36. Don't You Doubt It!!!
While Noh In-seong was busy crushing the opposition from the mound, his own hitting was doing some big things today.
Not big things in the sense of helping the team out, mind you. He was racking up nothing but towering fly balls at the plate, dutifully stacking outs like it was his job.
The two runners on third coming home on a pair of sacrifice flies was about the only silver lining — but the star of the show was not, in fact, him.
Crack—!
[Lim Jae-min — base hit! The shortstop gives chase but he's late! Runners on first and second!]
[My, with him playing first base today instead of catching, he's already collected two hits!]
The same human diuretic who'd led the charge in treating the manager's low blood pressure yesterday, dropping exactly one ball even after the bench-clearing incident. In place of Song Jin-wook,
Lim Jae-min came out to first today and, for reasons unknown, slapped together two hits.
Pi Jeong-doo, the call-up from the second team who'd subbed in for Dustin in left field, tacked on a modest single of his own to keep the fires burning.
Craaack—!!
[High and deeeeep—!! The wall! Back goes the fielder—! Into the stands—! It's gone!]
[Song Jin-wook today: two home runs! Three hits! Eight RBIs! He is personally responsible for eighty percent of this team's runs!]
But in the end, a rifle and a cannon simply do not share a production rate. It was the slugger who capped off the big inning.
The man who'd escaped defense and moved to the designated hitter's spot, shedding the yoke of fungo drills for the first time in ages.
Song Jin-wook had proven his hitting potential in the finest way possible.
Not even half the game had gone by, and the scoreboard already read 10–0.
Ordinarily, once a game tips this far, both teams throw up their hands — welp, it's just one of those days! — and pack it in.
Even the Grizzlies, our hated rivals, had yanked their starter mid-inning during the big rally and sent out the losing-relief corps.
But I was nowhere near ready to coast. The bastard who deserved a beating was still standing at the plate, after all.
[Haha, Noh In-seong is showing his grip to the batter again!]
[So that was a genuine pitch announcement earlier. But can you really trust it from the guy who tried to call his shot and dropped down a bunt instead?]
[Well, he did throw nothing but sliders last time... though it's hard to take an opponent at his word, isn't it!]
To bury despair into the face of a doping junkie, Noh In-seong rolled out his pitch-announcement system one more time.
Three more fastballs, then the slider grip extended forward for all to see.
"Just how much does this punk take me for granted?"
Kim Seong-ju was flabbergasted. Sure, the man was a lunatic with zero social sense who picked fights with every player in the league — he knew that.
But was he really the kind of guy who'd say, here's my pitch, and here's how many more I'm throwing, with that much contempt in his voice?
While he was busy thinking no way, the ball was already in the catcher's mitt.
"Strike!"
143.2 km/h — a hard, late-breaking slider, painted high and tight on the inner half.
So did that mean this pitcher genuinely believed he was a hitter who flat-out couldn't hit a slider?
Next pitch — a slider again, supposedly. But the trajectory looked off... it was dropping...?
Kim Seong-ju squared his bat at the dipping ball. It fouled high into the air, but something registered in his hand.
A pitch he'd never seen all day. Nothing like the slider he'd been tracking from the very first inning.
"Ha. Knew it'd come out like that. That's not a slider, In-seong sunbae."
"We as a society have reached a consensus to call that a 'dropping slider,' you dumb bastard."
...Right. Of course. The guy throws two different sliders.
The scoreboard said 136 km/h. Pitch type: slider.
He hadn't lied. Could it be trusted? And yet — a memory surfaced from last series. What that damn bastard had done.
'...He's the scam artist of the century who announced a home run and laid down a bunt. Next one might not be a slider after all...?'
Hitting is timing, and pitching is about stealing that timing.
He couldn't remember who'd said it, but by that logic, a fastball might be coming next.
'Yeah. That damn son of a bitch is a con man.'
The con man threw. The ball came in hard and buried itself toward the inside — a fastball... it broke... it broke?
"Strike three! Batter out!"
[Noh In-seong keeps his word—! Three pitches, three strikes, all sliders! And Kim Seong-ju simply watches!]
[Ah... this makes the hitting look terrible no matter how little he trusted him. Because from the fans' perspective, the reaction is always: you knew what was coming and you still couldn't hit it?]
—Boooooooo—!!
—Kim Seong-ju out! Kim Seong-ju out!
—Hey, you piece of crap! He told you everything and you couldn't even make contact...!!
The price of doubt was very, very steep.
Nobody in the stands could read the psychological chess match of this at-bat or the thoughts inside Kim Seong-ju's head. They only believed what their eyes showed them.
To the fans, Kim Seong-ju was now simply 'the spineless chump who couldn't hit even when the pitcher announced every pitch and served it into the strike zone.'
Nothing more, nothing less.
Even in his next at-bat — his one chance at redemption — Kim Seong-ju could not bring himself to stop doubting Noh In-seong.
"Swinging strike three — out!"
He went down on strikes without so much as grazing the pitches of an opposing starter who appeared to be running the exact same strategy.
He was pulled for the backup shortstop, carrying bigger jeers and an even bigger crater of self-loathing.
"Wow. Can't hit it even when it's handed to him. Is this guy even human?"
"Your second pitch in his last at-bat. You snuck in one 140 km/h four-seamer on purpose, didn't you, you con-artist bastard."
