22. Crocodile Tears
Incheon had a manager who wrote legends—both the good kind and the bad.
Ah, of course, this was back when the telecom company was still their sponsor.
On the good side: three championships and two runner-up finishes in five years.
On the bad side: a slash-and-burn farmer who devoured every resource the team had and torched the future ones through trades.
In short, the story of a madman who did his absolute best to win during his tenure.
That tradition remained with the team, steadily preserved—for better and for worse.
Franchise players retiring with other clubs as compensation picks, with no protection status and no media play whatsoever.
A player who wrote his name into Korean baseball legend? They sent him out to pinch-hit without hesitation, shoulder injury or not.
Trades? No hesitation whatsoever. Before victory, everything else is meaningless.
And two years ago, Incheon tasted a championship again.
Leading the charge with a madman, once more.
"This Noh In-seong kid doesn't even act like a player. That mouth of his, toying with people however he pleases—someone needs to shut it."
Jeong Yong-jun. Incheon's twice-reincarnated Jesus bared his teeth at me.
Honestly, it wasn't as if the existing managers held no grudges against me.
Plenty of them simply had nothing to say because they'd never crossed paths with me.
But after they saw what I did to the Busan manager, they split into two camps.
The first group treated me like I didn't exist, or pretended not to see me, hoping to avoid creating any more controversy.
The second group—like the Busan manager, or this man right now—were openly hostile to my face.
You only had to glance at the pre-game interviews to take a rough measure of them. Why the provocation, though?
Oh, so that's just how he is. He's been like this the whole time? Well then, I suppose I have something to learn from him too.
A war of public opinion? Can't let that slide.
It's easy to gather a pack of hyenas scavenging for material before a game—people who would drive a one-kilometer distance to the moon and back for a story.
I could just grab the standard day-before interview, or the one right before first pitch. Like this one, now.
A reporter had come to the café in front of our hotel. I'd finished my running a little earlier than the others and snagged the interview.
"Jeong Yong-jun, that man? Isn't he basically the cancer of baseball itself?"
If this were the UFC, it'd be a light slap to the cheek followed by a full-force kick to the groin—but I only know this much.
"...I'm, uh, sorry?"
"Incheon's baseball fans are one of two things. Either fans addicted to instant dopamine hits, or sages who want the manager removed."
Never mind the reporter's face, which practically screamed This lunatic is attacking an entire region this time!—at least I wasn't lying.
We did rotate our pitchers through on the last road trip, but these guys have been grinding theirs down since the start of the season. They did it last year, too.
They failed to repeat as champions in the end, and after all that talk about fall baseball, they limped into 5th place, got one taste of the wildcard, and dropped out.
Still, a strong team is a strong team. Their early record this year was ahead of ours. An overwhelming early-season pace—eleven wins and three losses—good for second place.
"And yet, pitchers with young, fresh arms are dedicating themselves voluntarily, saying the manager recognizes their worth."
"It terrifies me. What on earth did he provide them to turn them into zealots? A raid and seizure is warranted."
They say he gave them opportunity. Hmm, debatable. If they could develop that way, they wouldn't have needed such a stupid development method in the first place.
So then—shall we start slowly crumbling their internal unity from within?
"And if not that, then blow it all up if you want out. Unless you'd rather get injured and get scooped up cheap when you declare for free agency because you never got managed properly."
Human desire is money. As I recall, that bullpen ace of theirs is due for free agency the year after next, isn't he?
Try having a little ambition. Try wanting to be managed properly. The time to ride you isn't this year.
Push it a little harder, Jeong Yong-jun. Anything softer than that just sounds weak.
The truth is, if everyone hadn't gathered yesterday to offer one man decisive advice about the rest of his baseball career,
I would've turned on the broadcast... The broadcast, huh. A broadcast?
Oh? Handled right, this could actually be useful.
On my video platform upload account—the little hobby account where I usually post my gaming sessions...
I set up my phone, cranked the brightness to max.
Three, two, one.
"Oh, it's hyung."
"Hyung's going to entertain you a little. Starting now, I'm going to make some predictions."
It's going to be obscenely fun. For a few people, it's going to be fun enough to kill them.
Premiere date? Let's see... about an hour after Game 1 ends should do it.
From Incheon Astro's perspective, it was absurd.
They were managing things in their own systematic way, so why the provocation?
That's what they thought—because no pitcher had collapsed on the spot yet. And in truth, even if they'd known, considering the manager's temperament, no one would have listened anyway.
Among the fans who'd cheered for the team long-term, quite a few felt differently.
Once as the bespectacled ace of early pro baseball.
Once more as the architect of the Save-Me Squad in baseball's middle era.
