The Sprouts Are Still Green

It was at that very moment—while Noh In-seong was off filming a commercial that suited his image down to a T.

"Hey, where's In-seong?"

"I heard he has a commercial shoot today."

Jo In-soo, the team's captain, was running through his checklist of players when he belatedly noticed the absence of the most conspicuous lunatic on the roster.

"You're kidding—a rookie's already so money-crazed he's shooting commercials?!"

"I've never even shot a single one!"

"Hey, when that punk gets back, what's he treating us to?"

The news had spread far enough to get the whole clubhouse a little worked up, but then—

"...Does anyone remember how much In-seong's fines add up to?"

Manager Jeong Im-taek delivered the cold, hard reality that would put an end to all the chatter.

"Ah, so that's why you approved it, Manager?"

"In-SEONG's already racked up fines that big? He's not even human."

"Forget meat—the guy can't even afford a bite of Kimbap Heaven."

The sheer horror of his disciplinary record, comprehensible even to the most money-sensitive men in the room, softened their hearts considerably. And beneath it all ran another current of thought: even if Noh In-seong did show up today, was he really going to brawl with another team?

"He's never once gone up against Daegu, has he?"

In truth, in the games where In-seong had been tossed for throwing a couple of punches, the two clubs had never actually come to blows with each other. Considering what he did to Gwangju every time they met again—practically burying a man alive—Daegu had dodged a bullet.

"Honestly, wouldn't playing one fewer game be the better outcome? Real question."

When even Caleb was saying things like that, it was, admittedly, a fairly convincing argument. Just remembering that most of the teams they'd faced so far had earned themselves an extra tag reading 'cannot coexist under the same sky' was enough to make your head throb.

"...Is this guy trying not to make the national team?"

How on earth was this man planning to behave once he joined the national squad? Carrying that question with him, Jo In-soo boarded the bus to the stadium.

The first home game against the Daegu Lions ended in a Doubles defeat.

Nine to five. The kind of scoreline that made you go, well, that was a nice, smooth loss!

Among the pitchers, Jeong In-young was judged innocent for holding the line at three runs over five innings; the remaining six belonged squarely to the workhorse reliever and the collapse-prone relief corps. Kim Jin-hong, who could have strangled the momentum at a crucial moment, had thrown multiple innings the previous game while chasing the no-hit bid and needed his rest.

On the hitting side, missing the hottest bat on the roster obviously hurt, and Sung Hyun-tak had jammed a finger on defense the game before and sat out a day. Scoring five runs even without their fastest table-setter to spray singles at the top of the order, and without the team's best hitter—honestly, that much was something to be proud of.

Throwing your closer out there on a heavy workload and barking 'Go end it!' the moment a crisis hits is pre-2010s baseball common sense—armed with that piece of wisdom, Manager Jeong Im-taek had let his guard down. Anxious as he was, he'd assumed the existing bullpen arms, along with the young gun Yeom Dong-gu fresh up from the minors, could hold things together to some degree.

Instead, both of them promptly cooked the books with the previous pitcher's baserunners—and served the manager a steaming plate of screw you.

"Make a trade, call somebody up from Double-A, I don't care—DO SOMETHING!"

After the game, Jeong Im-taek was clutching his phone and demanding to know whether the front office had any plan to reinforce the pitching staff. That's how deliciously satisfying the screw-you had been.

One of his players was generating a catastrophic negative margin on defense, barely offset by bumping up the designated hitter rotation—and now, starter or reliever, the pitchers simply refused to cooperate. Compared to last year, when the staff had already been running on fumes just to scrape into fall baseball, the rotation was now thinner than ever. There was no answer to be found.

With the backbone of the bullpen aging out to the minors and another arm lost to injury—a genuinely insane situation—what exactly had Manager Im been expected to do? He had submitted a slugfest as his answer sheet for winning this game, and had lost, overwhelmed on all fronts.

