Break His Leg, Maybe — Be The Leg End
The Superstars were, for all practical purposes, a team that had gotten almost no return on its foreign-player investment this season.
They'd gone out and recruited an Enforcer — a man with proper fists, a player who could supposedly subdue Noh In-seong by force — and what had it bought them?
"No, bro...?! Is this dude completely out of his mind!"
The man had gotten beaten to a pulp over a "violation" the opposing players hadn't even registered as one.
He did sit out a lengthy ejection, sure — but the guys on the receiving end were in serious condition.
- Jimmy Sutton thanks Korean fans for their support and returns home... replacement mercenary: Joey Wheaton?
- Jake Paul, 5 innings 5 earned runs in a rehab start... falters with a lackluster outing...
The hitter had flown home to nurse his injury, and the ace pitcher had come back freshly beaten and wandered in a daze ever since.
"We can't go on like this...!! Our starters have to eat every inning, or how are we supposed to play baseball in the fall..."
What the Superstars needed most heading into the second half was for their mercenaries to step up.
"Add a bonus clause to the mercenaries' contracts."
"...I'm sorry?"
"No — pay them in cash. Quietly. I'll cover it out of my own pocket."
--Let them taste a little money up front, and if their results at season's end beat today's numbers, double it.
In effect, they had applied the 'merit' system — to the foreign players only.
All they had was money — and, apparently, a power-hungry acting general manager slash CEO who knew exactly how to spend it.
This secret merit policy worked magnificently on the mercenary players who received cold, hard cash on the spot.
"I trust you understand that this stays absolutely secret. If word of it leaks to the domestic roster..."
"YES, YES!!"
Domestic players' cash flows got audited easily enough, but a foreign player's finances were comparatively loose — that was what made the whole thing feasible.
And so the mercenaries began performing at 120% of their actual ability.
Harry Beck, the newest signing, reliably ate up innings and papered over the bullpen's weakness.
Jake Paul floundered for a few starts after his return, but once he received a somewhat unconventional course of treatment—
Somewhere deep into the second half, something clicked, and he was throwing hard and alive again.
"Whoa. So this is how much? Sweet."
"Jake? What's that money?"
He did, admittedly, earn himself a bit of a reputation for being 'analog' about such things.
"...OH, OH! I don't... hmm, trust BANK much. Americans like cash."
"...Right."
Well — when cash lands in your hand, who's going to complain?
Joey Wheaton, the new foreign hitter brought in to replace the man whose face had been rearranged, was no exception.
Craaack---!!
[Joey Wheaton with the hit! He comes through in the clutch here, and the runner on second, Jeong Him-chan, comes home—!! That's a double!]
[Hm... people keep saying the term 'clutch hitter' is a myth, but can the gap really be this dramatic?]
His average climbed meaningfully in run-producing situations, and he'd taken charge of the team's clutch hits.
It was no exaggeration to say the Superstars' crawl up to fourth place in the standings owed itself to the mercenaries of the second half.
Once you'd clawed your way to a safe position, you had a cushion — so you could manage with room to breathe.
Thanks to that they dropped a few extra games, but Jeong Jae-yoon figured a four-game lead was plenty comfortable.
"...Should we fight them properly, just once? Or simply let it slide...?"
He was planning a probing match against the Doubles on the road to fall baseball.
"...And we do owe that bastard a taste of his own medicine, after all."
He couldn't stand the sight of Noh In-seong, so he'd ordered his men to get rough — just within the bounds of 'accident.'
But watching his own player clinging to the pitcher's leg up on the mound, regret came flooding in.
"Damn it. I should've known from the start that lunatic isn't the type to sit there and take it..."
He'd assumed the man wouldn't pick a fight unless he was certain of winning — and instead the guy had just started swinging on the spot. It made his blood boil.
"Ughaaaah...!! Aaagh!!"
[Gigi Paul is... Gigi Paul is clutching his leg and wailing out there right now.]
[I honestly don't understand. What on earth was he thinking, throwing a brush ball at Noh In-seong of all people?]
--Did the man think he had two lives to spare?
To understand the commentators' bewilderment, you had to turn the clock back a little.
The first problem was that the Superstars had lit a fire under Noh In-seong's fuse from the very first game of the series.
For the first time in ages, he'd gotten a hit in his opening at-bat — and then the Superstars began their experiment.
"...Wow, seriously? These bastards are so well-fed they're actually poking the belly."
How do we handle Noh In-seong if we meet in the postseason? This was their answer to that question.
With a runner on first, they walked him.
[Walking him is one thing, but the next batter up is Song Jin-wook — what exactly are they going for here?]
[Exactly what I was thinking. They are shifting, mind you, though nothing too extreme...]
Third baseman shading toward short, shortstop pinched toward second — a standard alignment.
A textbook posture, anticipating a pull and letting them adjust to the ball's direction.
Back in the day, against a slow-footed lefty who couldn't bunt to save his life, teams had even deployed four-outfielder shifts, they say.
