Did Noh In-seong Smash One Today? (Part 2)
Noh In-seong's records were still a work in progress.
With 23 games left on the schedule, one hand simply wasn't enough to count off the records that would make every franchise in the league tremble. Most home runs, the longest hitting streak, 50-50, 60-60, a 50-50 in doubles on top of that —
— and he still had to factor in the record the Gwangju manager had caught wind of, belonging to the very opponent he was about to face.
"...Oh, right. This bastard has already blown past the required innings, hasn't he."
The man who had sworn to show Korea a sub-1.00 ERA the likes of which had never once appeared in the history of Korean baseball. A chase for the lowest single-season ERA (among qualified pitchers) on top of everything else.
His ERA still sat at 0.86 — a pitcher performing the outright miracle of just 14 earned runs across 146 innings. But In-seong had already grown tired of this insane record, the kind that would demand a ridiculous 18 more scoreless innings just to shave it down to 0.77.
"He really was playing a league apart — at a level all his own."
-- So that's why he was so finicky about his pitching load?
Noh In-seong, having dug up the old records, spat out a rude remark with a scowl on his face. Of course, even if he simply maintained his current pace, the only player alive capable of challenging the 2052 Noh In-seong would be the 2051 Noh In-seong.
Still, it was hard not to feel a little wistful about it.
Not that he was short on opportunities to pull off endless cheap tricks even without these records. He even suspected, cautiously, that once the Gwangju series was over, head-on showdowns would start coming his way whether he liked it or not.
"Once I clear 31 straight games with a hit, those Busan fans are going to start seizing up like crazy, you know."
The second-longest hitting streak in history belonged to Busan — yet the Doubles wouldn't even face them until nearly the very end of the season. Their own record had already been shattered; wouldn't it gall them to watch someone else's survive intact?
"They'll probably come at me head-on with their eyes literally on fire, won't they?"
Though to In-seong, records were strictly a nice-if-it-happens sort of thing.
"Man, the way those faces change the second their records might break? Absolutely hilarious."
Every time he glanced at the opposing dugout, those minute-by-minute shifting expressions were what made even a losing game entertaining. And with the injured Doubles players returning starting with this Gwangju series, the fun would come packaged with wins from here on out.
"Well then. Do your very best to protect those precious records of yours."
They'd have to stop him with everything they had, wouldn't they? That is, if they wanted any fall baseball.
Grinning ear to ear, Noh In-seong began packing his bag for the road trip on Monday night.
The Doubles' next opponent: Gwangju.
The Tigers were bleeding all over themselves in the fight for fifth place, so they hadn't yet reached their Tragic Number either. And they were a team with a documented history of getting robbed blind by In-seong's stolen bases, several times over.
"Hnnngh..."
The current rotation was PTSD territory. Oh Yeon-seok crouched in the corner with his mentality completely shattered, and — whether the constant torment had finally scrambled his brain — he was the man who hurled out the brutally factual insult, "Steals happen because the pitcher's a dumbass!"
Catcher Joo Ji-hoon, for his part, was dripping cold sweat.
And what burned Gwangju the most in all this was that dodging was no longer an option.
To think they might become the sacrificial lambs for those cursed two-way bastards. What even was this? If they dodged and let him pad his records in this climate, the home fans would plainly be ripping out his neck instead of pulling up the bases.
"Agh, those Daegu bastards — what is this?!"
Before their own series had even begun, Daegu had torched through every last one of the steal limits that Gwangju had been clinging to!
So what were they to do? Revenge, obviously.
"Fine! If that's how it is, then everyone goes head-on until we face those bastards ourselves!"
-- Let the hitting streak carry right into their own series. Those bastards will love that, won't they!
The Tigers — armed with wickedness, grit, and nothing left but a pure what's-it-to-ya? spirit — welcomed the Doubles.
Remarkably, Gwangju held their own quite well against a Doubles squad with every single player back from injury.