"...."
Admittedly, there had also been a starting catcher in on the scheme, feeding him lies about a slider that wasn't one — but a lie was still a lie.
In other words: Kim Seong-ju's suspicion had been perfectly reasonable suspicion. The results just hadn't cooperated.
The game sputtered to its conclusion in a listless Grizzlies defeat,
and Noh In-seong finished his fourth start of the season with 7⅓ innings before being pulled under the front office's mandate: do not exceed the prescribed pitch count.
When he retired the final batter, the counter read ninety-nine pitches. Anything beyond that was off-limits by internal policy, so even the manager had no choice in the matter.
He'd succeeded in piling up strikeouts, but perhaps because nothing but the slider was truly sharp that day,
Noh In-seong walked off having left runners aboard — then had to watch both of his inherited baserunners come around to score.
Yeom Dong-goo, making his debut, had shown properly rookie-like audacity by ramming the ball right down the middle — which, unfortunately, landed exactly there.
Still, whether it was the line drive that knocked some sense into him, after surrendering a double on the very first pitch of his big-league career, his command snapped into place.
From that point on he gave up nothing, successfully cooking the books and protecting the predecessor's line.
"Argh, that little bastard, I swear..."
"Let it go. He ate every remaining inning for you, after all."
Kim Jin-hong offered his consolation with visible effort. Then again, the man was quietly delighted to be skipping consecutive appearances today.
After the game, Song Jin-wook — riding his eight-RBI performance to the first first-team Player of the Game honors of his career — headed for the interview zone,
but the reporters swarmed around me just as thickly as they did him.
"You're on a rest day, and you never even show up to the ballpark, so it's a real pain to interview you."
"...And how exactly does that justify shoving a microphone in the face of a man who isn't even today's Player of the Game?"
Well, they'd asked, so I might as well close the loop.
"Whether I make the national team or not? I consider that an open question."
Because obviously, if they picked me it would be for my numbers, and if they didn't it would be because of my conduct. Either way, their call.
"But the national team I'd be joining? I'd really rather it not include that idiot pitcher, or that moronic doping junkie... guys like that. Is that too much to ask?"
Why the hell should I have to call bastards like those 'teammates' and share a field with them face to face?
"Oh, and one more thing, please — stop stuffing the roster with deadbeats who flunked their military service and can't produce a stat line to save their lives. It's a load of crap."
Or just stuff it with military-exempt guys like me? If only any existed, that is.
Noh In-seong had formally challenged the royal road to wealth and glory as traditionally laid out.
The national team was, and always would be, an organization where murky gray areas could not not arise.
Some positions and players simply couldn't be selected on raw primary metrics alone;
others couldn't be selected because of off-field baggage.
Take too many players from one club and the club's pressure follows, right down to backroom requests to please include a specific name.
And on top of all that, if you exclude a player over poor performance, some deranged lunatic is out there stamping other players with labels like 'wishy-washy' or 'chemically enhanced'?
"Good lord, the association's going to blow up again!"
"What is it now? That bastard again?!"
Which was precisely why the blood pressure of everyone affiliated with the association — men who could now smell exactly what kind of disaster was coming — kept climbing.
From there it wrote itself. Reporters hungry for a story would run 'He said THIS! Someone react, please!' pieces, guaranteed.
Conversely, the agents of players whose numbers couldn't back them up would publish articles crying, 'You can't let him talk about people like that!'
Every club seizing the moment to pile on, plus you're taking too many of OUR players! — and the whole thing descends into a circus.
Now, today was technically Noh In-seong's rest day.
But having decided the trip to Busan was far too long to suffer on game day, he'd booked a hyperloop and gone down early — and gathered the reporters himself.
That wicked, magic-spitting mouth of his had begun dispensing bait to the press corps.
The national team stuff wasn't the interview, of course. He'd sworn up front he'd only take Grizzlies questions.
"That fella really is the type who can't trust a soul, you know? I gave him signs — explicit signs — that I'd throw nothing but sliders, and he still couldn't hit."
"...The stat-tracking sites say you threw one four-seamer. Were you unaware?"
Tch. That one slipped out... ahem.
Still stewing, still kicking the corpse with every joke in his arsenal, Noh In-seong abruptly pivoted to his own Instagram situation.
"And one sincere plea — Grizzlies fans, I genuinely do not understand why you keep sliding into my DMs telling me I'm going to fail, or to go get injured."
The reporters thought, oh, an appeal about the fans? But this was not a man who let things pass that easily.
Noh In-seong was in the middle of detonating their entire wardrobe.
"While you Grizzlies fans break your backs cheering, then wake up the next morning and stare at the word defeat etched into the box score—
me and my fans, and every beloved fan of these Doubles, will be waking up and tasting happiness."
And you won't even have my healthy body to console yourselves with, because... mmph! MMMPH!
A junior member of the Doubles front office, who'd tagged along on the off chance something like this might happen, ended the interview by physically clamping a hand over Noh In-seong's mouth.
He knew all too well that an interview dangerous even in the mouth of a losing player becomes twice as dangerous coming from a winner. A triumphant day for the PR department.
"...Noh In-seong. That said, please stop licking my hand with your tongue."
Lick... lick-lick-lick...
He'd sacrificed a single hand to shut down the interview — a noble casualty in the company's service, in the most literal sense.