So while Noh In-seong's absence wasn't the direct cause of the defeat, he had certainly contributed to it. And because it wasn't as if the man couldn't hit, and because the loss felt so much like one of a failed finish rather than a failed offense—that made it sting all the more!

To top it off, the revelation that Noh In-seong had spent the day filming a commercial added one more condition for fans to seethe over: this punk skips the game and does THIS?!

The fans who had been itching to say "No... In-seong, come here and sit down. You're a rookie—you should be a little more diligent, show a little more fire..." now found themselves compelled, in voices tinged with no small amount of irritation, to leave comments on his innocent little appeal for a day of rest.

"The fans seem to be reacting with a fair bit of anger out there."

Today, by some miracle, it was Caster Yoo Jin-woo who showed up. Normally it was Caster Joo So-young who'd drop by before a game, fire off a dozen questions, and head out—so what was this?

"Wait, Caster Yoo? What brings you here of all places?"

"Reporter Joo So-young watched the Busan game, and her hair health deteriorated so badly from the excessive stress that she's gone off to get treatment."

Good grief. How abysmally does a team have to lose for a person's head to start falling apart?

I stared back at him with a face frozen in shock, and the caster gave a wry smirk and pointed a finger straight at me.

"It's because of Noh In-seong, you see."

"What exactly did I do? Is it my fault those guys can't play baseball?"

Sure, they got beaten pretty soundly—but losing while updating two records at the same time, and that's somehow my fault?

Noh In-seong came out swinging, thoroughly unashamed.

After fielding a few questions, Caster Yoo Jin-woo switched on his personal stream. Yoo Jin-woo was a freelance caster and baseball panelist who also ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ran his own baseball channel—and today, he happened to be recording a live video for his video platform while he was at it.

"Which is why I've come to find Noh In-seong—the player who's always the most honest with his fans."

"Ah, I'm the guy who talks straight, no filter, no chaser anyway, so sure?"

And for the love of god, stop nodding along—you're making me look like a lunatic in real time.

"So what's the actual truth here? You just didn't feel like playing? Can't give up your days off? Conditioning issues?"

"Nope. I just have a lot of fines to pay."

Funny ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠how everyone went blank when I said I'd shot a commercial? They'll all be thrilled enough once that ad money lands in my pocket, mind you.

"So, everyone—all you baseball fans out there—when you head out today, take a good look at my ad, and go buy yourselves some rice cakes while you're at it."

All things considered, Noh In-seong's statement was grudgingly accepted by the angry fans. Private-life exposure usually means trouble, but in this case, it wasn't. A guy who spent his rest day filming a commercial and a guy who spent his rest day getting hammered and attempting a drunk drive are both slackers—but the difference between them is heaven and earth.

Noh In-seong's fans loved it. They felt reassured that 'at least, outwardly, he won't sully the name of a professional.' Conversely, though, the players and fans of every other team were precisely the population of people who had all been royally burned by one Noh In-seong—so on the internet, that proud bastion of anonymity, they reacted with complete honesty to what was in their hearts.

Which is to say, they simply plastered up malicious posts and curses.

Caster Yoo Jin-woo, who had been busily blocking the stream's more violent chat messages, asked with a somewhat apologetic tone.

"Do the fans' opinions, the public sentiment—or the hate comments, for that matter—not weigh on you at all?"

"Well, these are the people who go, 'As expected of Hyeom-shin. The skill is GOAT-tier. This too is Hyeom-shin's mastery...' the one day you play well,

and then the next day, when you botch a game, it's 'JOAT. Just plain garbage. Go drop dead.' That's the very essence of sports, isn't it?"

Swinging wildly between joy and fury. Baseball fans, by their very nature, are people gathered from exactly that stock. Humans who sit through three-plus hours of blood-pressure-detonating baseball, gain nothing but stress unless it's a smooth, complete victory—and yet insist on watching anyway.

And Noh In-seong was the player who had watched those baseball fans longer than anyone alive.

Which is exactly why he could understand them.