For one thing, aside from their championship years, their overall results had never been particularly high even with rosters stuffed with rookies; in the other seasons, they'd drafted quality prospects at appropriate slots, so the farm itself wasn't bad. That was the root of it.
"...How does resting somehow make you worse?"
Meanwhile, the Doubles had their own problems — players who'd rested up nicely, only to fall apart the moment real work resumed.
"I'm just unlucky today, that's all! What's with this overwork-justification garbage?!"
Yeom Dong-goo was out there performing the miracle alchemy of coughing up five runs in two innings.
"Boss, do you simply have no intention whatsoever of pitching well before free agency?"
"......"
And in the middle of all this, Cho Hyo-jin turned in the worst outing of his life — two earned runs in a single inning.
If the lineup hadn't gone completely berserk, they might genuinely have lost today.
CRACK-BOOM---!!
"Yes! No need to even watch it! That ball is already IN the stands! A line drive home— RUN!"
"When you groove one to him, there's no mercy! This man absolutely murders bad pitches!"
"I'M BACK! Damn it, no more sleeping in the bathroom for me!"
Jo In-soo, freshly recovered from his enteritis after proper rest, put up a never-to-be-seen-again line of 3 home runs in 5 at-bats. The rest of the hitters gleefully beat up on the Gwangju staff in equal measure, and all nine starters in the order recorded a hit.
By the seventh inning, with the Doubles' hit count blowing past 21, the score had already ballooned to 17-9.
And when you get hammered this often, the law of averages doesn't lie.
In the eighth inning, during Noh In-seong's final at-bat, something enormous happened.
CRACK-BOOM---!!
"That ball is sailing WAY out there—!! It's GONE! It's burying itself in the stands! Noh In-seong—!!"
"History! A history-making final blow, achieved at last!! Season home run number FIFTY-SEVEN—!!"
"How... why... of all the people in the world, why does it have to be ME you run into..."
Perhaps it was simply the gulf between a full-strength Doubles team whose game had already collapsed into a blowout, and a rebuilding Gwangju squad. When two sides slug it out with no guard up, the pitchers inevitably run dry. And among the leftovers, the manager had spotted one man who'd at least once turned starts and thrown well.
From the corner of the dugout, trembling and praying with everything he had that it wouldn't be him — the man whose name was called, who sullenly loosened up, and who then received this result, lay crumpled on the mound.
The pitcher who allowed the new record was, of course, Oh Yeon-seok — the same man demoted to blowout duty ever since the "Mound Weeping Incident."
"HUUUUUAAAH...!!"
Oh Yeon-seok broke down sobbing on the mound again, and a truly pitiable scene unfolded. Even Noh In-seong himself had no choice but to round the bases quietly at the sight of it.
For the first time in ages — something close to a full sprint on the basepaths.
"Whoa, I'm seeing this with my own two eyes!!"
Everyone in the dugout swarmed out toward home plate to celebrate him —
"Read the room, you idiots! Get back in there!"
A once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of In-seong actually showing some awareness — and the celebration was canceled.
"...Good work out there."
"HUUUUUAAAH!!!"
Denied even the chance to pay back the man who had done nothing but hurt him, Oh Yeon-seok was pulled from the game just like that.
"Tsk. Was that too harsh, maybe..."
-- But you throw garbage like that and expect NOT to get homered off? Isn't that a little too shameless, even for you?
In-seong swallowed down a remark that would have had the other party sharpening knives and coming for his throat, had it been spoken aloud.
In exchange for offering up this magnificent home run record to Noh In-seong, Gwangju managed to protect a record of their own.
Which is to say: in the second game, Noh In-seong gave up earned runs for the first time in what felt like forever.
CRACK-BOOM--!!
"He hit it! That ball—!! For the first time since the Changwon series—!! His first runs allowed in ages! A TWO-RUN HOME RUN—!!"
"WOW! Joo Ji-hoon gets his revenge at long, LONG last! What a swing!"
"HAAAAAAAARGH—!!"
A scream of pure fury, as if melting away every knot of resentment in his chest all at once.
