Neither Nation, National Team, nor Player
By the time the flares had finally sputtered out, the people who'd hurled every imaginable projectile had been dragged away, and the stadium had been more or less scraped back into order, the umpires called our boys and the Suwon players together to deliver a stern warning so that no further "incidents" would mar the rest of the day's game.
"...And exactly what fault is ours here, exactly?"
The Suwon players lodged their protest, but of course you lot were at fault too.
"You call that playing baseball?"
Ah, don't look at me like that. It's embarrassing.
If you were this sore about it, you shouldn't have handed me two records, my friends.
But apparently the umpires didn't consider both sides at fault, because the warning came down one-sidedly — on me alone.
This is player discrimination!
By the time play resumed, the game already deep into its middle innings caught fire all over again. The Suwon batters, who up to now had been gritting their teeth and trudging back to their dugout after each strikeout in the name of mental discipline —
"Strike three! You're out!"
"You son of a—"
CRACK!
— started shattering their bats against the ground and hurling the splintered halves away in fury, competitive fire finally blazing in their eyes. Some white-knuckled it to the bitter end, staring down every pitch and coaxing out walks when the command zone refused to cooperate. My remarks — factual, incidentally, however defamatory they may have sounded — must have cut them deep.
Then again, the single biggest factor was probably how thoroughly my shoulder had cooled off during the flare fiasco. Fifteen minutes to sweep up all that garbage. Honestly, quit throwing stuff. And I heard the flares alone numbered one or two.
Where on earth did they even get those? They were throwing everything.
Of course, the opposition paid for it, and paid dearly.
"Ah, another walk, and the bases are loaded... Things are just not going Suwon's way today."
"When the gap reaches double digits, the toll on a team's bats is heavy. For tomorrow's sake as much as anything, they need to rally."
If me — a man whose career numbers were already overwhelming by any classical measure — was handing out walks because my control had briefly deserted me, then exactly how far did that rattle the pitchers on the other side?
"Base hit—! It drops perfectly between the shortstop and the center fielder! An RBI single for Sung Hyun-tak! The game is 11-0, and the Doubles are pulling away!"
"With two outs, every runner was off on contact — and thanks to Sung Hyun-tak's short little flare of luck, two more come home!"
Load the bases, challenge the zone to get the out, get punished by a hitter whose timing had caught fire, send in another pitcher to stop the bleeding, watch that pitcher fail to stop it too —
The fans and the players alike were nothing short of desperate. And honestly, they had reason to be — quite a few things only came to light afterward.
Even I knew that, as of today, two records had already slipped through their fingers.
The nine-pitch, zero-foul-ball immaculate inning? That one couldn't be helped. When the stuff is that good, sometimes you just have to tip your cap.
And the rookie scoreless streak? That one died the moment that lunatic crushed a home run, blew a kiss to the crowd, and had a flare come sailing back at him. Everyone assumed the story ended with him locked in a basement somewhere — turns out there was an entire underground city down there.
"Noh In-seong's, um... as it turns out, his record total now stands at three additional achievements."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
An immaculate inning achieved twice in a single season by a rookie — the first in history. An immaculate inning by a rookie at all — the third ever. Two immaculate innings over the course of one career — the fourth.
Every last one of them a record destined for the history of the league.
On top of all that, he'd taunted the umpires to their faces, taken a near-profanity dressing-down from his own manager, and now had a mob of flare-throwing hooligans holding a grudge. If anything happened to him while this heat was still at a rolling boil, lives were genuinely at risk. At the very least, that monster of a rookie had to be sent down and out of the game.
Their survival instinct became the fuel for their stubbornness.
And so, after clinging on tooth and nail, the fruit of that endurance finally reached the Magicians in the bottom of the seventh.
"Wow, that's already eight pitches! Kim Jin-il is seeing the ball exceptionally well today!"
"Two strikes, one ball — he's fouling pitches off, dragging the count out by sheer force of will, and now it's full!"
Every pitcher, sooner or later, has that moment come for them. The sad one.
CRACK—!
"Deep to left field---!! This ball is...! It's GONE—! The Magicians' first run of the day! And the first earned run Noh In-seong has ever surrendered in any game!"
"Finally, finally, a number goes up on the board! Kim Jin-il turns Noh In-seong's first professional earned run into a home run!"
A home run allowed. One runner aboard, two runs charged.
It was the moment the big zero on the scoreboard finally made two new friends — an 8 and a 1.
Worried after seeing Noh In-seong give up his first professional home run, Jo In-soo climbed the steps toward the mound.
"Hey, you alright? The ball got bunched up on you, that wasn't your—"
"Huh? Why'd you even come out here? Go back and catch the ball, the inning's not over."
Noh In-seong was fine. No — he looked fine.
Jo In-soo knew a few guys who'd acted exactly like this. And among them were some who'd gotten greedy, tried to keep pitching past their limit, given up even more runs, and then collapsed for weeks at a time through some genuinely miserable stretches.
"Hey, you don't have to tough it out for my sake. Giving up runs is just part of pro ball anyw—"
"Ugh, we've got to finish and go home, so go catch the ball, Hyung. I'm not going to bawl about it like some neighborhood kid who got pegged playing pitcher once."
And after Noh In-seong all but shoved him back toward home plate, then closed out the inning with a strikeout and a ground ball, he turned around with a grin.
