193. Go Become a Legend — Be The Legend
When people evaluate a hitter, there are classic stats clinging to the very front of the conversation.
Hits. And the 'batting average' they produce.
Countless players have staked their careers on that number, and plenty get undervalued simply because theirs runs a little low.
"But hasn't it been proven that on-base percentage and slugging matter too?"
That's what the OPS-type hitters would protest.
"Yeah, well, these days getting on base ranks below a hit."
"What."
After the sabermetric crowd ruled that in any hitting situation, a hit beats a walk, the debate went quiet.
The value of a hit now sits far above the value of a free pass. Even for an OPS-type hitter, this is an era where raising your slugging — worth more than your OBP — is what counts.
A stat where skill is actually reflected, even if luck lends a hand, beats a stat you can't control to save your life. And it's only natural, given that it contributes to 'wins' more than a pitcher's ERA ever does.
"Swing! Strikeout!"
"Argh! Don't get fooled, Ji-young! What are you doing out there!"
"Ah. Yes, Song Ji-young looks absolutely crestfallen out there. Haha."
"He's smacking himself on the helmet... honestly. It must be suffocating. Nothing is going his way today."
That's one reason so many hitters step back in day after day, trying to put bat on ball even a little.
But for one particular class of people — people who are not players —
"Fuck! How do you miss THAT?!!"
"Aargh! I'm losing my mind! I was almost there! You son of a bitch! HIT THE BALL!"
—it was also the stat that contributed the most to their own personal 'interest'.
Crack—!!
"He hit it! A base hit! A HIT! Noh In-seong slaps another single into play—!!"
"That makes three games left on the schedule. Haha. Daegu must be sweating on quite a few fronts."
"Kya-ha! THAT'S the stuff! This is why you bet the house on Noh In-seong!"
"Sob... why, oh why, did I pick Song Ji-young today... He looked so good riding hits in three straight games..."
Because there are people out there who wager a great deal on whether a player gets a hit today.
To them, a high-batting-average player is nothing less than a lottery ticket with winning odds.
Korea's baseball-linked mobile application, Be The Legend.
You pick the player you believe will record a hit today. If he does, your streak stacks. Land forty in a row, and you split the grand prize pool — a viral app, that's all it was.
For baseball fans, it started as a bit of fun alongside watching the games anyway.
Then the fun died, and in its place came analysis and obsessive over-investment, all in pursuit of nudging the odds up a single percent.
"Didn't you say you were at forty-two straight or something? You already cashed the prize money. Why keep grinding?"
To a normal person, it makes no sense. Why would anyone try this hard?
"No, you don't get it — pass fifty and there's a special prize? Season tickets, a Major League trip, the works..."
Prizes engineered with surgical precision to hook the exact kind of guys who spend their free hours at a baseball pub watching games. And they burn. They burn with the conviction that they absolutely will not miss their shot at that special-prize draw.
And among them, one sucker clenched his fist.
"For my Major League trip! For a full year of season tickets to my team!"
His special prize drawing nearer with every swing — from here on out, he'd keep milking the golden cow that was a Noh In-seong pick.
"Woooo, you TRASH—!! Fall off already! I'm begging you!"
"If I can't have it, YOU don't get it either! I hope you blow up at forty-nine, you dog!"
Of course, the sight of this only delighted the crowd of users whose combos had exploded without them today.
What the hell?! You bastard... I'm already dead and buried, and YOU'RE the only one happy? I refuse to accept this...!!
Crash-bang-kaboom...!!
If you can't take the mockery with a laugh, you take it with your fists instead.
The pub owner, watching yet another brawl erupt under his own roof, felt his soul curdle in a number of ways.
"Haha. I swear, I hope every last one of these bastards gets banned."
Today, too, the sports pub was drowning in headaches courtesy of its deranged clientele.
Currently, the player with the most hits in Korean baseball is not Noh In-seong.
Physically speaking, how could the guy who gets fewer plate appearances rack up the most hits?
"Still, on a rate basis, the best hitter in the league is that guy."