Yes, their head-to-head numbers were lopsided. But watching Oh Yeon-seok blubber away on that mound had stirred something in Joo Ji-hoon too.
'Wasn't I one bad day away from looking exactly like that?'
Their steals had been taken. Their team's home run record had been torn away too. And with nothing but the single thought of this insufferable bastard, he'd whipped three full swings out there, hits be damned.
And on that very last swing, In-seong's slightly under-rotated horizontal slider sailed straight into the barrel.
"Tsk. Yeah, right. 'I won't let you hit me.' — And yet what else would make a bastard like me scream my lungs out in front of a man like him."
Perhaps it was a flicker of conscience, or the last line of decency he held as a human being — but after the seventh inning, In-seong threw no retaliation pitches and quietly headed off to the showers.
"Wait, we're not fighting...?"
The Gwangju players, some of whom had mentally prepared for a bench-clearing today, stood there in bewilderment.
"Is that proof that even the devil can shed tears?"
SMACK-SMACK-SMACK--!!
"GRAAAAGH---!!"
Of course, Song Jin-wook chose that exact moment to run his mouth and achieved the miracle of taking three hits for every one he dished out. Flip off the man who just showed restraint, right next to him, and that much was to be expected.
Worse, this oblivious human went 0-for-4 on the day.
"Is this even human? No. Seriously, why does he produce this exact kind of stat line once every single season?"
"Hing. I was just unlucky today, that's all..."
Double play — flyout (two down) — strikeout — groundout. A perfect four-course meal of outs.
THWACK-!
It was the very same Cycling Out he'd recorded once last season, which meant In-seong's kicks landed with that much extra force behind them.
"Thanks for your patience, folks! A feat not seen ONCE since June this year — Noh In-seong takes the LOSS!"
"And for Gwangju, this is their very first win against Noh In-seong all season! I imagine it'll be one to remember!"
Is he mentally ill? Just cuts our momentum dead ;; lol
Instead of providing run support, this damned man turned even his hits into double plays, soaking up every curse word the fanbase had to offer today — and so, for the first time in a very long while, Noh In-seong found himself tagged with a loss.
"Wow. So now I'd have to throw twenty extra innings to claw that back?"
He'd already filled his required innings for the year, and In-seong had been on the verge of declaring the pitcher half of his season officially closed. Granted, he hadn't planned on chasing the ERA record anyway unless he threw nine scoreless today, but still.
"Cheh. Doesn't it feel way too pathetic to fumble a vintage like this..."
"Don't worry about it, In-seong! You got tagged for a two-run bomb, so it was already impossible anyw—"
THWACK--!!
The sound of the day's third butt kick rang out — and with it, the all-time ERA record chase vanished into the distant sky.
And so Gwangju — bleeding the least of anyone in this war of records — managed to escape the first minefield, for now.
With their own record still unbroken, Gwangju was in a good mood — all except one man. Whether their feet would still be intact by the time the final game rolled around was a question for the next minefield down the road.
But what did they care? It wasn't their record.
"Like Noh In-seong would suddenly go and steal more than eighty bases or something."
That was about the only record that could realistically threaten anyone at this point.
"The final series of the season is in Daegu, anyway. The shaft was always going to land on them, so whatever."
Now that the head-on matchups had revealed him as a man who barely ever steals, all anyone had to do was simply fight. The ones who'd have to decide, at the very end, what to sacrifice when surrounded on all sides by his mountain of records — that was Daegu, their blood feud enemy.
Incidentally, plenty of teams going forward genuinely didn't care about records. The newly founded franchises had relatively few of their own to lose.
And among them, Changwon — a team with almost no records to call their own — displayed a madness that went one step beyond even Gwangju's.
"We play the Doubles in games five and six back-to-back anyway, right?"
"That's right?"
"Then if we just go head-on ourselves, it's the bastards after us who have to deal with the fallout, no?"
"...Right?"
"Here you go, pick your poison, the pitcher's coming — feel free NOT to hit a home run! Come take a look before you go!"
