The Second One, Quietly
With the opponent so furious you could practically watch the blood vessels bulging on his forehead, the time had come to launch the second operation.
"What the— where do you think you're... Oh, going somewhere, are you?"
The opposing third baseman, glued to the bag, could only gape as the lead widened to an absurd degree.
Of course, the other side had their own common sense to work with — they knew the rules of the Korean league, where three pickoff attempts or fewer wouldn't earn you a balk — so the moment that lead stretched even a little further, they scrambled to fire the ball down to third.
"FUCK! Knock it off!"
The problem was that once or twice might've been forgivable, but this was already the fifth.
-- Throw it home!!
And since this was home turf for both teams, naturally the crowd's cry to throw the ball home only grew louder with every pickoff attempt. Unlimited pickoffs or not, under this kind of pressure, a pitcher had to throw home at least once.
"Hey! Just get off the base already!"
"I can do this all day, if you want."
Ignoring the third baseman's face — which plainly read, what kind of lunatic is this guy — J-Lo finally fired the ball home.
But the ball smacked the dirt instead of the mitt, and by the time the catcher scrambled to scoop it up, the play was long over.
"See you again next inning, Mr. Catcher."
"Ah... how the hell am I supposed to calm that lunatic down..."
Leaving the bitterly grimacing catcher behind him, Noh In-seong strolled back to the dugout, his job for the inning complete.
Thanks to the wild pitch, the Doubles had taken a brief lead — but regrettably, it didn't last. In the second inning, opposing shortstop Kim Sung-ju nearly scooped Jeong In-woo's pitch skyward, and the ball scraped over the wall by the slimmest of margins.
Kim Sung-ju flipped his bat and rounded the bases at a leisurely stroll, glaring over toward our side the whole way. You can't do that, can you? — was that what he wanted to say? Buddy, I'm one homer away from double digits myself.
Naturally, only an idiot spares an opponent's feelings, so I served up the syringe performance right in front of him again. Not stabbed into my own arm this time, though. Mid-play, any form of verbal abuse directed at the opponent counts as a violation, and I had zero intention of getting tossed like some moron — so I just did it in the empty air, sssswick, eyes tilted up toward the sky specifically to avoid meeting his.
He seemed to get the message anyway; even through my narrowed peripheral vision I could see his entire face contorting like he'd bitten into a lemon.
Anyway, with J-Lo and Jeong In-woo both brazenly stuffing the strike zone and milking out counts by working over the beasts swinging away on Jamsil's vast expanse of grass, the game rolled on — until:
"Ball four! Runner to first!"
I'd worked an eight-pitch walk in my second plate appearance, laying off the final offering. Now then, what shall it be this time? Go ahead, try to guess.
"Whoa, look at him bouncing that leg."
"What on earth is going through that man's head when he plays?"
There at first base unfolded a once-in-a-generation piece of pitcher-torture theater, one that left even Sung Hyun-tak — a man with a genuine eye for baserunning — and Kim Jun-soo, who couldn't hit water from a boat but owned legitimately quick feet, staring in open disbelief.
Merely reaching base on disciplined takes hadn't been enough to sour the opponent's mood, so In-seong escalated to outright lunacy at first base. All the assorted dances he'd been running since the start, plus a full pirouette for absolutely no reason at all. He blew straight past the legendary six-skip that had once triggered a nationwide sportsmanship controversy and debuted a seven-consecutive-skip routine. A false steal here, a creeping shuffle there — in perpetual motion — and J-Lo's expression curdled by the second.
Finally, convinced the damned bastard was definitely going this time, he called for a pitchout — and promptly detonated when the runner turned out to be spinning in circles atop first base.
"Fu...Fuck...!! Does this psychotic little brat think baseball is a goddamn circus...!!"
And because the man only stopped his antics right at the brink of the pitcher's total breakdown, the poor guy had no choice but to stay on high alert every single second.
"Goddammit... Jay! Jay! Ignore him and just throw the damn ball!"
"Throw what?! That lunatic's sitting out there doing all of that!"
The pitcher and catcher were failing to coordinate even through the PitchCom, and the sight of the infield drifting toward the mound to hold back a man on the verge of rampaging told me he was about to blow for real.
"Their manager sends word that he'd like this to stop."
"Stopping or not, something's bound to blow up sooner or later anyway, no?"
No matter how many times the umpire called for restraint — there was no intention of stopping, and frankly, the restraint had stopped meaning anything.
THWACK—!