But once the question becomes 'who hits with the most precision?', the story changes a little.
"Honestly, if he'd just swung at people a little less, he'd be first in hits too."
Because as of right now, Noh In-seong's batting title was all but mathematically locked.
"Well, obviously. All he has to do is fill the minimum plate appearances."
Exactly 400 plate appearances, 143 hits in 339 at-bats — a .422 average and holding.
Even if he went hitless for every one of the 46 plate appearances remaining to qualify, the average would settle at .371.
That's comfortably inside the all-time top ten. Second place is Song Jin-wook at .365. In other words, the man could sleep through the rest of the season and still win going away.
A bitter situation for whoever's chasing him — trailing a guy holding a batting-title-worthy average in a year where it wouldn't even normally suffice.
Those who sighed and tried to hoist the record with a lighter barbell, for the record, were all hovering around 20th place all-time themselves.
"Hnnngh... This is such bullshit. This is a career year for me, you know..."
"Hey, Mr. Song. Shut your mouth and finish the rep. You think your ancestors built that muscle for you to chat?"
Anyone hoping to carve their name into history has to exist on a different dimensional plane from league average.
Since Korean baseball's founding year, two records have been called the hardest to break.
One is that monstrous ERA record, missed by a hair in the final start of a season...
"A shattered record does taste bitter today... Whew. Gwangju — let's beat up the bear bastards first, then reassess."
The remaining one is .412 — the highest batting average in the history of Korean baseball. The record of the Team Legend.
A man who chased both rabbits at once, caught the one that stayed a rabbit, and is now sprinting after the rabbit that got away.
Noh In-seong set the barbell down and steadied his breathing.
Fine, he'd missed both rabbits. But the guy who made him miss even one of them deserved a beating, didn't he?
"Those bastards have to fight their way into fall baseball anyway, so of course they'll be desperate."
The Grizzlys. Gwangju. And Daegu in the final series of the year.
Just like last year, they intended to throw sand in the gears of the fifth-place decider.
"Fuck. I genuinely never imagined some lunatic would come along and challenge our Team Legend's record."
Jo In-soo shook his head as he studied Noh In-seong's stat sheet.
Even this deep into the season, the core temperature of the man's bat hadn't cooled one degree — it was practically glowing charcoal.
No wonder Be The Legend users pick this human being with blind, cult-like faith.
And the season isn't even over yet. These are the reactions already.
Just consider how well that gentleman must have hit — the one and only hitter from the primordial ancient era to post that record.
"Damn it all. They say if a pitcher has that ERA, then a hitter has this average."
Say he only ever played seventy games of professional baseball. It's still a record set by a man who returned from 'a league operating several tiers above league level'. The man was a batting champion in Nippon Professional Baseball, so in a league that had just been founded, well.
"Though to later generations, he's mostly famous for a golf club commercial."
Or possibly for a car radiator suddenly bursting into flame. Either way, the man became a meme. Drink up, everyone.
"Hey! We're not Busan — we do NOT get to talk like that!"
Jo In-soo nearly choked at Noh In-seong's utterly irreverent treatment of a living legend.
—Hold on. Didn't this bastard literally win an award named after the man?
"You... now that I think about it, didn't you take home the .412 Award back in high school?"
The award given to high school players who posted sixty at-bats, a .400 average, and an OPS over 1.000.
"Name one award I haven't won. I've collected pretty much all of them."
And the name of that award also contains our Team Legend's name, and this creature, I swear to God.
"HAH!!! To forget one's benefactor is not the act of a human being...!!"
Jo In-soo, a captain with genuine pride in his franchise, roared like a lion.
And while Jo In-soo, every inch the team captain, lectured him on ingratitude and demanded he stop—
'...I'm from Busan, you know.'
Noh In-seong, who had merely stated, deadpan, the perception his old hometown franchise had held of the great man, poured the sermon into one ear and vented it straight out the other.
'Man, I hope lunch today is grilled mackerel.'
His mind was on the set-menu joint down the street. Nothing more.
