Stand Up to Me Wherever You Dare
A man who won hearts on both sides — shredding the opposing batter's mentality with his mouth while dutifully shredding his own team's out count at the plate. For all that, Lim Jae-min's pitch-calling was, surprisingly, textbook.
Step one: identify where the hitter is weakest, or which pitch he can't touch.
Take Jeong Him-chan, standing in the box right now. A man whose defensive value had cratered so badly — the range, the glovework, all of it unwatchable — that he'd been forcibly converted into a designated hitter. But his bat had earned its keep, and he was a hitter whose production leaned heavily on the long ball.
'Low and away, out to three-quarters of the plate: .284. Up top: .245. But lift it all the way to the top of the zone and he climbs back to .260.'
'Against four-seamers over 155 km/h, his slugging drops across the board while his walk count rises.'
'Not much curveball data, but his career average against them sits under .200.'
'After two strikes, he has a tendency to lock his focus down on pitches that drop.'
Having shoved every scrap of data into his skull, the next step was to combine it.
First pitch — a cutter, low and away.
"Strike!"
It clipped the corner by a hair. An enormous amount hinged on that one strike.
Step two: if the hitter doesn't react, find out whether he couldn't hit it or simply chose to take.
"You swung at that one last time, though, didn't you?"
"Aigoo, my eyes aren't what they used to be today."
He was grinning slyly, and that told you roughly whether it was confidence or a con job. This bastard had never intended to swing in the first place. Which meant his focus was parked on the inside of the plate.
Several of Jo In-soo's tips began auto-playing in the back of his brain.
'If it looks like he's sitting on the inside pitch, pound the next one away too — and watch his feet.'
If his weight was already leaning inside, there was no way he could get to a pitch on the inner half. Sure, a hitter could cheat and pull the bottom hand off the bat early, but that wasn't a technique that worked on Noh In-seong.
Pitch two — a four-seamer, out over the plate. The fastball ran the same direction again, but this time off the edge entirely.
"Swing — strike!"
Now it was certain. The focus had been away from the very start. His footwork had been far too naked about it.
Which meant all that remained was one breaking ball on the inner half that he hadn't been shown yet — one pitch, and the game was over.
Pitch three should be, obviously, a slider falling off the plane from the outside corner...
'You absolute lunatic, did you forget the low-and-away focus data?'
Dissatisfaction spread across Noh In-seong's face. Nobody's mug could be that honest. The PitchCom alarm in his ear kept chiming away — cutter, cutter, cutter... — until it grated.
'Aoh, you pigheaded steel-cable bastard. Fine. Throw whatever the hell you want.'
Lim Jae-min gave up. No — wait, how on earth does In-soo hyung get THIS madman to throw what he calls for?
Pitch three — a cutter, back on the inside corner.
"Swing, strike! You're out!"
[Haha, Noh In-seong deceives the hitter three ways and retires him. There's simply nothing to be done.]
[It might look like the batter went down to three fastballs dancing in and out, but in truth they were deceiving each other.]
[The first two pitches played with his read of the break point, and the third went right where he wasn't looking. The detail is... superb.]
[And that's the top of the third — the Gwangju Tigers go down one-two-three. We are live at Jamsil!]
"...This punk classmate of mine is actually pretty useful?!" Noh In-seong marveled.
It wasn't the rock-solid stability of a Jo In-soo, but the intelligence was tailor-made for reeling in suckers. And while he lacked Jo In-soo's dagger-sharp gift for trash talk, he could commit flat-out fraud at the plate with a face of pure shamelessness.
In-seong couldn't speak to the long-term plan, but he figured a serviceable second option was already on the table. "I wasn't the second pick for nothing, after all."
That said, watching the kid get cocky off this much made his bile rise. "He has grounded into two double plays now, so maybe they gave him that second pick for a reason after all..."
Worse, this latest one had come with a runner on and one out — which meant the ads got summoned.