My next batter took one off the body. It didn't look like a command problem, either — more like an open letter of complaint reading, would somebody please stop that lunatic.
"You fuc... You threw at me on purpose?!"
"Wh—whoa?! Hey! Somebody grab him!"
Because let's be honest — the guy hitting behind me wasn't exactly famous for his even temperament either. I mean, think about how Dustin and I got close in the first place: it all started with a mid-game mission inside the stadium. You could see this coming from a mile away.
Obviously. I'd seen this exact outcome coming from a mile away.
This was not the standard Korean-style bench clearing, with its tiresome litigation over whose fault it was and who bore the greater sin. This was the pure, classic MLB variety: a solemn, dead-serious contest to determine who gets to turn whose ass over first.
And of course, wherever a brawl breaks out, bodies pile into a churning mass, and the outer ring clogs the sightlines as everyone shoves in to break things up.
While Dustin charged the mound and traded blows, I slipped into the crowd of bodies packed around them — and while pretending to break things up, stomped on the occasional instep.
"AGH! Who—my foot! MY FOOT!!!"
Or, while seemingly wrenching Dustin and J-Lo apart, quietly dropped one of their guards instead.
"That's enough! Both of you, knock it off!"
"You fu... what the—?!"
THWACK—!
"Hey! Jay! Hold him! Hold Dustin back!! He's lost his mind!"
"This roided-up son of a bitch dares—!!"
And as everyone surged in to separate them, I wedged myself into the middle, slipping short, surgical jabs into ribs, knees, and joints along the way. Ah — though of course, my own visibility wasn't great either.
"AAAGH! In-seong! It's me! IT'S ME!"
"Hyun-tak hyung? Huh. What are you doing over on their side of the scrum, hyung?"
Sure, Hyun-tak hyung — mid-brokerage — caught a one-inch punch to the ribs, but on balance I landed far more blows on the enemy than on my own team.
But hey, I won't get ejected today, right? All I did was pull people apart. On the surface.
"Noh In-seong, you... *sigh*. Any other day, maybe, but today... you did light the fuse, so it's a gray area."
Dustin and J-Lo were ejected outright, and the opposing catcher, Jeong Han-sol — knocked over in the pile by Dustin — left the game complaining of a concussion.
Our side wasn't spared either: Hyun-tak hyung shuffled off muttering, "Manager... my insides feel all wrong...", babbling something about a Spider-Man who couldn't remember where he lived.
"Just a warning this time. We'll chalk the, ah... shoving your own teammate while attempting to break it up, up to momentary confusion."
And so I stayed on the field — our defense barely diminished at all.
Ahaha. So they did catch the spot where I tagged Hyun-tak hyung? Who knew one punch to Hyun-tak's ribs could snowball like this. Thank you, Thumbs-upTak! Hope you're living your best life up there in the medical room...!
Not that he died, obviously. He went to the trainer's room, so he's probably watching all of this on the monitor right about now.
The provocations didn't stop after the bench clearing, but I could tell the air had cooled somewhat after that first eruption. Though honestly, who could say for sure — a few men on their side looked to be in genuinely rough shape. As if struck down by a mysterious batting slump, if you will.
True, we'd lost two of our genuinely hot hitters — but I was still standing.
CRACK—!
Song Jin-wook had mangled things in the field yet again, but at least he was pulling his weight like this on offense.
Even granting that, our own offense had been plenty sluggish — the other side was simply worse.
"I swear to god, I just want to play every single game at home."
This was a man whose career home/away splits diverged by more than twenty percent. Even the hikikomori golden boys who'd made the couch-bound Lü Bu look tame went utterly limp in front of Jeong In-woo.
"How does a guy with a mid-two ERA at home turn into a four-something the moment he sets foot in Daegu...?"
"Shut it, you. That stadium's design is just fundamentally broken."
Jeong In-woo walked off after eight innings of one-run ball, whistling as he went, shaking it all off.
But In-woo's whistle bore no fruit.
Right down to the wire, the scoreboard barely moved, and the bottom of the ninth crept closer. The score: dead even. Two apiece.
Our lineup had scratched out runs in the seventh on back-to-back singles from Song Jin-wook and Kim Jun-soo — complete with Jin-wook's glacial sprint home, somehow ruled safe — and though Kim Jun-soo ran himself into an out to end the inning, we'd sat back comfortably, trusting Kim Jin-hong to protect the one-run lead, and...
"Ah... seriously, they're riding me way too many days in a row..."