Who was it who said that what you wish for shall come to pass?
Noh In-seong pecked away at his braised mackerel, again and again, then placed another order.
"Ma'am! Two more mackerel! Refill every side dish, and more rice too, please!"
"...Y-yes, of course!"
It was apparently the season of ravenous autumn appetites, and his intake was nothing short of ferocious.
"...Is it really okay to eat like this before a game?"
Jo In-soo clutched his face in both hands as he watched Noh In-seong put away his sixth bowl of rice.
"If I want this body back the way it was before the season started, I have to keep eating like a machine even after I hang up the pitcher's glove. So there."
Compared to that bear-like presence from early in the season, the current Noh In-seong had gotten notably lean.
With what little season remained, and the international tournament waiting on the other side, a man had to prepare early.
"...Hyung, you're a national team player too. Don't you do any body maintenance?"
Noh In-seong, for his part, was already planning to shove every other Doubles player onto a special management watchlist.
"There is no way I'm going around swinging tai chi in there!"
The national team's backup catcher recoiled in horror at the declaration.
Of all the moments in his life, he did not expect to be clotheslined by a tai chi maneuver from that lunatic — a lunatic aiming punches directly at his own body, no less.
Jo In-soo, having experienced something that drained all the fight out of a man, simultaneously failed to notice his own mackerel vanishing from the table.
When your appetite dies on the spot, nothing registers in your eyes.
'Damn it, I'm a dead man. The way they tell it, that winter was some kind of hell where you ate three square meals and lifted iron from dawn to midnight.'
Lim Jae-min's account of those hellish winter days was still ringing vividly in his ears.
Contrary to Noh In-seong's stated ambition of thrashing the Bears—
"Argh! If I don't kill them, I'M the one who dies! DIE!"
"WAAAAAGH—!!"
—in the first game, the Grizzlys lunged forward with everything they had and clamped their jaws around the Doubles' throat.
Well, of course they did. The fight for fifth place was escalating by the hour.
Korean baseball, for sixth place and below, just tallies up a few numbers and says, "Right then, sort out your own rankings..." But—
"What? A tie above fifth? ...Well, how convenient. You lot go ahead and beat each other bloody a few more times."
"KRAAAAAAGH...!!"
For the teams with a shot at fall baseball, the math was a very different story.
A tie in Korean baseball means extra games must be played, full stop.
Last year, the Doubles had rocketed so far above the pack that everyone else was a spectator — until Noh In-seong's relentless sniping dragged the standings all the way down to a tiebreaker.
This year there were three separate candidates for fifth. Eyes rolling back into skulls was the only sane response.
"Agh! You bastards! We HAVE to win today!!"
"'The Bear bastards had better slip away while the Doubles are busy!'"
Bear, lion, and tiger — three apex predators staring down a scenario where one more win, or the lack of one, decides everything. Desperation all around.
The Grizzlys drew the very best hand they possibly could.
"And here it is! Right here! Revise delivers the shutout! A shutout loss for the Doubles today!"
"Ah... yes. Honestly, if you look at the expanded roster, they did pull quite a bit of power out of the lineup."
The Bear, having plucked one mercenary pitcher with uncanny precision, walked away with the first game.
Frankly, anyone who had been watching how the Doubles assembled their recent rosters found the loss entirely forgivable.
Starters and core pitchers weren't being used on consecutive days, and Noh In-seong — the man who ate innings for breakfast — had been shut down on the mound entirely.
The once-overwhelming lineup, too, had been banished to the bottom of the order under the noble banner of "testing the Triple-A depth."
Nearly everyone was a backup, with the exceptions of Song Jin-wook, whose fifty-homer summit was finally coming into view, and Noh In-seong, with his record on the line.
"Tch. I got my hit today too, but..."
"Noh In-seong got his hit today, but he doesn't look pleased at all. It's a hitting streak, after all."
"Well... having a competitive fire isn't a bad thing, is it? He wanted to win."
He'd preserved the streak with his hit, but the team kept going under, plop, plop.
