The Throw That Sends You to Heaven
"The guy on the other end could have a broken rib and lose the entire first half of the season — and you're saying it's fine to talk like that?!"
A reporter shouted at Noh In-seong.
Naturally, In-seong responded as if the outburst wasn't worth a single scrap of his attention.
"Well then, am I supposed to take the hit when that rabid dog comes charging at me with his spikes up? Is that the 'proper' thing to do?"
The reporter had no answer for that.
And for good reason — In-seong had, after all, been on the receiving end of a murder tackle twice. The situation before Song Jeong-woo went down was no different. Everyone agreed, unanimously, that the moment that foot came up, anyone in its path was in danger.
"And now that I think of it — do I look like I actually put any real force behind that throw?"
"...What on earth are you talking about?"
The reporter's confusion quickly gave way to a look of dawning comprehension.
"Glad to see you're catching on, at least roughly. Yes. There was quite a distance between us."
Hadn't he released the ball the moment his opponent lifted his leg and began his slow, deliberate slide at full effort?
"If that's the case, he shouldn't be with a doctor right now — he should be with a mortician."
Or already earnestly praying for Saint Peter to call his name, or checking himself into Team Guanyin's care?
"Honestly, if I'd thrown it the way I do when actually pitching, he could have taken that relay throw and devoted himself to God forever."
His little quip about how fast time flies — already New Year's in May — fell completely flat. The mood was having none of it.
"...You're saying you took something off the throw?"
"Well, yeah. A throw only counts as a throw if the first baseman can actually catch it, doesn't it?"
He had no particular desire to watch a man die on a baseball field, thanks. Baseballs weren't poison mushroom soup.
Tiring of fielding these questions, In-seong took the last one.
"...Don't you worry that players with more malicious intentions than you might abuse this method going forward, Player Noh?"
Haha. What a truly useless question. You call that a question?
"Well then, that would require, what, three prerequisites?"
He'd have to throw as well as me, and be a pitcher with an infielder's secondary position.
"And on top of all that, we'd need a piece of garbage who injures players this way and figures baseball fans will just go, 'Well, he had it coming eventually.'"
If the association keeps tolerating murder tackles until that day comes, baseball as a sport will simply cease to exist. Get a clue, you people.
Noh In-seong delivered a rebuke to the reporters — and a pointed warning to the association.
The message was clear: normalize the ban on murder tackles before I have to put someone else in the hospital.
After the shocking interview ended and before Game 3 began, In-seong was quietly loosening up with yoga during warm-ups when two figures came strolling over from the Incheon dugout — two figures that didn't quite qualify as human beings.
"Where on earth did you pick up the habit of playing baseball like that?!"
"Figured I couldn't just let today slide, so I thought I'd drop by."
Jeong Yong-jun and Ji Yong-jae. What were these bastards scheming before the game had even started?
"You think you can make a throw like that and keep playing baseball in this country?! The old guard is going to rise up and condemn you any day now!"
"Seems like I'll manage just fine. Do you two play baseball while checking your own reviews or something?"
Not that it mattered to him — he'd been the official villain of every franchise in the league already. There was no deeper basement left to sink to.
But these days image laundering wasn't so easy, and every dirty trick they'd pulled on him had been laid bare for all to see.
Once everyone abandons that brand of baseball, only one man gets to be filthy — and nobody quite understands how filthy that one man can be. But when two guys are doing panty-wrestling in the middle of that cesspool, both of them end up on the exile list.
And the old fossils? What can those bastards possibly do besides crack open their memories of the good old days and run their mouths?
Besides, a genuinely legendary player from back then wouldn't have anything to do with the likes of them in the first place, so what weight would their words carry?
Jeong Yong-jun had clearly never anticipated being rebutted to his face — he went blank.
"And Ji Yong-jae. Why exactly did you come here? Still haven't figured out where you stand?"
"What's that supposed to mean? I just came to tell you not to cause my team any more—"
"No, what I mean is you're the next target, you dense bastard."
You thought I hit you two on purpose? Then you should have come to me, knelt down, and begged.
Did he really think that strolling over without reading the room and arguing semantics would make me promise, out of consideration for the cameras, never to do it again?
"You're a target until the day I retire. And every time your team plays mine, I'm starting at second base."
"What the hell?! Are you threatening me right now?! Is this even allowed?!"
Well, you know that line you people are always spouting? Your manager, you, all of you — you say it constantly.
"'There was some unfortunate contact during the play, but it was all just an accident.'"
You said it, so I'm simply honoring your words to the letter.
Try not to take it too hard. If it bothers you so much, just don't show up when we play.
"You should retire from the national team soon, too. I'll be watching second base every single time you play in the premiership."
"......"
How beautiful was the sight of those two jackasses trudging away, having swapped a tick for a tumor and carrying it fused to their backs?
From before Game 3 even began, Noh In-seong wore a face as bright and sunny as a spring morning.
"Man, he seems to be in a great mood today."
"Well, why wouldn't he be? Nobody's left to mess with him now."
Sung Hyun-tak, still nursing the bruise on his calf, snapped back at Jo In-soo while sitting out another round of swelling reduction — a small act of revenge, seeing as the lump on his own head still hadn't gone down.
When Game 3 started, the mood in the Doubles' dugout was its usual self. Incheon Astro's was not.
It was closer to a funeral — or the heart of a condemned man climbing the gallows steps one slow step at a time.
"Ha... What do we do."
"Tch. What else? We play. That's all there is to it."
In other words, nearly every batter in their lineup was terrified of a mere rookie standing on second base, staring them down.
Watching it, Sung Hyun-tak — starting at first base today instead of his usual position — was genuinely moved.