[The rules were revised quite a while ago now. You can't skewer an opponent's weakness as brutally as teams used to.]
[The Song Jin-wook of old would've been met with a shift that outright abandoned third and dropped the outfield back, daring him to slap one through...]
Defensive positioning was now restricted — no stacking the outfield or infield, no swinging the whole defense to one side of the center line.
And against a Song Jin-wook who could now drop down a bunt, there was only so much anyone could do.
"Not a real shift, and the bunt isn't sealed off... What the hell are they aiming at?"
Forcing me onto base, and in the process even conceding an extra base — what's the point?
Craaaack---!!
[And just like that, it's over before they can do a thing! That one's gone! Song Jin-wook puts the first run on the board!]
[Honestly, there's a simplest way to beat a shift — just hit it over it!]
However hard Noh In-seong racked his brain, the ball had already vanished into the stands beneath the dome's lights.
Song Jin-wook had hammered his forty-ninth home run of the season on the very first pitch, handing his team a comfortable lead.
"What do you people take me for? Any other year, I'd be an MVP candidate, you know."
Song Jin-wook, smirking down at the opposing backup catcher and twisting the knife, then slapped the waiting Noh In-seong's hand with a thunderous high-five.
"...Ow, you lunatic! That hurt!"
"It's supposed to hurt, you punk! Because of you, they're treating me like a sucker!"
--If they walk you, then I'm next in line to get walked, aren't I!
So there he was, seventy percent water by volume, shouting himself hoarse in outrage — don't take me for a fool!
Noh In-seong, meanwhile, looked nothing like a madman begging for attention. He just kept grinding his brain.
"...Ah. This is driving me insane. Didn't I already shut down intentional walks?"
He couldn't figure out what these bastards hoped to gain by walking him.
The Superstars made their next move — flagrantly this time — in Noh In-seong's very next at-bat.
Top of the fifth. They walked him again — but this time with one out and the bases empty, which was a subtly different statement.
"Wow. So these bastards aren't scared of stolen bases anymore?"
It was as good as saying they'd serve him a 50-50 on a silver platter.
Naturally, Noh In-seong took off.
And sure enough, a pickoff throw came screaming to first with all the subtlety of a freight train.
Thwack!
"...The hell? Is this bastard out of his mind?"
The problem was that Joey Wheaton, the new arrival, took his tag a bit too boldly.
Every team that had ever faced Noh In-seong had been too terrified to do anything but tag him gingerly.
And if they happened to tag hard by accident, the first thing out of them was an apologetic face.
"Sorry, had to catch the ball...!!"
With good reason — skip even the barest apology, and this was a bastard who'd answer with a fist faster than any baseball, straight into your face.
But this mercenary, whether he was out of his mind or simply asking for it—
"...What's this? You looking for a bench clearing?"
At Noh In-seong, who raised his fist as if to say come on then—
Joey Wheaton, the instigator himself, tucked his tail.
"...I'm not looking to fight you. I saw exactly what happened to Jimmy."
When your predecessor is the guy whose face got caved in, what can you do?
Noh In-seong, for his part, had no hobby of baring his teeth at ten thousand tails at once.
"Good. Keep that attitude. Otherwise I can't promise how I'll come out of this."
He let it go and returned to his pointless little motions, which thoroughly irritated the pitcher.
A second pickoff throw came in.
Thump!
"...No, no — that's just, the throw's just fast, that's all."
Joey Wheaton was too busy making excuses to notice his own narrowed eyes, but hit was hit.
"You tag pretty hard for that story, though? Are these bastards running a blood-pressure experiment on me?"
The tags had softened somewhat, but were still plenty rough, courtesy of pure speed.
Are these bastards trying to map out my limits? Thoughts like that flickered past in a rush—
and when he took off for second on the third pitch, that flicker hardened into certainty.
A leg draped across him at a subtly aggravating angle — one that could be ruled baserunner interference if the umpire called it tightly.
But considering today's second-base umpire was, at the very least, not the type to call those tight...
Right on the borderline. Look at him stretching his foot into the last sliver of plausible deniability.
A gray zone where, if they collided, part of the blame could be pinned on Noh In-seong as well.
He'd have to twist his body just to slide, and the irritation began to build.
Regardless, the steal of second succeeded — and with it, 60 home runs and 50 stolen bases.
The moment a record that had happened exactly once in Korean baseball greeted its second occurrence, every spectator in the park rose in applause.
[50-50! Yes, ladies and gentlemen — Noh In-seong steps into one of the rarest records in the sport, only the second time in the world it has ever been done!]
[Ah... truly, truly an astonishing achievement. And by a player in just his second professional season, no less...]
The commentators were all but weeping as they proclaimed the future of Korean baseball blindingly bright.
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"Why does it hurt so much to watch this bastard do well... I just hope he gets seriously hurt one of these days. Damn it all."
True to form for a man who'd accumulated grudges in every direction imaginable, the spiteful comments came crawling out.
"The record's amazing, but the rest of him is more amazing. How is this guy allowed to be a professional."