"Anyway, the ones who actually cross the line—I have no intention of handling with words. Shouldn't you be worrying about how my legal team plans to handle them?"

And at the same time, he was also a player who knew perfectly well that the bastards beyond redemption would simply never be redeemed.

After all, this was a man who, in his past life, had even witnessed the dark magic of things that never existed being made to vanish—all for the crime of being summoned to film too many commercials.

Before Noh In-seong planted himself in the lineup for the second game of the three-game series against Daegu, he first took it upon himself to whip the fans back into line.

Daegu was, at present, walking through a dark age. Assembling talented pieces through the draft and trades and rebuilding their position-player corps to a reasonable degree—that much had succeeded. The problem, as always, was the pitching staff.

Starting pitching is, forever and always, one of the resources that demands the highest cost. The bullpen you can scavenge from anywhere—converted failed starters, call-ups from the minors, whatever. There, at least, you can shuffle the pieces until something roughly fits its slot.

"Aigoo, you rotten punks. Win one yesterday, and today we're getting absolutely rolled. Rolled."

That is why deep wrinkles were carved into the forehead of Daegu's manager, Song Jun-ho. Try to trade for a decent starter, and you'd find every other club dried up of prospects too—no merchandise was ever coming to market. In the end, he'd had to grind through the four-spot and five-spot starter battles with makeshift patches: throwing up minor leaguers or career swingmen, praying they'd hold the line for four or five innings, then trying to win the slugfest that followed.

But today—unlike yesterday—the formula simply didn't work.

Yesterday, it had been swingman versus swingman, both sides pounding each other senseless in a slugfest of whoever's-left-standing. Today, the opposing pitcher was Caleb. The fact that he was a genuine number-one starter import mattered enormously. So did the sight of Sung Hyun-tak striding to the plate one slot ahead of In-seong, fully recovered from his minor injury. So did the fact that yesterday's Daegu pitcher had outpitched both of their own imports—he was, in practice, their ace.

And then, the most important point of all.

Dustin—suspended after the punching incident, stuck at home changing baby Alice's diapers—had returned.

"THIS is me! THIS IS ME!"

"...Would you kindly never say that within my line of sight again, Punch?"

"Kkuhk...!"

Granted, getting smacked around the dugout for showing off in front of Noh In-seong was not exactly a good thing—but from Dustin's standpoint, freshly liberated from the wailing of an infant, even the beating couldn't wring a single trace of sorrow out of him.

"I'm fucking FREEE-dom!"

Noh In-seong lamented, once more, that every last screw in his teammates' heads had come loose.

Before the second game against the Daegu Lions got underway that day, there had been a presentation over lunch from the manager and the analytics team. The gist of it: 'Excluding their two imports, every Daegu starter is below league standard—with the sole exception of national teamer Jo Il-yeong.'

The ballpark itself was famously hitter-friendly, so most of their wins came from inducing slugfests and outslugging the opponent; the team leaned on the sheer weight of a lineup anchored by table-setting center fielder Seong Il-yeom and Jong Min-soo, one of the finest third basemen in the country. The prediction held true. Today's opposing starter was last year's Daegu swingman.

"...Good work out there. Go on in and get your recovery work done."

"I'm sorry, Manager."

The starter couldn't even survive into the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fifth inning, and bullpen arm after bullpen arm followed him to the mound—but much like yesterday, it was merely more cooking-the-books accounting. Song Jun-ho's blood pressure monitor announced a hypertension reading, while Jeong Im-taek—unlike yesterday, closing the game out with a starter he could trust and a well-rested closer—smiled.

Of the two teams carrying mirror-image problems, the Doubles took Game 2 by exactly nine to five—a result that was yesterday's scoreline with the team names flipped.

"...What is this?"

And then, before the game had even finished—while the afternoon slate was still in full swing—

"L-lawsuits?!"

Lawsuits came flying, all at once, at the reporters and media companies who had spent the past months writing article after article laced with malice toward Noh In-seong.

Noh In-seong's advertising fees had begun to be worth their price.