"Haha. Watching those goddamn bastards cower in front of our In-seong is the best feeling in the world."
So good that the bruised calf that had been nagging him all day suddenly felt lighter.
"...Huh? What are you doing over there?"
"You lunatic! I'm cleaning dirt off the base — what does it look like?!"
There was, admittedly, a minor incident in which he stepped on his own team's base coach, but whatever.
That's how good the team's mood was.
Once the game began, the problems surfaced immediately on Incheon's basepaths, the team still shaking off yesterday's traumatic scene.
"Ugh... uhhh!"
Runners hesitated, staring at In-seong's raised hand even when a full-speed sprint and slide would barely have been enough — and got thrown out. The aggressive, punishing baserunning they used to break up double plays and pressure the defense had been completely sealed away, handing the Doubles easy double-play opportunities on a silver platter.
"Hey! What do you people think you're doing! What kind of baseball is that supposed to be?!"
Of course, the manager was erupting in fury from the dugout, but it meant nothing.
'...That maniac is right there in front of me, and I have no idea when he'll fire that throw at me...!!'
'If the manager sees me, I get traded or sent down to the minors... but if he catches me, I might not make it to retirement...!!'
A throw soft enough to leave only cracked ribs meant, in other words: do not give this man a reason to throw it hard.
Fear, at times, paralyzes a person's rational judgment.
And baseball is a sport where mistakes happen even when a player makes the most rational decision available to him.
[And—!! The second baseman fires the throw! Noh In-seong takes advantage of the gap and breaks for third! Safe at third!]
[The Incheon players look completely off today! They can't focus on anything out there!!]
"Haha. I wasn't even planning to throw, and these idiots are self-destructing all on their own."
Incheon's third baseman bristled at In-seong's sneer — then quickly fell silent.
It was, in fact, true that they were self-destructing, and letting that sneer rattle them would only have been more foolish.
Fortunately, someone in the Incheon dugout finally said, 'Looks like he's not planning to throw anymore. He's just mocking us,' and that bought them a little composure.
[Base hit! The Astro string together consecutive hits and put runners on first and second. Have they finally collected themselves?]
[Their focus is back, unlike earlier. No word on what happened in that dugout, but...]
They clawed back four runs against So Dong-yeop, the workhorse reliever who only ever comes in when the deficit balloons — but that was where it ended.
They had already wasted far too much time. When So Dong-yeop, who'd taken the mound in the 6th, was pulled in the 9th without recording a single out, the man called in to close out the final inning was none other than the team's closer.
[And here comes Kim Jin-hong, his second appearance of the series. Last game the score margin was a little wider, of course.]
[Technically it's not a save situation today either. But the opponent is showing real fight, and with only one inning left — why not?]
[Managers do bring in their best pitcher in moments like these. And Jung Im-taek is exactly that kind of manager.]
"Mine!"
Kim Jin-hong had overpowered batter after batter with nothing but heat, all the way to two outs — and then, abruptly, opened the next at-bat with a changeup.
Noh In-seong's eyes caught the glancing contact, the ball floating up lazily into the air —
and when he settled under the fluffy popup drifting over his head and squeezed it into his glove, the series was over.
And it was the series in which Incheon lost everything.
From this game on, the Incheon Astro lost the engine that might have carried them to October baseball.
When the third game between the Seoul Doubles and the Incheon Astro ended, the biggest topic of conversation wasn't the final score.
It was whether a new regulation would be created to govern Noh In-seong's 'magic trick of erasing a player from existence with a single throw from second base.'
Naturally, the fans of every rival franchise rose up in revolt. There were even people who admitted they'd simply never liked him in the first place.
"Noh In-seong is attempting to terrorize other teams with the threat of relay throws!"
"Either put that lunatic in permanent isolation, or mandate the obvious: hit by a throw on the basepaths means immediate ejection and suspension!"
To anyone who understood even the basic mechanics of baseball, these were monstrous, horrifying statements...
And it was all the more horrifying because legions of fans actually agreed with this complete nonsense.
And so public sentiment gathered into an instrument, and the instrument was delivered to the association with demands that the rulebook be rewritten —
"We can't do that."
"What."
Of course it didn't work. Honestly, whoever brought this so-called law forward had to have been dreaming — it was pure comedy.
Setting aside the fact that the association itself hadn't even reached internal consensus on the matter.
For the association to enact a new regulation, it must first consult with the players. Baseball is played by players, after all.
And among those players, position players naturally make up the larger share — and infielders the largest share of those.
Therefore:
"What kind of drugs were you on when you brought this insane rule revision in front of my eyes?! Get out. Now!"
"Why? Should we issue bulletproof lining for stolen-base gloves while we're at it? If deflecting throws is fine, knocking them down ought to be legal too!"
"When the public goes into a frenzy, the association is supposed to hold the line — not get swept up in it and start chewing on garbage like this!"
Even the mere suggestion of forwarding the proposal to the players' association got torn-up paper and spit hurled back — that about summed up the situation.
The infielders, nearly to a man, spoke with one voice: "With best wishes for the continued growth and glory of this association — go eat shit."
The outfielders, once they realized the rule meant they would never get to take out a religion again, turned against it as well.
And the fans who actually understood the rules? They just laughed. "What exactly are those people doing that requires wasting this much time so creatively?"
Noh In-seong? He'd known exactly how this would play out from the moment he made his move. Naturally, he was laughing too.
All that came of it was the association getting roasted from every direction in the meantime — incompetent, a one-man dictatorship, pushed around by a single player...
"That goddamn brat — get every last form of punishment we have shoved onto him, whatever it takes!"
"With what, sir? The man has been playing by the rulebook this entire time."
It was only natural — inevitable, even — that a very displeased superior would come into existence.