Why on God's Green Earth Would You Catch It Like That?!
It may have sounded like Song Jin-wook was spouting something utterly impossible, but there was a small measure of grievance in it too.
Song Jin-wook had originally been a pitcher — the very case of a player whose team judged his hitting talent to be superior to his pitching talent and pushed him to convert.
And to be fair, if a guy gives up five runs as a pitcher but then scores six runs with his own bat in that same game to win the championship?
Converting to a hitter is the standard move. Pitching is for guys with far more overwhelming talent than that.
The only reason he'd crossed paths with Noh In-seong so little was regional separation and the fact that he'd belonged to a relatively weak team — but he too was a player who had actually won a championship in his second year. That was exactly why he'd been drafted as a first-round pick.
"So basically, he hasn't played any defense since Little League..."
"His catching is still stuck in that era. Or so the coaches tell me."
And yet, for all that, the punk sits there playing defense even Little Leaguers wouldn't attempt... Honestly, it beggared belief — but this was all territory that only experience could teach, so there was nothing to be said about it.
"If he doesn't want to go down to the minors, couldn't he... I don't know, DH, or take more fungo work? A fielding percentage of .850? On a professional player?"
There is no defensive position for a player like that. Sure, there's a Major League record of a guy who logged 89% as a rookie after snorting half a pharmacy... but that was third base.
If a first baseman fields at .850, the melons would start flying from the stands before the ball even hits his glove.
Sighing in defeat, Song Jin-wook resumed rolling around in the dirt.
Right — sweat never lies. At the very least, it can turn a maggot into a butterfly or a moth.
"Get in front of it, Song Jin-wook!"
"Ugh—!"
That thought, of course, died the moment Song Jin-wook got drilled in the lower abdomen and collapsed during his twenty-first fungo grounder — a hard, sharp one simulating a runner charging down the line.
"...Ah, shit. So that's not it, huh?"
The idea simply vanished from Noh In-seong's brain. All that remained was the old proverb etched a little deeper into his skull: a guy who can't, just can't.
Today's game was Seoul's signature derby.
With two clubs sharing the same home stadium, things never ended prettily.
It was a blessing that it was still late April. If this had been the first Jamsil Derby of May, just weeks away?
Oh dear. Under the banner of recruiting child members, everything short of outright violence would have been fair game.
They had perfectly good existing ballparks sitting there, and could easily have split the venues between the two teams — and yet even in a brand-new dome, it had come to this.
"Well then, let's see what you've got. Just how good are you, exactly — good enough to be chirping 'sparkle' this and 'shine' that at me?"
Naturally, in a marquee matchup like this, players would be grabbed one by one and told to kill each other on sight, WWE-style, starting right now.
"...Wait, when have you even seen me play, to be talking down to me like this?"
"What do you mean, when? I watched enough of you at the ballpark last fall, didn't I?"
At least today, it wasn't that. Judged purely on verbal punching power, this was UFC territory.
"Kim Seong-ju, Kim Seong-ju... Are you some kind of legend worthy of my respect? Somebody with towering career numbers?"
"At the very least you should know I'm your senior — on the national team and in this league — and show some damn respect!"
Noh In-seong was publicly, unapologetically disrespecting Kim Seong-ju.
In truth, if he had merely disrespected him, that would have been the merciful outcome.
"Hmm, weren't you the punk who popped hot on a doping test in your very first year? How exactly am I supposed to respect a drug addict? You're barely a person."
"!!!!!!"
Kim Seong-ju's eternal complex, his scarlet letter — doping — dragged out and torn apart right to his face.
And with that as the opening shot, the derby began.
The Doubles, remarkably for a founding member club, had always been free of exactly one thing: doping scandals.
Their fans, on the other hand, had diligently filled out an exhaustive checklist of every filthy act imaginable — riots and assaults, brawls and attacks on players, sexual harassment of cheerleaders.
And while Noh In-seong treated the opposition like chronic-gout patients, drunk driving arrests actually ran higher on this side of the derby.
Honestly, given how bench-clearing brawls had erupted the moment Noh In-seong entered the league, there was no basis for declaring one side cleaner than the other.
The real problem was that the one who picked the fight first was 'the drug addict,' and while Noh In-seong demanded psychiatric evaluations and asked whether the other side was on something else entirely — 'at the end of the day, he never actually doped.'
In light of their own gloriously doped MVP's scarlet letter, it was the Grizzlies who had swallowed their pride and ended the interview first.
"This is all because the association refuses to invalidate the entire careers of dopeheads."
Everyone thought it was over — until Noh In-seong dragged the league office into it.
"Shouldn't the MVP they already handed out be treated as 'never having existed' — like holding a lit cigarette over a rug and calling it clean?"
