Stats Beyond Character
The very same day Noh In-seong was busy turning Children's Day against the Grizzlys into an annual festival of manufactured childhood trauma, one internet platform's channel was hard at work on a video titled Noh In-seong: Is He God?
"I'm telling you, these numbers are flat-out absurd!"
"Oh, come on. A month-long sample can produce an outlier — there is nothing 'absurd' about these numbers!"
Yoo Jin-woo, the man who spoon-fed sabermetrics to his viewers under a thin veneer of patience. Mook Jeong-ho, the co-operator and editor who hated the very fact that the channel was named Yagurix. The two of them were once again butting their heads together.
"Are you kidding me?! His wRC+ is over five hundred!"
"You lunatic, his sample size is nowhere near the other batters'!"
One waving a chart while the other tore into it like a rabid dog — the crowning glory of their content, the two of them cursing each other out with abandon. Then, as if to prove he wasn't wrong, Yoo Jin-woo slapped the hologram screen with a bang! and roared.
"You look at THIS and still spout that nonsense?!"
⚾ PITCHING: 6 games, 5 starts — 5 W, 64 K, 4 BB, 1 HBP, 16 H, 1 HR, 5 ER — 37⅓ IP, 0.64 ERA
🔥 BATTING: .578 AVG / .615 OBP / 1.343 SLG — 1.959 OPS — 12 HR, 8 SB, .754 wOBA, 35.24 wRC
80 PA · 64 AB · 10 BB · 2 IBB · 1 HBP · 3 SF · 37 H
"The pitching, well — that's excellent even by current standards. The league ERA is creeping toward the five-point range."
"True. An ERA- of 23. If you remember how the legendary Tigers pitcher of old put up a twenties figure exactly once in his entire career, you'll get the picture."
The problem was the hitting. Even granting numbers like these, he'd seen barely half the plate appearances of the other players.
"The day his timing goes completely cold, those beautiful numbers will come crashing down in an instant!"
Granted, if he simply wasted sixteen more at-bats, the world's greatest beauty would merely sink to baseball's greatest beauty. But there is, of course, a marked difference between the two.
"No. Let's stick to reality. So — who exactly was god in March and April?"
"...Noh In-seong."
"And roughly how many times more efficient was he than the other guy who deserved the MVP?"
By an enormous amount, actually — that was the answer that ought to have come out, and it refused to. He knew perfectly well that this whole tirade was barely different from a toddler throwing a tantrum.
"But — but...!"
Wear this crest on your chest and sing that bastard's praises? Over my dead body!
"I'm a damn Tigers fan!"
And so Mook Jeong-ho bared his fan's heart, wearing the face of a man profoundly disgusted with himself.
"Because of this guy, our Cy Young candidate is in free fall right now — you seriously think I'm about to glorify him?!"
Proof enough was the replica jersey with Oh Yeon-seok's name printed on the back — Mook Jeong-ho's most treasured possession — which had been forced to sit in the closet, soaked in tears, unwearable to this day.
For Tigers fans lately, feeling anything warm toward Noh In-seong was impossible. Genuinely impossible.
Right after Oh Yeon-seok took the full frontal brunt of the mega-Doubles offensive with Noh In-seong at its center, his ERA had sat in the mid-fours. But then other teams had their own revelation — ah, so THAT'S how you beat this bastard! — and in that brief span, secret notes on him made the rounds among hitters. He was now marking the mid-fives.
The most infuriating part? His curveball — the pitch that put food on his table — had turned into a ball factory.
"...Shh. Don't say... don't say curveball...!"
But the channel's owner, Yoo Jin-woo — with all the grace of a man reminding his underling, but you're just the hired help here, no? — poked him precisely on that topic, and it took Mook Jeong-ho less than two seconds to hurl the documents in his hand at the man's face and declare a fight to the death.
"Ack! My head! Don't grab my head! I've been sensitive about it lately!"
"You goddamn excuse for a boss! You picked the WRONG day!"