Today, though, he ripped a double and finally completed the 50-homer, 50-double milestone.
"I KNEW that madman could do it! Our website's domain straight-up crashed!"
"Team dinner tonight! Doesn't matter if it's the foreign press — they'll just lift our official announcement anyway! Everybody celebrate!"
The ones grinning through it all weren't the Doubles, but the association, basking in the attention of a freshly updated record.
Or, alternatively—
"Kya-ha... almost there! Hee-sha! Hee-sha! Hee-sha, hee-sha!"
"Hey, idiot! Quit hollering and drink your beer!"
—or it was an app user who had blindly picked Noh In-seong once again and received his divine reward.
"Ugh, what a repulsive interview. Forget it."
"Noh In-seong? But — you just set the record! Surely one interview is—!!"
Vrrrrm...
Interview flatly refused, Noh In-seong vanished into the distance astride his electric kickboard.
Losing brings no joy. And winning? You didn't win because you played well — you won because the opponent happened to be worse.
Where's the thrill in that?
Noh In-seong, a man who hated losing second only to dying, felt exactly the same.
"Ugh. We lost yesterday, so my plan was to pound the Bear bastards into paste today and clear my head..."
The opposition had also fielded mostly backups, so the win produced less fun or excitement and more of a vague "...huh, we won" sensation.
The Grizzlys, having taken one yesterday, rolled out their Triple-A squad to save their strength for the next game.
In the end, their starter combusted from the very first inning and the Doubles cruised 14–2 — but the mood stayed sour.
Everyone, it seemed, had decided they only needed to steal a single game from the Doubles.
No fun in that, sure. But what could you do? The Doubles were miles ahead, and the teams fighting for positioning were standing right in everyone's face.
"Endure it... endure it...!!"
Straining to smother his boiling innards, Noh In-seong played on.
Daejeon and Busan, trading haymakers and hemorrhaging runs at each other, had staked their very lives on who would claim second place.
"Just win ONE more game! You can do it!"
"...Wait, what the hell. This is OUR home park. Why are Daejeon fans the ones cheering in here?"
Things degenerated to the point where opposing fanbases were parking themselves in each other's cheering sections, applauding politely.
The fifth-place pack, meanwhile, remained a swamp in its purest form.
One win, one loss against the Bears. One win, one loss against the Tigers. Which left Daegu weeping alone in the corner.
"Ah, why do WE have to be the ones going last...!!"
"Daegu's finished. At this point they should start trying to lose a little harder, honestly."
"Yeah. Go tank, kiddo."
Because their final opponent of the season was the Doubles. The ones with Noh In-seong.
And in the middle of all this chaos, the most comfortable team in the league was fourth-place Superstars.
One day at full strength, one day a Triple-A squad — these people were husbanding their energy like misers.
"You think this gets overturned in one shot? How many times do I have to say it!"
Jeong Jae-yoon was panning for raw ore ahead of the fall classic, playing deliberately gut-wrenching, attendance-killing baseball.
"Just pick Noh In-seong! The streak copies itself, I'm telling you!"
"This is what it's all for. Please. Please. I'm begging you. Let him start every single remaining game, just like this...!!"
The legions of prize hunters were likewise growing happier by the day, one Noh In-seong pick at a time.
And then a spell of pure catastrophe detonated over everything.
Second game of the final series against the Superstars. Noh In-seong was ejected without a hit to his name.
CRACK—!!
"Is this bastard out of his MIND?! You throw at MY head?!"
The game had been as bland as chewed gruel — one joyless, listless win stacked atop the last — and Noh In-seong's temper had been wearing thinner by the inning.
Then the ball drilled his body, and the reports broke that he had floored the opposing pitcher on the spot and cinched in a submission hold before anyone could react—
"NOOOO!!! Our box office is RUINED—!!"
The association, too.
"M-my combo... my darling 47-combo, faithful to me all these months...!!"
The app users, too.
Every last one of them had their minds collapse in unison, rolling around and wailing on their floors.