Catch Me If You Can
If it had been the association's mess just this once, maybe they could have let it slide.
But this Noh In-seong, a.k.a. that goddamn little bastard, had been spewing problem statements nonstop without a single day of rest. Sprinkled among them were plenty of remarks along the lines of what has the association even been doing all this time? — and for that, he caught flak constantly. Then again, honestly, it had all started the moment he gave that refusal interview calling them a 'defeat-mileage punch bowl' before the draft even happened.
"Because of that one goddamn little bastard, our boards have been blowing up all day long!"
It wasn't as if that rule had sprung into existence after they took their seats — so why were people showing up just to curse them out!
Fair point, in a way. But it also missed something.
"...Uh... aren't you sitting in that chair specifically to fix that? You seriously don't get it? The same comments keep coming back, you know?"
Midway through the meeting, in place of anything sweet, a remark in the full Betrex style rolled out — so bitter it made you want to throw up.
"......Do you think I'm angry right now because I wanted to hear that answer?"
An executive straining to hold back a rage that was popping veins across his forehead —
"Probably not? But what can I say, it's the truth."
After the era of lunatics who said whatever they wanted, and then the era of new hires who couldn't read the room, and after even the era of just carry me out if you don't like it — BYE♡, a rookie who spoke blunt truth directly to executives had finally arrived.
The year was 2051.
Having violently banished the rookie from the conference room, the executive roared for countermeasures — but everyone already knew the truth. What countermeasure could possibly exist? The only answer was a total overhaul of the relevant rules.
"You tell us to come up with countermeasures, but with what, exactly?"
"Exactly. A rule overhaul while we can't even give people what they actually want? That's suicide."
So what, were they supposed to pin every one of these original sins on a single player and go on the attack?
The parent company of In-seong's club might just tolerate it — or the player himself might not sit still, which was its own question. Try picturing things roughly from that player's perspective:
"I am Noh In-seong... I cause trouble wherever I go... I am going to do something catastrophic..."
"Just run the damn AI deep-learning model instead of thinking with your stupid brain."
"...Understood."
The results of the role-play exercise were astonishing. In the worst possible way.
"Here's the report."
"Right, let's see..."
Just two hours from hand to finished report. All they'd done was feed Noh In-seong's malice into an AI deep-learning model — but the participating staff all shared the same hunch that the output was probably dead-on.
"He wraps factual, precisely-timed defamation in his own statements, hijacks attention as public-interest whistleblowing, then hauls out every one of the association's screwups and self-detonates?"
"That's correct. So we leave him alone. The kid won't last long in this league anyway — we just endure until he's gone."
Saying he had no allies in the baseball world meant he was a kid who could blow up every single incident and show the league its own funeral.
When a human bomb walks into your house, the correct answer is to hand over everything you own and see him politely out the door.
"......Nothing to be done, then. We're dropping this matter entirely."
And so the association resolved to observe Noh In-seong from a position of absolute neutrality.
"Oh, and separate from that. Make sure that son of a bitch keeps getting his fines, no exceptions."
"His club did file a complaint about that, sir. Yes, understood."
Which is to say, the fines were handed out with strict neutrality. Not for anything on the field — purely for things said.
"These bastards can't do a single thing right, but the fine notices always arrive right on schedule, huh?"
Today, too, Noh In-seong crumpled the freshly delivered fine notice into a ball and hurled it at the trash can.
Naturally, a paper ball obeying the laws of fluid dynamics resembled a baseball closely enough that it made it most of the way to the bin —
"Ow! ...No, you absolute maniac! Who throws stuff while sitting on a b—wait, what is this? A fine notice?"
It smacked dead into the head of Lim Jae-min, who was taking study notes in the seat beside the yellow plastic bin being used as a trash can.
Jo In-soo, seated on the other side stuffing data into Jae-min's skull, demanded they refocus — but it was already too late. Watching the two rookies start scrapping with each other, Jeong Im-taek clutched his head.
