Bread, the City of Bread (Part 2)
Up until last year, You Hong-jin had never once known the feeling of distress in Korean baseball.
Setting aside his condition, he won far more often than he lost.
Granted, there were days when his own team's batters or defense smacked him hard upside the head and stamped a loss on his record anyway.
Why does Daejeon's ace have to roll around in a dung field every single game?
I want to see defense from actual human beings, you pieces of trash!
Can't you figure out why my strikeouts and pitch count keep climbing?!
↳ Guess this is why "I'll trust my defense and pitch" gets filtered out even by sabermetricians
↳ Strikeouts... the pitcher's salvation... the secret to winning amid trash defense...
↳ "I have to get it myself. Absolutely have to get it with a strikeout." That thought.
↳ (OP) *sob* I'm sorry, still happens to this day...
That day, as usual, the board's real estate was swallowed up by the botched defense and the batters who'd fumbled away runs, while he was left collecting condolences.
A pitcher coddled by throngs of fans cooing, Aww, our starter is growing up so well!
On the national team too, he was naturally selected — and slotted in as the number one starter.
Jin Jung-jae, who had made a name for himself in the KBO before breaking into the majors, glared daggers at him. But what could you do?
He was the difference between a supple willow and a towering pine — the gap was there the moment either one swung.
After training, intra-squad scrimmages, and real games, that arrogance of Jin Jung-jae's had quietly fizzled out along the way.
And then, last year, something appeared before him for the first time in his life that he simply could not comprehend.
"Looks like you didn't quite build your body up in time. I sat on the pitch and drove it. Well. It'll be different once the season starts, I suppose."
Getting homered off of in an exhibition game was infuriating enough — and then Noh In-seong threw nothing but fastballs down the middle to the other hitters, as if to say just swing and get out.
Even he, who carried a reputation for a certain arrogance, could never have said that to his seniors without watching his step.
What the hell kind of punk is this? — that thought lasted about a second.
Once the season began and he kept getting homered off of, it evaporated entirely.
CRACK----!!
[That ball---!! The center fielder chases it to the wall---!! It's gone! Noh In-seong's 53rd home run of the season!]
[That wasn't even a mistake pitch! A changeup graded plus-plus, and he just sat on it!]
Top of the third, one out. Back at the plate, Noh In-seong detonated a bomb, and the sound ripped through the park.
The instant he heard it, You Hong-jin bowed his head, as though he'd sensed the ball's fate the moment it left his hand.
What did I throw wrong to end up like this?
It wasn't in the zone — a low ball, borderline at best.
If you wanted to nitpick, the problem was that he'd thrown it just a shade above the hitter's hottest hot zone.
On a normal day, dropping it any lower would have kept it un-hittable, but with In-seong in this kind of groove, he'd needed to bury it that much more decisively.
After self-recrimination came reflection, and after reflection, feedback.
After Song Jin-wook's dying-quail flyout just short of the right field wall and Jo In-soo being robbed by a rocket at shortstop, You Hong-jin passed a tip to the brooding Myeong Jeong-ho.
"Consider a zone a ball and a half bigger than usual to be dangerous. Jeong-ho."
"...Yes, sir. Understood. No, seriously, that lunatic. He HIT that?"
The already sky-high difficulty of getting outs against Noh In-seong had, in an instant, been locked onto Hell mode.
You Hong-jin, tightrope-walking on a skyscraper rooftop, steadied his wobble and found his balance again.
...One more mistake and it's over.
After all, the opposition was a team that could burn through pitchers like water.
With a win streak on the line too, he'd have to assume any lead under two runs was no lead at all.
Whatever his batters did, he paid it no mind — You Hong-jin wrapped himself in his flame and drew a breath.
It was a desperate scramble to recover even a sliver of stamina, to keep the body throwing as long as it could.
Noh In-seong's batting cycle was already at its absolute peak.
Frankly, the rest was a far better deal for a pitcher. From a hitter's standpoint? Eh.
"Some guys can be white-hot at the plate, and one little breather and they cool right off."
"...Is that a shot at me? In-seong-yah?"
"What are you talking about, hyung? It's a career year for you. Though you do seem a little off coming back from the rest days, I'll admit."
ARGH! That damned bastard, I swear! Look at him, needling me nonstop like the petty little—!
Leaving the firefly to flare and sputter on his own — on offense, Noh In-seong had pried loose a single run — the opener strategy on defense had turned out to be a roaring success.
WHUMP--!!
"Strike three! Batter out!"
[Yes... and that's how the second inning ends. Two hits and four walks surrendered, but he got through it.]
[He leaned hard on his curveball and changeup, pouring every ounce of effort into making that four-seamer look that much faster.]
The 152 km/h right-handed overhand pitcher, already familiar to every batter in the lineup from one to nine.