Still, it was a WWE match with their paychecks on the line, so it ended — more or less.
"You crazy bastard, why do you KEEP grabbing me?!"
...It ended, more or less.
"Hm..."
Meanwhile, something deeply strange was arriving at the desks of that very Tigers analysis team.
"So you're telling me: 0.96 walks per nine innings, and 0.24 home runs per nine. That's what this says?"
"K/9 of 15.43, BB/9 of 0.96, HR/9 of 0.24. Yes, that's correct."
"...Monstrous. Goddammit — who on earth raised this thing?"
For their next opponent to be a complete maniac riding a hot streak of exactly this magnitude — the man was already, in real time, hollowing out the chests of every child on the opposing roster.
"Well, for what it's worth, he did play ball at a prestigious Seoul high school..."
"From what I've heard, though, it's a school that's always produced hitters. Not the type to win on the mound."
No matter how shamelessly Noh In-seong blew through the rotation without rest, his game count was still small. And since it fell to the Tigers — the team right after the Grizzlys — to catch Noh In-seong's ball, they threw themselves into the analysis with everything they had. Only to discover, before long, that the extractable data was thin, and that it all boiled down to a single instruction: 'just watch the ball come in and hit it.'
"...So. Do we have a single hitter who can touch him?"
"Uh-oh."
And in truth, even that theory meant absolutely nothing. That part was just a bonus.
"Oh, for crying out loud — what's with the 'personality' angle. Since when was pro baseball a sport for cultivating character?"
He'd seen far too many cases, after all, of a person's worth being measured by their numbers once middle school rolled around.
How bad had it gotten? This was the man who'd been denied even a single sign to throw — and their starting catcher had gone down injured that very day.
It was while Noh In-seong, milking the advantage of the upcoming home stand, was loosening up in his room in front of a monitor.
"Oppa! Because of you, the kids are saying things to me... wait, what are you doing right now?"
Siyeon had walked in. What am I doing? Didn't she know a starting pitcher has to work his body loose properly the day before a start?
"This isn't your mother's yoga, you know—"
"Gah! Mom joke!"
No — dammit, why is that your catchphrase? Anyway. He was in the middle of a routine blending light calisthenics with yoga.
"Anyway, speak, you wretched sister who so ungratefully squandered the vote of this heaven-sent older brother. Why did you call?"
"Oppa, what are you getting Mom and Dad for Parents' Day?"
Now that you mention it? He hadn't given it a single thought.
"Come to think of it, I already handed over half my signing bonus to them. Couldn't that just count?"
"Then a pot is going to clang right off your skull."
Dammit — Children's Day stays valid all the way through elementary school, so why doesn't Parents' Day...!!
"Dad gets home today anyway. I'll just ask him tomorrow."
"Hing... then I don't get to ride along on your gift."
"Since when is a Parents' Day gift a game of yut where you stack your pieces, you airheaded little sister?"
Anyway, a gift was not a 'please stamp one extra bus card' request. From his side: denied. Rejected.
"Huh? A gift? Forget that. Can you please just go one single day without causing some kind of disaster?"
"That's right, In-seong. You need at least one day that doesn't produce something starting with 'accident,' 'assault,' or 'ambulance.'"
So what Mom and Dad wanted wasn't anything material — it was something non-material...
Their father had finally returned home after enduring a long business trip, and their mother had thrown herself into an enthusiastic market run to welcome him. Gathered around a shabu-shabu pot — a menu that packed a real punch for once — the family chattered away about everything that had happened, and when he'd casually asked whether there was anything they wanted, this was the answer that came out.
"Agh, have I really caused that many incidents in my life?"
"The 'Noh In-seong/Incidents and Accidents' page already splits off by month — does that teach you nothing?"
"You know what the most shocking part is? There's an entry from before you even turned pro."
What? That damn document has monthly sub-entries? Don't people have anything better to do?
Noh In-seong / Incidents and Accidents / March 2051...?
What the hell. It was real?
