a triumph of cutting-edge technology, capturing every movement of his lips.
There are people in this world whose presence announces itself whether they want it to or not. Thus was Sung Hyun-tak — the sorrowful moon, swallowed whole by the light of a raving sun.