And the man who followed him: a right-handed sidearmer topping out at 140 km/h.
The hitters wrapped themselves in their protective gear and dug in with everything they had — but the first at-bat, the exact window where a batter gets his read on a pitcher, had been spent flailing against a different arm entirely.
Naturally, until familiarity caught up, they were whiffing wholesale or gifting the ball to the dirt.
Granted, now and then a ball ricocheted off the armor and the batter reached base, just as the manager had planned —
SCREECH--!
WHACK--!!
"GYAAAAH...!!"
— but just as often, a deflected ball cracked somebody upside the back of the head instead.
[Ah... a foul ball heads somewhere very unfortunate. A sad sight. Are you alright, Song Mu-jin?]
[He's face-down and motionless. Seems the pain is considerable... Ah, Jo In-soo is patting his backside for him.]
"Aigoo... Mu-jin-ah, that's why you don't swing at borderline pitches. Didn't you see this coming?"
"Hah... this godawful sinker..."
Time dragged on for a while, but the umpire never called a delay of game.
The pitcher cooling his shoulder said nothing either, and from the Doubles' side it was an oddly heartwarming stretch of watching a man suffer.
In Noh In-seong's second at-bat, You Hong-jin's resolve won out.
If any spot in the zone was going to yield a rocket anyway, the call was to throw where his arm could put the least effort behind it.
He kept pounding inside to hold the hitter's focus, then buried a slider running off the plate away.
"A pitch you don't even usually throw, and you bring it against me?"
The high-velocity slider — the pitch he'd sealed away years ago, prone to blisters — grazed the strike zone for the first time in ages.
CRACK--!!
Even that one Noh In-seong fought off and pushed the other way — but the wind wasn't helping, and a swing with less behind it found less.
[Caught just inches from the stands! Song Mu-jin hauls it in in front of the wall — two outs!]
It dropped dead fifty centimeters short of the fence.
"Wow. Yeah, fine. This is too filthy for me — I'm out. Look forward to next inning."
He'd gotten the out, but watching a man square up a pitch he'd never even seen before, You Hong-jin was sweating buckets.
Baseball fans with a few seasons under their belt all know this one.
When a pitcher is dripping sweat, something's rattling him.
CRACK--!!
Song Jin-wook, who'd been frozen by a changeup last time, sat on the changeup this time and punched it into play.
Jo In-soo, reduced to watching four-seamers paint the corners, whirled and whiffed at the one that drifted a hair toward the outside.
The inning ended, all told — but the air was a far cry from how it had felt earlier.
"Damn it. This is exactly why the lineup needed to score."
The opposing lineup had been through the order once now, and no one stops adapting.
He figured he could hold them through the second look.
"But I don't think I've got a third one in me..."
There was only one scenario where eating innings at the cost of runs paid off — and that was when the offense finally woke up.
The scoreboard, still zippered at zero, felt bitterly unfair to You Hong-jin.
His premonition materialized, unaltered, into reality.
Bottom of the sixth. Phoenix at the plate.
Just as the hitters were finally growing comfortable with that sinker, the Doubles began, methodically, unloading their pitcher satchel.
"Pitching change! Joo Hak-soo!"
[...Ah, yes. After the sidearmer, a submariner. Joo Hak-soo — the core of the Doubles bullpen this season.]
[A 2.21 ERA across 31⅓ innings. A pitcher averaging better than a strikeout per inning.]
Whether he'd judged the danger one more time against the heart of the order,
"ARGH, I'm hopeless against submariners! Why do you do this to me?!"
"That's exactly why you're coming off the plate. Accept it, In-woong."
— or whether he'd simply been summoned to poke at Jung In-woong's blind spot against low-arm angles, no one could say.
Jo In-soo, ever the diplomat, chose the option that gently needled his draft motivation instead.
SNAP--!!
[Right at the shortstop! Noh In-seong scoops it one-handed, takes his sweet time setting his grip, and fires! Out!]
[Maybe because the runner's so slow. The man is positively lounging out there.]
"Wow, even throwing it THAT slow, he's still a quarter of the way from the bag? Truly glacial."
With that parting review from Noh In-seong — who'd thrown it practically at a jog — the inning closed behind them.
And so the sixth went to Joo Hak-soo, and the seventh to Kang Ji-hoon returning to the mound.
Both pitchers answered the manager's opportunity with three-up, three-down innings — and then came the primary setup man and the closer: Jo Hyo-jin in the eighth, Kim Jin-hong in the ninth.
"ARGH, these bastards seriously stockpiled a mountain of bullpen arms...!!"
Sure, some of them were homegrown, but most were pillars hauled in from somewhere else.
Selling off the future as raw material in exchange for young, quality arms — hardly a bad trade, all things considered.