The kid had gone quiet on his own, well aware he'd personally posted a two-at-bat, two-rally-dousing stat line — which was, frankly, very rookie of him in every possible way. Noh In-seong gave the greenhorn catcher, who still had ten thousand miles of road ahead of him, a boot up the backside.
"Quit moping and hurry up and cram the rest of that data into your skull!"
"Hrk—!"
Thanks to his own starting pitcher delivering the kick, Lim Jae-min came one squat away from developing every catcher's most chronic condition.
Noh In-seong had taken care of seven innings and one run today. When he came down off the mound, the score stood 3–1.
'Another productive outing, ugh. That Lim Jae-min kid couldn't gun down a single steal and let a runner into scoring position on top of it...'
He grumbled his way through the shower, sat through the cryotherapy, changed, and stepped back out into the clubhouse —
"...My win just vanished into thin air? The hell is this, some magic show?"
3–3. The air in the dugout was foul. With the Doubles down to their final turn at bat, everyone was moving with desperate urgency.
Noh In-seong, unable to bear the grief of watching his win bonus ascend into the heavens and become a star, was taking it out on his classmate. Not that Jae-min was the true target — no, Yeom Dong-goo, that cursed third-round bullpen bastard, had gone and pulled off something spectacular yet again. A catastrophic 0.1 innings, two runs surrendered, yanked the instant he issued one more baserunner and replaced by Jeon In-soo. Jeon In-soo, with that signature glacial delivery of his, peppered the strike zone and successfully devoured the two remaining outs.
After that eighth-inning nightmare, the bullpen options available to Jeong Im-taek amounted to exactly one man.
"Aoh, I've been out here way too much!"
Kim Jin-hong trotted out yet again. This appearance locked in his consecutive-day conditions — he was unusable tomorrow. And to top it off, the next inning would start from the bottom of the order: worst-case scenario. A pinch hitter was an option, but of course he couldn't waste one on Jae-min's spot.
"I mean... I *can* go up there, you know."
Jo In-soo made his pitch — obviously use me as the pinch hitter! — but:
"And do what when you get there? If this goes to extras, you'll be squatting right back down in the mask and the gear."
Jae-min had caught today because Jo In-soo's backside had developed a serious problem of its own; as a pinch hitter, the captain was worth less than nothing.
If only the eight-hole doesn't ground into yet another double play... Jeong Im-taek found himself praying to a shoe he didn't even believe was his size.
"All right, Jae-min. There is exactly one way you survive today even if you ground into a double play."
Oh, as expected, the master lecturer is the Old Man himself... And with that, Noh In-seong launched his masterclass at Jae-min, who sat down in front of him.
"The opposition is bringing in Lim Jin-hong this inning, guaranteed. Better than fifty percent of what he throws is the four-seamer."
Uh-huh. And? So what do I do? ...He didn't get it. My stupid classmate...
"Just wait, idiot."
"What?!"
To be precise: wait until a pitch came right down the middle. Stand there, do nothing — and the moment one drifted over the heart of the plate, gather up the energy of the entire universe and swing from your heels.
Dismissing this "great advice" — what kind of instruction is 'watch the ball, hit the ball'? — Jae-min strode to the on-deck circle.
Hey, I never lied to you.
Lim Jin-hong. He shared a name with the Doubles' own Kim Jin-hong, and did the exact opposite of everything he did. A four-seam-heavy power pitcher who threw a slider with a razor-thin break angle and a changeup with barely any velocity separation. And — most important of all — a pitcher who threw more balls than strikes.
Look. There's already one man on base.
[Ah, ball four is declared. With the runner on first, Lim Jae-min steps into the batter's box.]
[It's the same pattern every time out. Last season the slider's velocity gap was so small it played like a cutter.]
[This season the break angle has improved a touch, but it's slowed down considerably — and it looks like every hitter has caught on.]
[Two double plays and a sacrifice fly in his plate appearances today. The bat feel is not exactly crisp.]
