A Law of Their Own Making
Midway through the game, Noh In-seong had been pulled by his manager to prevent a bigger incident from brewing — and in the end, the game came down to a single razor-thin run. The Doubles took Game 2 and clinched the winning series.
Whether it was the overheated atmosphere that had plagued the entire game, or simply the fact that the performance itself was prime lunatic material, the clip's view count climbed at an even steeper rate than the first video — which had hit 300,000 views within a day of posting and now sat at ten times that number.
At the same time, his pre-game interview became a firestorm of its own.
"What exactly do you think that statement means?"
"Isn't it obvious? It means I'm done figuring out why I should play inside the rules you people made up."
Baseball panelists, grinning ear to ear, turned it into debate fodder across their platforms. The equality of swinging at seniors and nobodies alike, the freedom of charging headlong into clubs and hierarchies without a flicker of hesitation — and threading through it all, a "fraternal love" that looked exactly like real brothers: every word and every scene a smiling blade slipped between the ribs.
In short, a one-man French Revolution had erupted in Korean baseball, and the old order was being gleefully ignored from top to bottom.
And naturally, once a revolution has its figurehead, the establishment was bound to take it personally. The opening salvo came from a heavyweight elder — a former national team manager.
"A textbook antisocial player. Too flashy, too violent, and completely unserious about the game of baseball."
"Back in my day, I imagine plenty of sunbaes would have already taken care of a kid like that behind the stadium."
Of course, this was Noh In-seong — a man who, throughout middle and high school, had enjoyed his manager's protection while knocking those very sunbaes around like chew toys. The bloodstains on the away team dorm's rooftop hadn't even dried yet; a man like that had no interest whatsoever in empty bluster.
The problem was, when one old mudfish swims, the minnows are sure to follow.
"What future is there in a baseball without hierarchy? Even if you won't demand obedience, you should at least respect the order of things."
"Injuring an opposing player without so much as an apology — is that supposed to be sportsmanship?"
So stepped forward, at long last, the living legends of the team that had taken the beating, along with the managers who had once retired in glory.
"A player who has shown a graceless display yesterday and the day before both. That he cannot grasp why unwritten rules are unwritten — that is what I cannot grasp."
The Astros, hammered inside and outside the lines by a rookie for two straight games, finally could no longer endure the tide of public opinion. The tone of the pre-game interview with their captain and starting pitcher, Jin Noh-ryeok, sent a chill down every spine — nothing less than a declaration of war, delivered in the hardest language imaginable.
But Noh In-seong, treating the whole thing as a personal threat, buried every one of those pronouncements beneath his own response to the cameras that had come hunting for his reaction to the interview.
"Crazy old boomers telling me to apologize and not apologize. You go apologize — apologize for the international record you posted managing the national team."
That record being, for a former national team manager past seventy, the worst in the program's entire history.
"Since when did 'sportsmanship' come to mean old men running their mouths about the jobs of active players? Go find yourself a PC bang in front of Tapgol Park."
Extending a gracious invitation — to the many retired legends and former managers currently collecting unemployment — toward a traditional gathering place better suited to their hobbies than to public commentary.
"Yesterday and the day before, you dropped the manners first. So the moment even one of you lands a pitch on me, there will be no further mercy."
"So you barely scraped the top pitching WAR, did you? Jin Noh-ryeok?"
"Congratulations. I suppose your retirement ceremony will be held at the Incheon Jung-gu Funeral Hall. Yukgaejang on the menu, right? Spicy shredded beef soup — fitting, since that's about to be you."
The opposing ace had promised vicious, hostile baseball; the rookie, smacking his lips over a three-course meal, had answered with his advance selection of a funeral hall menu.
Every word out of my mouth today, of course, was fine-worthy fire — but the club had decided today they'd be the ones paying. The other organization had taken a blatantly public shot at us; if we swallowed it, the franchise's image would come crashing down like a house of cards.
So Manager Jung had laid it out: consider it damages for our player — every fine I rack up today, the club covers in full.
Whoa, seriously? Today? Then watch me stack up fines worth my entire annual salary by end of day.
"...You're really going to charge the mound if you get hit today?"
And that question coming not from the opposing catcher, but from today's home plate umpire — tell me that doesn't tell you everything about the temperature of this game.
"Who knows. Does that coward even have the guts to actually put one on me?"
"...I'm begging you here. If you're going to beat people down today, at least beat them down moderately."
To be fair, In-soo-hyung had mentioned that the first bench-clearing brawl was already circulating as a training video for umpires.
I stepped to the plate as the leadoff hitter and took a few pitches. One strike, one ball. Apparently no intention of hitting me right out of the gate. 147 km/h was this guy's ceiling, but he was a righty sidearmer who absolutely refused to throw the zone's middle — regardless of whatever trash he'd talked beforehand, you could tell he was built like a team ace.
Crackaaang—!
[Noh In-seong rips the third pitch! Way, way back to the wall — and it's GONE, clear out of the stadium entirely! A go-ahead solo home run!]
[Wow, it honestly looks like he was dead certain that pitch was coming. His timing was absolutely perfect.]
"Phwoosh—!"
So what? What does that have to do with anything? Do aces not give up home runs?