Sluuurp... mmph. "You didn't knoooow? Broooo, you're suuuuper famous!"
Fine. I lose. I'm the bad guy — sure, whatever. And Siyeon, please, for the love of god, finish what's in your mouth before you speak.
Having been thoroughly dog-piled by all three of them on pure logic, he couldn't even muster a defense. And so, as his Parents' Day gift — unless the opposing team pulled something over the course of the next series — Noh In-seong promised to behave himself.
"Good, In-seong. Keep that promise, please. It's only about three days."
"So as your father, am I now obligated to hear 'just how on earth did all those people raise their son?' in a double meaning?"
"If you act like that, the kids give ME grief!"
Okay, okay, I got it! God, so loud.
The next day, an article went up: Noh In-seong clocking in for work and posing for photos with a single plaque.
"So — your parents..."
"That's what they told me. Apparently I'm supposed to keep a low profile, at least on days involving Parents' Day."
Once the photos were done, Joo So-young — looking as though she'd either finished her hair treatment or simply given up on it, impossible to tell which — came over with her microphone in hand. His face had been the very first question, and when he'd answered honestly...
"Hohoho, at least give me a longer soundbite to work with..."
Geez. That reaction was lawsuit-level adorable — like a woman who'd just nailed a one-take commercial for sesame dressing.
"Don't know if it's next week or the week after — Busan comes in on the road around then, right? They're dead. Seriously dead."
"Ack! Again! Oh no! Noh In-seong! Please, don't!"
The 'oh no' was, of course, about her team's record — pitch black, just like the word itself. And as for him? He'd grind her beloved team into the dirt so thoroughly her hair loss would relapse, so thoroughly she'd have to book another round of treatment.
And so Noh In-seong wrote Busan, once again, into his petty little cashback ledger.
"This may be our opportunity."
To the Incheon Astro, Noh In-seong's reactions had been nothing short of shocking.
Their roster was stacked with veterans, and however rough their brand of baseball got, whenever opponents voiced complaints, their manager would stride out of the dugout and crush the complaints into the turf instead. The problem was that Noh In-seong — a creature whose Confucian filtering applied exclusively to himself and his tiny inner circle — had responded to rough baseball with a question: 'And what if it costs a man his entire career?'
Armed with an automatic pistol named injury, he had pretended to play Russian roulette — and fired every last chamber into the other side.
Song Jeong-woo, the second baseman, had at least returned from the facial fracture, but the starting catcher was still complaining of pain. Their slide in the standings was no accident. With the team oscillating between fourth and fifth place in a prolonged funk, a turning point was needed.
"He's made public statements this time, and he'll be watching himself to keep them — it looks like the right moment to me."
Jeong Yong-jun, the Incheon manager who'd been listening to his bench coach, spoke up with gleaming eyes.
"Good. This game — put Jeong-woo back in."
He'd been the one to hand out the injuries first, so surely if a threat of injury came back at him this time — minus the injury itself — he'd finally come to his senses.
"And have Sa-rang come see me."
With the ace having ducked down to the minors on claims of a sore arm, the next ace in line would simply have to do the job. Jin Sa-rang — younger brother of Jin Woo-jeong and Jin Noh-ryeok, today's starting pitcher — was summoned to Jeong Yong-jun before first pitch.
"...Ball."
Well, well. Go right ahead and pull this crap.
Ump! You're not going to say anything about this!?
"He's a pitcher whose control's chronically a coin flip... he'd already given up four balls today..."
Listening to the umpire ramble through his excuses, the picture snapped into focus: the kid wasn't reading his own catcher — he was reading the opposing manager's face.
He'd batted second today, and when Sung Hyun-tak had worked a walk, Noh In-seong had actually found himself wondering, is the pitcher just off his game today? Yeah. He was the idiot.
"No — if you're going to come out and do it this blatantly..."
'Wouldn't taking a pitch for the other side be the truly unfilial act here?'
On the eve of Parents' Day, Noh In-seong had already fired a you okay with this? straight at the parents in his heart.