[But it's his fourth at-bat. On average, wouldn't you grant him about one hit?]
[I suspect the Doubles would love exactly that. And the first pitch is a ball.]
At first, Lim Jae-min had written Noh In-seong's words off as natural-talent-freak gibberish — but deep down, he'd understood them.
'Below-average BB/9. Above-average K/9.'
A pitcher who handed out walks like a vending machine but could still pile up strikeouts. Which meant that when he wanted to, he could put the ball in the strike zone.
'So he was saying: turn on it if it comes over the middle, and ignore everything else.'
Was the guy unexpectedly diligent about his data? Well — fair enough. You can't hit well if you don't even know what kind of pitcher you're facing, can you?
While these thoughts circulated, the count was already three balls without a single strike.
[Aha... no intention of challenging him, I see?]
[Well, against a hitter who's grounded into two double plays today, I suppose it does feel like he's making this harder than it needs to be...]
An ordinary hitter would choose to take the next pitch and see. But Lim Jae-min, a man who had trusted the data, was built a little differently. Whether it was because he had, subconsciously, believed Noh In-seong's word — or simply because the data said a pitcher buried in the count comes hunting for a strike —
—CRAACK!
[HE HIT IT! It's carrying! Carrying——!! The wall... IT'S OVER THE WALL! LIM JAE-MIN'S WALK-OFF TWO-RUN——!!]
[He didn't miss the pitch they crowded him with! No slugging punch, so they stuffed it in there — and he swings like he's been sitting on it all night!]
[Even with no power to speak of, it was more than enough to just clear the fence! The Seoul Doubles take Game One in walk-off fashion!]
Lim Jae-min had decorated his first career home run as a walk-off. Unable to quite believe he'd been the one to do it, he stood frozen for a beat — then began hopping up and down, beside himself.
"Whack him! Beat him!"
"Woo-hoo! Jae-min, congrats!"
"If it weren't for this bastard, we'd have ended it ages ago... Ah — In-soo hyung! Why aren't YOU hitting him?"
"In-seong, when a man hits a walk-off, you congratulate him. What is wrong with you..."
He'd come jogging home only to get pummeled by the entire roster — and just like that, a magic spell wiped every trace of emotion from the moment. His beat-up backside throbbed.
"You lost the win when they scored after you came out in the seventh. Did that sting?"
"Like hell it did. I mean — obviously I trusted them to shut it down, and I walk out of the shower and it's tied."
Today's official interview slot belonged to Lim Jae-min by right of his first career walk-off home run, but the reporters swarmed Noh In-seong too — the man who, despite the carnage at the Parents' Day game, had simply gone home. He'd said a few words at the following day's game, but nobody had managed to ask the one question that mattered.
Once the standard questions about tonight's game were out of the way, one reporter stepped up to take point.
"Do you intend to keep playing defense at second base against left-handed pitchers going forward?"
Politely worded, sure — but it amounted to: Are you planning to muscle in on another man's position at second base? Noh In-seong answered with all the politeness the question deserved. That is to say, none.
"Hard to say, sir. There are some dangerous slides out there — I might've put my glove on the wrong hand out of pure fright, you never know."
An obvious lie. He had quite literally broadcast himself breaking in his glove on national television.
"And as for that pitiful injury — I can only regard it as an unfortunate accident that occurred in the course of play."
Which was to say: don't get hit and come crying about it.
"In any event, this sort of unfortunate accident seems like it'll only occur when... hmm, one of our players gets hurt, or something dangerous happens to me."
For an instant, a single image flashed through every reporter's mind. Not a scene from the sports pages — something far older.
'...Mutually Assured Destruction?'
'What the hell. Is this... the Cold War?'
"So in short — kindly don't pull that sort of thing unless you absolutely must. I'd like to see a lot less of myself camped out at second base."
And with that, Noh In-seong formally declared his doctrine: not a retaliatory nuclear strike, but a retaliatory throw.