A brand of baseball like a backwards boiler running against the current of the times, twice burning through fans' blood pressure—now it needed a justification.
And that justification could only come from the drug-like pleasure of winning—the phrasing looks odd written out, but it's an idiom.
In other words, right now, whatever Jeong Yong-jun said and whatever he did, he was a man with justification.
First place. Only by a single game, but first place all the same. A ten-win margin at twelve wins and two losses granted him that justification.
"That... that little brat may need to relearn baseball from scratch."
Jeong Yong-jun continued, his voice calm.
"The era where starters were allowed to throw long is gone. These days, five innings counts as a job well done."
"Look at Major League Baseball. They've batted the six-inning rule back and forth, tried all sorts of things, but in the end it proved impossible."
Besides, that's something even the Majors over there are doing. We merely adopted advanced baseball—so what's the problem?
"He's just a foul-mouthed kid. Because he's young, he thinks he can do anything right now."
Like consoling a poor, rough-edged, wandering child, he laid bare his superiority through experience and knowledge.
"Weren't we the ones who called it foolish to fail to keep up with the trends of the times?"
Jeong Yong-jun turned his back as if he had nothing more to say. He had a game to prepare for, he said.
It was bright noon. A baseball player waking up before eleven? Yeah, right. Like that'd happen.
While everyone was eating their pre-game meal at the hotel, chattering nonsense around the table about what they'd do after the game—
the topic of today's opponent came up.
"Ugh, those guys' manners are total garbage."
Surprisingly, it was Jeong In-young who spat out the complaint. A rare sight indeed.
"You're usually Mr. Positivity, hyung. What's gotten into you?"
The man was in his second year, had claimed a rotation spot, seen the coach he hated disappear, and lately lived a life of constant joy—so what gives?
"Look, I can ignore the old fossils and just do my job, but those guys don't have a single shred of professionalism between them."
"Well, I can't argue with that."
Cho In-soo added, setting down a piece of grilled mackerel he'd been eating. Fair enough, coming from this hyung.
"You only say that because you got body-checked at home plate."
"Are you kidding me?! Those lunatics were blocking our runner at home, then this guy stomps on my leg with his, and they just push through like nothing happened?!"
It hadn't led to a major injury, but apparently he couldn't escape the concussion.
"And those bastards—do they only practice sliding with their spikes up, doing it slick at second base?"
Once Sung Hyun-tak started in, everyone got worked up and threw in their two cents.
Their manager trash-talking players in interviews to crush morale, hit them too well and a beanball comes flying,
dirtied balls and corked bats stirring up trouble as a matter of routine, and then out of nowhere—"illegal batting, you stepped out of the box!"...
And in the middle of it all, Caleb suddenly complained that I was throwing shade at his pitching form, and vowed that if I did it again he'd flatten my face.
Seriously, drawing this much aggro over a single year—these bastards are no joke.
And so, while building camaraderie through mankind's fastest friendship ritual—badmouthing other people—the time to board the bus arrived.
This was going to be fun. Probably the most guilt-free move I could make since I came back.
Some people will say, "The Majors do bullpen days too, so what's Korea's problem?" Well, someone will.
Sure enough, the reporter right in front of me was saying exactly that. Pre-game, apparently, he'd spouted some nonsense. Let's have a look.
"Manager Jeong Yong-jun criticized your remarks as the foolish words of someone who can't follow the times. Do you have a response?"
"Could you pass along a question for that borderline-dementia old fossil: has he ever counted how many times larger the US-Korea baseball talent pool gap is?"
And over there they run the minors through Double-A, Triple-A, four levels, five levels. Here, after the second team, we have the development squad.
What a moronic attempt at justification. He should have aged like fine wine, ground down gracefully—but I guess his intake and output got reversed somewhere.
"Isn't it ultimately just him saying he wants to grind through pitchers to get results and reduce the criticism aimed at himself?"
No wonder they call up kids to throw until they fall apart, then trade for aging veterans. Genuinely awe-inspiring, honestly.
Play Major-League-style bullpen-shredding baseball in a talent-starved Korean league—yeah, pitchers will just rain from the sky.
I'm starting to understand why he gets automatically expelled after a fixed term. Maybe if he'd been drafted over there, he'd have made the Majors.
Thinking of the verbal sparring match we had before the game, I'm so scared some unlucky thing might happen to me today. Brrr, so scared.
"No, that guy is literally blocking second base like it's home right now!!"
"Jung-woo! Jung-woo! You okay? Where does it hurt?!"
And then, less than three innings into the game, it happened.
Noh In-seong, grinning down at the fallen player.
And the man on the ground—taken down by the opposing second baseman, Song Jeong-woo, sliding the way he always did.