The fans who weren't tearing him down were marveling too — just along a different vector entirely.
But Noh In-seong, author of this monumental record, neither celebrated nor pulled the base out of the ground.
"......"
Instead, he stood there glaring at the second baseman as though he meant to pluck out the eyes that had dared threaten him.
Whether the man noticed or not, he stood in silent, obedient stillness — without so much as a word — until Noh In-seong's next steal attempt.
What made Noh In-seong even more incredulous was that when he stole third, the leg-drapping routine never even materialized.
"...What's with you? You're not participating?"
"What's that supposed to mean, you lunatic. You saying I should get death-glared for celebrating after giving up a home run last time?"
The man fired a question straight back at Noh In-seong's question — a rhetorical technique truly befitting someone who'd slept through school.
But the third baseman, Seol Ho-jin, seemed to have absolutely no clue what was even happening.
"...Hold on. Let me get this straight."
The ones messing with him were the opposing backup — functionally a nobody — second baseman, and the mercenary scrapheap signing at first base.
The third baseman, an actual core starter, had no idea what was going on — and meanwhile the manager was walking him?
"These bastards. They've split the clubhouse down the middle — the ones in on it, and the ones who aren't."
Noh In-seong roughly mapped out the internal situation inside the Superstars.
Setting aside the oblivious ones, the ones who found the play too difficult to execute, and the bastards marinating in pure terror of him—
"They must've ordered only the new guys — the ones I don't know — to grind on my nerves, huh?"
And in case a bench clearing actually broke out, they didn't want to look like the villains — hence even the little games?
Noh In-seong's fist slowly, steadily clenched.
"So the scheme is to manufacture scenes where I'm the only one losing my temper, and paint me as the villain?"
No jumping to conclusions until he'd confirmed everything — Noh In-seong resolved to observe the rest of today's game.
"Fine. I'll genuinely let it slide."
--As long as they don't push it any further, I'll let tomorrow pass peacefully.
And to this genuinely rare act of goodwill, the response arrived in the spirit of yeah, screw you.
In the seventh inning, as he stepped in for his third at-bat, the harassment of Noh In-seong carried on without end.
The tapping hands had lost some of their force, but every pickoff throw came with a thump on the chest.
On his third steal attempt, he saw it — mid-leap, the second baseman's face peering down at him from above.
The spikes glittered menacingly in the dome light, and the sight sent his blood pressure rocketing.
"...Pull that flirty little stunt one more time, and we'll start with a facial fracture. Understood?"
When Noh In-seong raised a finger and jabbed it toward his chest, the man did swallow hard—
"......"
But watching him stonewall the exchange, this too reeked of orders from above.
"Noh In-seong, that's enough! No bench clearings!"
Tendons began to stand out on Noh In-seong's forehead as he peeled his finger away at the umpire's intervention.
And when the hit finally came, the crowning touch was the catcher's little game, which caught the eye of Noh In-seong charging full-tilt for home.
Not the starter, Song Jin-soo, but a 28-year-old fossil of a catcher freshly called up from the minors — who blocked home plate with his body for one split second, then let go.
"Uh—huh?!"
The extra time wasted in that process pushed Noh In-seong past his limit.
"These son of a... bastards. For real."
Someone once said, didn't they — the angrier a man gets, the colder he becomes.
More 'little games' followed after that,
and with the Doubles' farm-system pitching depth scraped past rock bottom and driven clear into the sediment, the bullpen gleefully committed arson.
[Yes, hm... are the Doubles simply out of prospects, or is their generational turnover just astonishingly fast...]
[To be fair, they produce a handful of elite prospects every single year, but after years of them all busting, the Doubles are...]
[Well, Noh In-seong did extend his record again today. I suppose we'll have to take comfort in that.]
And when the Superstars took the game by a final margin of two runs—
"Heh... heh heh."
Already buried under mountains of stress, having now lost the game on top of it all, Noh In-seong's eyes went murky and dark.
The madness he hadn't felt since the day he'd drilled a fastball into a second baseman's ribs was sitting right there behind them.
The only difference was that back then, his hands had been busy wiping a glove. This time, they were wrapped around a clenched fist.
Even Song Jin-wook — the self-proclaimed 'world's number one at reading the room' — knew enough to tuck his tail when death was in the air.
"Whew... wow, great work out there today, In-seong. I'm, uh... gonna head in first..."
For the first time in an eternity, he watched his step and clocked out down the back road.
Jeong Im-taek, spotting the thick vein pulsing at Noh In-seong's temple as the man paid for his electric bike ride home—
"...Well. Would the bastard even listen if I tried to stop him?"
They'd won the championship anyway. All that was left was agonizing over who to slot into the guy's spot.
You might call it the luxurious worry of a manager with nothing left to lose—
"Damn it. I have to agonize over this every single time, and I can't even stop him — could you spare a thought for my position for once?"
But to Jeong Im-taek, living each and every day like a bomb technician on shift, it was nothing but nonsense.