Amid all of it, You Hong-jin felt hollow.
"Damn it. I grind through seven innings all by myself doing this circus act, and all they have to do is click! swap pitchers, and they win?"
The Phoenix's bullpen was a weakness to begin with.
The lineup and defense had improved by leaps, but the graying closer Sung Hyung-joon had been demoted to the bullpen, and Jo Yong-il — the most serviceable of the ambiguous middle group — was still a half-baked pitcher whose command hadn't settled.
His faith rested on the rookie closer Song Woo-jin, but Phoenix was one of those clubs that simply could not manage its pitchers.
A rookie who looked openly exhausted by the late innings, stacking an even bigger fire behind a man who'd gone seven innings and given up just one run.
CRACK----!!
[Yes! You hit one, I hit one back! Song Jin-wook, who'd been lying in wait quietly behind Noh In-seong, unloads the bat!]
[Frankly, even if Noh In-seong scares you — Song Jin-wook is no free pass. This man has cleared the 40-homer wall too, you know.]
Only after paying that price in full did You Hong-jin trudge down off the mound, hollowed out.
Final score: 4–0. A deflating game decided by two home runs.
It was the kind of bullpen management he could put on display in the postseason any time he pleased.
"Now that's real beehive baseball. Though I suppose you shouldn't run it more than once a series."
With two inning-eaters left to nurse his arms back to health over the remaining games, he had the luxury to deploy it.
Jung Im-taek wore a contented smile, turning to eye his candidate to swallow tomorrow's innings whole — and then.
"...Mm. As expected of the great house of the Daejeon Bakery. The cream just melts on the tongue."
He discovered that said candidate performing a mukbang broadcast in the dugout, face slathered with cream.
"...In-seong-ah. Where exactly did that bread come from?"
"Hm? Somebody sent a delivery to the team — addressed to the Doubles? Must be a gift?"
So he was simply expected to stand there and watch his own bread order transmute into somebody else's free lunch.
His blood pressure, which had descended graciously with the win, began climbing right back up.
"That's MY bread, you damn parasite! What in the hell possessed you to open someone else's package?!"
"What are you saying, sir! If it's addressed to the Doubles, it's MINE! I am the king of this franchise!"
And with that, Noh In-seong shovelled the remaining bread into his mouth like a crab swallowing a minnow.
Unlike the old scandal — eating bread mid-game while losing, and catching flak for it — this time he'd caught flak for eating someone else's bread while winning.
Well, it wasn't exactly a first, so everyone let it slide.
Only Jung Im-taek, money and bread both gone, mourned alone.
"Ugh, of all the errands in the world."
Grumbling, Noh In-seong was methodically packing boxes full of bread.
"Now, now, save the complaints. Sign there too. Since your sister-in-law will be eating it, wrap that one up extra carefully."
"Aigoo, our manager is a legend — assigns the insane bastard as my watchdog AND my parole officer."
Jung Im-taek's punishment, delivered under the banner of: You ate another man's bread, therefore you shall receive Punishment.
The sentence: appear at the bakery early the next morning, buy the pre-game snack for every player on the team, and stock the manager's office pantry to the brim.
Noh In-seong did not stop grumbling for a single second.
"Damn it. I'm homering this team into first place — the least they could do is just feed me bread for free."
"You lunatic. You tore open someone else's delivery and stole their bread — that's how this whole mess started... Whatever."
With Jung Soo-jung written on the delivery slip as recipient, Song Jin-wook handling the address, and every task at last complete —
came the sight of Noh In-seong grabbing one of the breads he'd set aside to eat on his way out, and taking a big bite.
Click!
The Daejeon fans who witnessed this began uploading photos of Noh In-seong mid-bite.
Anyway, he's buying it in bulk to ship out, apparently?
Like, how shameless do you have to be to straight-up eat the bread mid-game and then come back for SECONDS;;
And isn't this bastard our starting pitcher today?? Already had his rest and now he's out here sightseeing, ffs
We beat his face in until it swells up nice and puffy like bread, ffs
Perhaps it was the faint air of being underestimated? Or maybe it was simply that no one knew the real story behind it all?
Either way, the fans couldn't have cared less.
Thanks to the loss, the standings had knotted up again — dead heat for second place — and now they were watching the rival team stroll in for some celebrity souvenir shopping on the side.
Their uniforms had to feel about two sizes too tight.
"...Not that I was ever hoping for this, mind you?"
BOOOOOO----!!!
Even before first pitch, Daejeon Ballpark was already posting boo-decibel readings on par with commercial aircraft.
"...You brought this on yourself. Endure it by any means necessary — evil or stubbornness, dealer's choice!"
At Jung Im-taek's shameless proclamation, Noh In-seong made a solemn vow: if the bread vanished, so would every last snack in the manager's office. He would crush them all.