Now then, what kind of ceremony shall I perform today, you unwritten-rules enthusiast? The fans' verdict on pretending your declaration of war never happened... isn't looking so great, is it?
The Astros gallery, naturally, was on fire.
Part of it was the spectacle of Noh In-seong's greatest ceremony hits collection — the strolled-around-the-bases routine, the bat flip, and the time he tried the "heave-ho" home-plate swing and got blocked. But beyond that: yesterday's game had confirmed their fall to second place, two starters were injured, the bullpen had been emptied in a losing streak — and today's game had opened with a 1-0 hole before an out was recorded. Only a saint could swallow that.
One look at the state of the board told the whole story: the locals were cursing at a level that got them deleted mid-rant, while outsiders strolled in to twerk on the corpse.
And when Noh In-seong's third consecutive home run in as many at-bats went off in the top of the 7th, the gallery outright detonated. The post regen surged into full disaster territory — the Jin brothers, pitchers all three, taking abuse as a bundle: Woo-jung, Sa-rang, and Noh-ryeok. Friendship, Love, and Effort, dragged through the mud together.
Jin Noh-ryeok giving up 7 runs over 7 innings was one problem. A manager letting his ace sit out there soaking up 7 earned runs without pulling him was another. But above all, there was Noh In-seong — whose very interviews made people's blood boil, and who then kept rubbing salt in the wound with ceremony after ceremony while ripping every single one of those runs out via home runs in consecutive at-bats. There was no not being furious.
Then, with two outs in the top of the 9th, came Noh In-seong's fourth plate appearance.
[Ah! A breaking ball nails him in the back! Noh In-seong! Jin Noh-ryeok hit him with the pitch...!]
[Is something else about to erupt today? Because this player has stirred up trouble in every conceivable way!]
[But honestly, the bigger mystery is why Manager Jeong Yong-jun keeps going back to Jin Noh-ryeok. He's well past 130 pitches.]
Pitch 134 — the pitch Jin Noh-ryeok had been grimly clinging toward across 8⅔ innings and 8 earned runs — buried itself in Noh In-seong's back.
129 km/h. A curveball.
"Hmm... pitch 134, huh. And now they're changing pitchers again."
Frankly, if an opposing ace that deep into his start had dropped a curveball right onto my back, it might genuinely have been a mistake pitch. It was absolutely, positively not that I was in a good mood after homering in three straight at-bats. A 130-pitch start is a torture no ordinary starter even attempts — so you give the man some credit where due.
That said, I'd assumed that lunatic geezer only butchered relievers, but apparently he's graduated to starters. What is this, bullpen conversion?
"Well. Duty calls."
I signaled to the dugout for the change. We had an off day tomorrow anyway — time to show them exactly whose gift horse this was. The opposing hitter would be their three-hole man, the center fielder, the core of their defense. Hard to say how tonight would shake out for him, but by my math, he was probably the best player on the Astros right now.
Behold: the terror your pitcher has so generously manufactured. Enjoy the meal.
Back in the top of the 9th dugout, after Jeong Im-taek had asked — 'Do you seriously have to do this? How many games are you planning to sit out this time?' — and Noh In-seong had answered — 'Eh, let me watch first and get back to you' — the defense underwent a dramatic realignment, and the broadcast booth scrambled for the scoreboard.
[Bottom of the 9th, the Astros down 2-8 in their final at-bat — and the pitcher has been switched to Noh In-seong. Isn't he Tuesday's starter?]
[Man... this is why you never, ever let a guy like that get plunked. He's one of the hardest average-throwing pitchers in the entire league right now.]
FWOOMPH—!
[Whoa! That one dove in right at the batter's feet! First pitch is a ball.]
[Hold on... is that velocity reading real? I can't say whether it'll count as an official record, but that looks like a league record!]
166.4 km/h.
At the very summit of the league's velocity records, Noh In-seong hammered his own name into the stone.
And the man staring at that pitch — or rather, the man who had completely failed to react to it — Astros center fielder Ji Yong-jae, felt his entire body begin to glisten with a cold sweat.
"...What the hell, why is he doing this to me?!"
It wasn't you who ran your mouth, buddy. So why take it out on me?
"Don't look at me. You expect me to understand our next game's starting pitcher coming out in the 9th and pulling this circus act because he got one on the back?"
Jo In-soo, who had spent the entire 9th inning walking on eggshells, answered in a voice worn down to the bone. What answer are you expecting from a lunatic? Just be grateful he didn't hit you.
In the end there was no dead ball — but all three batters got a personal viewing of a fastball screaming past somewhere in the vicinity of their skulls.
And then every player in the league understood.
'Oh. This bastard really was picking out a funeral menu for us.'
He had, technically, taken one off the body — but since the opposing starter had been so publicly, so unambiguously turned into a bullpen arm, the deadball had been granted a stay of execution. The realization crawled up the Astros hitters' spines as pure, freezing dread.
He was throwing league-record fastballs at head level with a smile on his face. They'd known he was no ordinary brand of insane, but still...
The "hustle" plays they prided themselves on suddenly looked very small indeed.
A team that weaponized its opponents' fear, that came out swinging full-force at all times and strangled victory from every game. Incheon Astros. This was the moment a team capable of anything for a win discovered what it meant to be beaten by a single player who played rough simply because he felt like it.