After all, their slugging percentage record had already been thoroughly trampled last season. There was no real need to dodge the fight.
Mostly, though, they wanted to watch the Busan bastards' faces contort.
"NO! Please! Just DODGE him...!!"
The hitting streak's number-two spot was already tied. The Busan fans who had flooded into Changwon shrieked in agony.
"You sons of—! Was last year's on-base record not enough for you?! What is this nonsense!!"
Go head-on, and if the streak renewed, Busan got shafted; if it got stopped, Changwon got credit for the stop — either way they won. This "Please-Take-It Project," built around weaponizing the barbarian (?) known as Noh In-seong, worked flawlessly (?).
CRACK-BOOOM---!!
First inning, first at-bat, the instant the game began.
"That's number FIFTY-EIGHT on the season! He leaps over his own record once again! HOME— RUN!"
The ball that caught his bat chose to soar high into the sky.
"Changwon chose a head-on confrontation! With this home run, the hitting streak stands — renewed yet again!"
"Busan's legend is now being pushed aside by a legend of the Doubles! Noh In-seong rises to sole possession of second place all-time in consecutive games with a hit!"
The broadcast booth could chatter away brightly, watching this legendary moment unfold in real time.
"""NOOOOOOOO---!!"""
But for the people inside the stadium, this majestic tape-measure shot was deeply unwelcome.
"No, don't clear the whole park — clear it toward US, you idiot!"
"He can't aim for anything! Bro! Over here! It's over HERE!"
The home-run ball snipers seated in the outfield bleachers were heartbroken that In-seong had once again donated his ball to some stranger's car instead of their gloves.
"Agh! I need a drink! Why did I even come here to watch this...!!"
The Busan fans in the away section despaired as one more piece of their pride shattered to pieces.
And so, by the top of the seventh inning — with at least the Busan faithful thoroughly drunk, brawling in some corner of the stadium or stumbling out of the park in search of more liquor —
when Noh In-seong stepped up for his fourth at-bat and yet another home run exploded off his bat,
"Huh? I got it! I CAUGHT it!!"
This time, with genuinely perfect precision, the home run ball was delivered into a pair of hands raised in a daze at the very top row of the outfield stands.
The truancy specialist — the Jeong kid — had made the catch.
Perhaps it was the sheer satisfaction of finally completing part of the summer homework he'd barely touched, but —
"Skipped school and got my allowance CUT---!!"
a scream soaked in his every raw desire tore out of him as he leapt into the air.
"THAT was a truly great day of spectating--!!" — the little rascal's blissful face aired on the nine o'clock sports news.
The problem was that this kid's homeroom teacher was Jeong Hwa-jeong, famously one of the most rabid baseball fans in the profession. Even buried in teacher duties, she never skipped the sports section — and that habit spelled misfortune for the kid.
'Wait, I thought this was an educational field trip — turns out it was some random toxic custom?'
Jeong Hwa-jeong raged at the grand tradition of "field-trip fraud" that had been running for twenty years. Not that the little delinquent had done his vacation homework either, of course.
"...You. Bring your guardian in on Monday!"
The following Monday, yet another student was summoned to a parent-teacher conference.
"Boohoo, my dad's a sports reporter, I was only following him arouuund!"
"Then you should have been sitting in the press box! How does catching balls in the outfield make any sense whatsoever?!"
The kid just went, 'Huh. So I got filmed, huh,' and sulked.
Meanwhile — wasn't there a saying about blessings in disguise?
"We were thinking of a price in roughly this range."
"And should I assume I'm meant to budget for this level of fist instead?"
The club had planned to lowball a price they figured they could get away with — until Noh In-seong leaned in with a friendly "Care to get knocked out?" and single-handedly normalized the market rate.
"Are you insane? Don't you DARE scam a kid just because he's a kid. He's my friend."
"...Since when do you do 'friends' with children?"
The general manager, thoroughly cowed by the threat of violence, handed over a handsome monetary reward to the kid — providing happiness in the midst of his sorrow.