"Woo! That's it! Can I go get my shower in now?"
"...Ha, damn it. I knew this bastard was a lunatic, but still..."
It was when Jo In-soo was half-hinting to the manager to get someone up in the bullpen that the realization struck him.
"...This bastard — he doesn't actually care about his own numbers, does he?"
Ah. He really is a lunatic. What a waste of good worrying.
While I was showering in the visitors' locker room, a great commotion came booming over the home stadium's speakers.
"—...When cheering, please follow along with the call-and-response—"
Someone once said they hated it when fan cultures clashed over the same stadium? Well, the situation had gotten far worse now that soccer fans who didn't know a single baseball cheering song had been mixed into the stands.
The home crowd was singing their team's fight song, while the soccer fans sang their own chants — and their own anti-calls.
"If you're gonna play baseball like thaaat~ Go die, go diiie~ In-seong you bastard, go die~"
It might sound like my anti-chants were flying thick and fast, but sadly, I am not the founding father of this particular art form.
There was already a legend who'd received "Get out of Incheon" — or straight-up "Go drop dead" — so honestly, I'm a latecomer by a wide margin.
Though when it comes to racking up this much pure, unadulterated hatred — not performance-related, just good old-fashioned loathing — I might well be the first in history.
Towel-drying his hair, Noh In-seong strolled out of the dugout tunnel, looking for all the world proud of the anti-chants still ringing through the stadium.
He'd been lying on a mat in the dugout tunnel running his post-start routine when the game ended. A blowout, double digits apart, on the very doorstep of a sweep. With the stadium still seething, a reporter came out to review the player of the game.
Naturally, it was me. What can you do? The guy who went seven innings, two earned runs, and hit a home run — that guy's the king.
"Yes, today's player of the game — an incredible five records in a single contest. Noh In-seong!"
BOOOOOOOOO—!!
Mm. The rich, thunderous chorus of boos shaking the entire stadium. The highest tribute an enemy can offer. It puts me in a good mood.
"Noh In-seong here. It's an honor to receive this much acclaim from so many thousands of fans."
"...I'm not sure that quite counts as acclaim. Were you aware of the records going into today?"
Obviously. I know pretty much every record worth knowing.
"Yes, I was aware. That's exactly why I enjoyed it so much."
"But you did give up your first earned run today, to Kim Jin-il — how do you—"
Kim Jin-il! Kim Jin-il! Kim Jin-il!
Before the reporter could even finish, the chant for the day's only run-scorer rolled across the stands.
Not one of their official fight songs, so the two fan factions must have actually reached an agreement. Good for them. As if they'd know anything — it's not like people who follow both soccer and baseball are common.
"Well... Kim Jin-il is the national team's starting second baseman, after all... actually, that's part of what makes this so satisfying."
"Oh? Are you paying him a compliment?"
As if. You really still don't know my personality, do you?
"Nope. I'm saying there are now three clubs out there too stupid to score so much as a single run against this rookie while absorbing every insult I've got."
Noh In-seong wrapped up the interview with a smile.
Demonstrating, even in the matter of his own surrendered runs, the sheer viciousness of a man who uses the kick to his own corpse as forward momentum.
Twenty-three innings pitched, just two runs allowed. An ERA of 0.78, with the only hit to produce a run being a single home run.
K/9? Over thirteen. Thirty-five strikeouts, after all.
Naturally, the conversation started. It was 2052 — not an Olympic year, but the international tournament postponed by the whole string of incidents. The question on everyone's lips: should Noh In-seong board the World Baseball Classic roster?
Even setting aside a rotation spot, a pitcher with the hardest fastball in the league is worth carrying as pure bullpen insurance. And his hitting numbers were frankly absurd.
.625/.683/1.500/2.183. Eight home runs. A small sample across twelve games? Meaningless. His defense was solid too, he could be cycled to third base — second? Never played it there, but he'd manage fine.
No, those batting numbers were never lasting until season's end — but even if he kept half of them, you could just bring him along and use him strictly as the designated hitter.
Looking at it that far, why is there even a debate? Just write the name down first and think later — you'd think. And yet...
"Sure, the kid's good. But who's to say it's not just a hot streak? Anybody can look like that for a month."
Kim Seong-ju, the Grizzlies' starting shortstop — a former national team mainstay deeply uninterested in surrendering his position — opened the door first.
"Give any rookie a run as a starter, and sooner or later he comes apart all at once. This is premature, in my view."
Oh Yeon-seok, Gwangju's third-year starter, fired his own shot — a pointed bit of gatekeeping at the man who, through last year's step-up in performance, had stolen what he considered his rotation spot.
And then one more.
"...No telling how long that insolent little brat can keep up those numbers, but what worries me is what sort of disgrace he'd drag onto this country on the international stage..."
Jo Ho-yeon, the former national team manager, hurled himself into the media war for revenge — still nursing the grudge of how his own national team record had been dragged through the mud.
Noh In-seong's national team debut was, bit by bit, growing darker.
Meanwhile, the man himself:
"I'm telling you, they made a whole movie about this stuff? This chicken might be more famous than we are!"
"Really? It's just fried chicken with sauce brushed on it."
"You bastard, you owe the Colonel an apology before anything else."
It was his day off. He'd gone out to eat some regional specialty and couldn't have cared less about any of it.
It was a holiday.