"Agh, and now I have to send out a kid who won't listen to a word, paired with a kid who has zero intention of listening."
"Is this even right? Should I just go take the mound myself?"
The fool and the moron who had contributed yet another generous helping of wrinkles to the starting catcher and the manager were the next game's battery.
Of course, this wasn't Jo In-soo taking the occasional day off because he was a bad catcher. Quite the opposite. For one thing, the man had just turned thirty. For another, he had started behind the plate in every single game of his career up until that thirtieth birthday.
"In other words, his knees are slowly filling up with fluid, or his joints ache, or else... that..."
"You mean the violent recurrence of his hemorrhoid condition, obviously. Walk around like that every day and everybody figures it out."
A devastatingly frank blast of fact-violence, filtered through the very finest of Noh In-seong's delicacy, prompted an attempted noogie from Jo In-soo — all of which missed.
Punches were simply too slow for a man who made his living tracking a ball with his eyes. And he wasn't even swinging at full power.
"Hyung. If I can see your hand coming, it doesn't work on me."
"Argh, argh...! Why won't this bastard take just one hit...!"
Noh In-seong understood the importance of mileage as well as anyone — after all, the team this body had joined before was a legend in that exact department. And Jo In-soo's occasional rest days were good for the team's fall baseball hopes, too.
"So why exactly does being a Slap Hitter/rookie/greenhorn/short-on-data/moron qualify YOU to start on MY pitching day?"
"Why, you—!"
Lim Jae-min fought down the urge to slap the face of the classmate bastard who'd shoved his rudeness right up front, and pressed on.
"Hey, today'll be different, okay? I've gotten some playing time lately, built up some experience..."
"Right. And I've spent that same time building up grudges against every team in the league."
--If he takes his frustrations out on me, someone might actually die. So he'll probably take them out on you instead?
At those words, Lim Jae-min's mind flashed back to the PTSD of his first appearance ever.
"...Ah, damn it."
Lim Jae-min began displaying a violent, visceral resistance to the idea of syncing up with that lunatic.
Schedules in Korean baseball differ a bit from team to team. Some clubs share a home park; there are road-trip logistics, league-wide calendars, all sorts of piled-up complications — all the way down to domed-stadium allocations during monsoon season just so a minimum number of games can get played even in the rain. Factor in the fall postseason schedule, where some teams never even get a look in and are left sucking their thumbs, and... well.
What mattered right now was the friction ledger between two teams forced to stare into each other's faces nine times before the season had even reached its midpoint.
The previous series, after all, had been the one where they handed a trauma to one of the opposing team's players.
"Ugh, seriously, we see these bastards way too often. Is Oh Yeon-seok pitching this time?"
"Zero chance of you running into him. He's going in Game 2."
--This insane coward, he takes a few beatings and now he's running away? And this guy is supposed to be an ace candidate?
Whatever contempt Noh In-seong harbored for the man's cowardice, the trauma on the receiving end had been fairly violent.
"Come on, I'm not asking for anything special here — all I want is a single day off!"
"Yeon-seok. Do you really think there's a paradise waiting at the end of a run like that?"
They needed a pitcher willing to go shot-for-shot with the fiercest lineup in the league head-on, and their supposed ace had chickened out. A man who'd clawed back his earned runs only to develop a flaw everyone could read, and who'd been getting shelled for it lately, had turned into a coward outright.
And so the idea was born: send out Jeremy first, then follow with Oh Yeon-seok, and snatch a Game 2 victory while Noh In-seong rested! A fine idea. Nothing objectionable about it at all, on its face — they were simply deploying their one-two punch in sequence.
The problem was that there happened to be one complete lunatic who would counter-punch straight to the gut the moment that one-two came out.
"I'm well aware Oh Yeon-seok dodged me and ran. But he can forget it."
--Even if it means giving up my rest day, this time I'm going to beat him within an inch of his life.