Whether it was an off day or a body crying out for rest, who could say — he served up a solo home run all the same. If we lost today, his name would get run through the online forums as plain old "Lose"-hong, and honestly, that almost made me feel bad for the guy.
No, seriously — is our bullpen real life these days? The healthy guy's getting ground into paste, and the innings-eater can't throw a strike to save his life.
"Hyung, you look wiped."
"Dying. Christ, isn't there a single decent arm in the minors? Somebody needs to be throwing in front of me at least once in a while, no?"
Watching him stomp off toward the showers, no doubt screaming my elbow's gonna fall off before the Sangmu boys get discharged, you absolute maniacs!, I figured another trade was coming before long. After all, this gentleman seemed to have been anointed as the closer.
—"Grizzlies... pitching change... number forty-two... Cho Hoon..."—
"Well, well. Bringing the closer in with the game tied?"
Maniacs — do they have no backup plan at all? Even granting today's bench clearing, your closer, in a tie game? These weren't guys stripped bare of setup arms, so what was the logic here? As I stood in the on-deck circle, timing my swings and mulling it over, I got a front-row view of opposing shortstop Kim Sung-ju fumbling Kim Jun-soo's grounder through the hole between third and short.
Call Kim Jun-soo whatever you like — fast feet, zero power, a certified slap hitter — but you still field the ball cleanly first, then take your next step.
"Good grief. Is it inexperience, or did the juice start eating his brain?"
I was trudging toward the plate, staring at him in open pity, when the opposing backup catcher gave me a puzzled look... What are you looking at?
"...Weren't you a rookie this year? Isn't your experience the thinner résumé here?"
...Ah. Right. My body is technically the younger one, isn't it? That probably sounded like a bizarre thing for an outsider to hear.
The new closer, Cho Hoon, was a second-year man who'd debuted just last season. A pitcher who'd rewritten his own organization's rookie save record with twenty-one. A fastball with genuine pitch-value, a slider that fell off the table from the heater's plane — being that similar to the very man who shattered his own record was no small feat either.
Except for one, small difference.
"His two-seamer's got some serious bite today. Won't be a picnic for you either."
A three-quarters deliverer of the 'sinker,' topping out at 146 km/h, now stood on the mound facing me with a runner parked on first.
Cho Hoon, having failed to retire the leadoff man through no grand design of his own, was thoroughly irritated.
'Ha. And that guy is my senior... can't even say anything about it, either.'
It was his own fault from the start, failing to punch the man out.
A guy who strutted around boasting about his above-average range, yet fumbled the easiest ball on the field. His one consolation had been his bat — and then the doping came out, and even that turned out to be chemical.
'If you're going to juice that hard, the least you could do is hit like that rabid lunatic glaring over there.'
He'd successfully coaxed a ground ball, and yet the out count wouldn't budge unless he racked up strikeouts himself — and it gnawed at him.
Whether it was because he was pouring everything into steadying his mind by blaming others, or because the hollow base hit had sapped his edge —
He'd tipped the off-speed timing, and the runner took off. Nobody out, runner on second. The opponent's expected win probability had just shot through the stratosphere.
In this situation, Cho Hoon had to smother the rally with a strikeout or, at worst, an infield grounder. No exceptions.
He went to the well-worn book — the one course against Noh In-seong that produced the worst batting results, the one every scout knew by heart — and buried his number-two pitch by value, the sinker, right there.
But the batter, as if chuckling at the pitcher laboring over all those careful calculations —
CRAAACK—!
Ground-ball pitcher that he was, Cho Hoon had coaxed exactly that — and In-seong simply reshaped his swing, floated the ball into the deep grass, and waved the runner over to third.
The very next batter — a man who would never, ever square around to bunt — did exactly that, and the defense found itself cornered into playing the infield in, damned if they did and damned if they didn't.
tick—
On any ordinary day, he could have sprinted after that ball and thrown his body at it — and instead, the game ended with nothing left for him to do but stand and watch it fall, helpless.
A blown save, charged with no earned runs. For a game violent enough to require a full-scale bench clearing, the ending was remarkably clean — and remarkably hollow.
The losers trudged back to their dugout with the strength draining out of their limbs, and the winners finished the night by pounding the author of the walk-off Texas leaguer, Song Jin-wook, half to death at home plate.
"AGH! AGH! Quit hitting me! Who—!"
"Hahaha, is it for real? This dumb bastard can't even lay down a squeeze bunt? Guess somebody needs a few more reps down in the minors, huh?"
He took a fair amount of punishment, all things considered. But anyway.