If he'd been the type to stop there, he wouldn't be the rising lunatic he was in the first place.
"Yes, we're live at the Jamsil Dome, bringing you the first matchup of the season between the Grizzlies and the Doubles. And what a prelude we've already witnessed, haven't we?"
"Indeed. Noh In-seong, the human headline machine, has this time gone straight at Kim Seong-ju — the very man who attacked him first — and shredded him to his face."
"It's true that Noh In-seong didn't even have social media until he admitted he only signed up to needle his opponents, and he keeps a rather quiet profile on holidays. Relatively speaking, anyway."
"Which is why some say he deliberately manufactures controversy at the ballpark — that it's all a box-office play... Well, people do buy tickets hoping to boo somebody. Either way—"
"Oh — Noh In-seong is... ah ha, well, this is going to stir up yet another controversy..."
Before the game even started, the cameras locked onto Noh In-seong facing Kim Seong-ju, his hands shaped so unmistakably into the form of a syringe that everyone could feel the needle.
Kim Seong-ju grimaced while Noh In-seong beamed ear to ear, cheerfully jabbing his invisible air-needle over and over. One. Two. Stab.
Before the first pitch had even been thrown, Noh In-seong had already won the psychological war.
The opposing starter was their foreign ace, Jay Rodriguez — better known as J-Ro.
Our starter was Jeong In-woo, finally restored to the third spot in the rotation after his rest day and bullpen day.
That same J-Ro was the case who'd been flagged for doping on consecutive at-bats in Triple-A until he was finally banned for life — at which point he crawled his way into this league.
Put him together with Kim Seong-ju and you got the duo mocked far and wide as the Double Drug.
"Wow, how is it that there's always one guy on every team just jabbing syringes into himself? What is he, an outer-space marine?"
His numbers came out so monstrously bad he apparently swapped his happy juice for happy injections.
"...Ha... I heard he was a lunatic, but he really is a lunatic. How is In-soo supposed to control this madman?"
"Control? You don't control him. You feed him something. Poison, ideally."
So he calls In-soo hyung by name — catchers must get along with each other, huh? Who knows.
"Hey, I'm not talking to you. I can't stand you, I can't stand that punk, and I can't stand the guy fielding over there either."
—So PLEASE, for the love of God, could you just shut your mouth and play baseball?
It was the current national team catcher, Jeong Han-sol, making the plea — his face aged roughly two years in a single afternoon.
"Oh my, it seems there's already some internal strife on that team?"
"......"
He wasn't even pretending to listen, just pressing away at his PitchCom. Whatever happened, it looked like nothing short of a catastrophe could rattle him.
Most catchers and players carry some sense of team loyalty, but this man seemed to operate on a very different frequency.
Fine, let's poke at the pitcher instead. I don't see any further business with this gentleman.
—Jay Rodriguez, screaming from the mound—
"Pwahahaha, those guys are fighting right out in the open. Wonder what else he's got loaded in that syringe besides steroids?"
While standing on third base watching their starter — the drug addict — blow up at his own defenders,
Noh In-seong found the opposing third baseman glaring at him, the opposing drug-addict shortstop staring daggers like he wanted him dead, and the base coach sweating bullets.
"Coach, c'mere a second. Lean in."
"What is it? Mid-game, you can't just... wait, what?"
What do you mean, what? I'm telling you to use some situational awareness. You've got plenty of years on this job, don't you?
Earn your veteran's pay, third base coach.
The Doubles' third base coach had started moving with conspicuous, theatrical flair — and of course, the opposing dugout caught on.
With a runner on third to begin with, any signs growing elaborate and complicated stick out like a sore thumb.
"Wait, is he stealing signs right now?"
"Uh... I can't say for certain, but their third base coach does seem to be sending some kind of signal to the first base coach, over and over."
Frequent hand signals, and the first base coach occasionally relaying something toward the Doubles dugout after reading them.
The question was whether these signals could possibly mean anything to J-Ro — a pitcher using the PitchCom.
"So then are they reading his grip, or... some shift and relaying that?"
"I couldn't say. The timings don't line up at all — too inconsistent for that."
To a group that had done nothing but play baseball their whole lives, the whole performance read as: No, seriously, sir — what exactly are you trying to do?
"...Are these punks stealing my signs right now?! FUCKING HELL?!"
But to a man who dabbled in more than just baseball, this was the perfect setup to blow his stack — nerves already stretched thin at the best of times.
Jay Rodriguez unleashed his Roid Rage, spending his aggression without a shred of restraint.
"Heehee, already rattled?"
It was all by design — relayed through base coaches whose "signs" weren't stealing anything at all, but rather suggesting they grab a bottle of soju together for a late-night snack.
And once again, Noh In-seong had carved out an even bigger opportunity to shake his opponents to their core.