Noh In-seong surrendered his holiday, declaring that he would personally hand the wounded starting pitcher to the slaughter himself.
"I hear baseball's really gone downhill lately. Wonderful. From here on out, I intend to plant traumas so deep it never recovers."
The bombshell in the pre-game preview interview contorted the faces of both teams into extremes. Jeong Im-taek nodded along with a face-splitting grin; the Gwangju side, in contrast, looked ready to die. Watching Oh Yeon-seok's blood-drained face, Noh In-seong smiled with a crinkle of pure malice.
"Ah, wait, was giving up my rest day going too far? I really, really hate missing even one day off."
The regret came the moment the words left his mouth — but it was too late. Jeong Im-taek was already amending the Game 2 lineup with a smile.
"That's right, In-seong. Days like this are part of the job. You'd have had to come up to bat for your minimum plate appearances anyway if you wanted that award."
"Hold on, I was actually thinking, why not just call all my remaining plate appearances automatic outs as long as we still win—"
And you think that's easy, you lunatic... rose to the tip of the manager's tongue — and had to be swallowed, because the player's numbers were simply too good. Such was the sorrow of reality: the guy with the numbers became the boss.
Even before first pitch, the mutual sourness from the last incident had carried all the way into this game. First came the visiting-team amp — your guys blasted an amp at our home park last time, so I guess I get to do the same, right? — and then, the instant Noh In-seong stepped onto the mound, a massive wall of boos.
---WOOOOOO...!!
"Mmm. The aura of a true superstar."
Hate me all you want, you ghouls — what exactly do you think you can do about it? All I can say is, I hope heckling me at the ballpark relieves even a little of your stress... though if you lose, it'll only pile higher.
That was what Noh In-seong thought, deep inside the swelling chorus of boos.
Of course, the booing died out the moment the first pitch left his hand.
"...Son of a bitch, what is wrong with that kid? The more abuse he takes, the more velocity he gains in exchange for his lifespan?"
"From what I've heard, he's apparently still growing, height and bones and all. His... growth plates haven't closed yet, supposedly."
First pitch of the game: a four-seam at 167.1 km/h, buried deep and inside. The leadoff hitter's face went suddenly white, then flushed red, then pale green again. As if seized by a sudden, urgent desire to surrender, the man who'd been barking imperiously at the rookie catcher turned remarkably gentle.
"Haha, hey, let's fight this fair and square. Deal?"
Of course, by the time he'd swung through two more pitches and trudged off after striking out, he was furious enough to snap his bat over his knee — but at the very least, the opposing team could no longer bully Lim Jae-min in the batter's box.
"You think I'm giving the signs? The pitcher over there with the personality that shattered before the game even started — he's the one calling them."
Meanwhile, the perfect scam material was busy throwing baseballs on the mound, and —
"No, I never once called for a pitch inside... that was breaking-ball timing."
"...Seriously?"
"That's why I squared it up flat-footed — I figured it'd be reverse pitching. I'm the victim here, you know."
Match the scam material with a lie or two of his own, and a five-star con came together in minutes. Even if the opponent sensed something was off, everyone carried the same prejudice — a rookie catcher fresh out of high school wouldn't dare pull something like that — and prisoners of that prejudice kept surrendering strikeouts and outs, one after another.
"That last one was pretty good, wasn't it?"
"...Fine. I'll admit it. I can't tell whether you're a good catcher — but you're at least a good con artist."
The expert in physical violence and verbal abuse had finally acknowledged the young swindler beginning to reveal his true talents.
"...But do something about your hitting, you insane Slap Hitter bastard."
"......"
To be clear, he'd only been grading the catching. Grounding into a double play with the bases loaded and nobody out was something that simply could not be forgiven.
And so, as Lim Jae-min jogged back in after his inning-ending twin kill, Noh In-seong gave him a swift, vigorous kick in the rear.