The Human Thermometer
A person's psychology, more often than not, comes down to one simple variable: whether or not they have any breathing room.
Aggression usually reared its head when someone was cornered psychologically, or when life had handed them some fresh disaster.
Conversely, the easygoing ones were almost always people whose lives were going smoothly and peacefully.
"...Then what the hell are these bastards?"
Lunch was mandatory — everyone gathered to eat and refuel their energy. I had a piece of grilled mackerel in my mouth and my phone in my hand, and it turned out that while I hadn't been looking, my social media had been absolutely raided.
Obviously I'd trample your lives and pocket my stats, you doomed false-dilemma extremist bastards...
While I was busy replying to each and every one of the assorted shitposts and curse-filled tirades, someone sat down across from me.
"Wow, these bastards. Been a while since my SNS got trashed like this."
The hero of yesterday's decisive homerun — the swing that had sealed the win — strode into the banquet hall where the lunch spread was laid out.
"Welcome, In-soo hyung. Did they hit your SNS too?"
"Yeah. Managed to dodge filters that catch pretty much everything else just so they could curse me out. Bet it's the gamblers."
In-soo hyung had been in a fantastic mood ever since cracking his first three-run homer in ages and finally landing an interview opportunity.
But from his dorm room, the gamblers' furious abuse had started pouring in and hadn't stopped all day, until the endless flood of notification chimes had robbed him of sleep entirely — at which point he'd taken, in his words, extreme measures.
"Though by 'extreme measures' I mean I just physically turned the phone off."
So he'd slept with the phone powered down and only switched it back on this morning, apparently. No wonder the guy who usually bolts out the door the second the buffet opens to eat his side dishes while they're still hot was slower than me today.
"Do they not realize I'm never letting these people off the hook? Why do they keep running their mouths?"
"Kid, those people don't have a 'downside' as a concept."
These are guys who'll throw money they literally need to survive into a game and then think about consequences — you think they're scared of a lawsuit?
It was a remark steeped in the hard-won wisdom of a man who'd swallowed every flavor of abuse the pros had to offer.
Needless to say, I disagreed. I may have no wisdom of life, but I live a life that could at least render you some broth. Even the bastard who'd grin and demand a broth-sharing agreement if you boiled his own father would howl bloody murder at the suggestion of boiling him. Shouldn't people like that be dragged down into the abyss first, so the money meant for their bets ends up spent somewhere else entirely?
Noh In-seong felt not a shred of sympathy for them.
Rather than offering sympathy, Noh In-seong had chosen to shatter the begging bowl on the spot.
That day, plenty of people joked — in words only — that at this rate the gamblers would soon be getting to feel the warmth of the Han River for themselves.
"Why check the water temperature with your mouths when we've got human thermometers in such abundant supply?"
It didn't take long for Noh In-seong to personally shove them into a beautiful, big-sized river at a payout multiplier of 380-to-1.
You point a finger and shout, There's a harmful human being right there! — and just like that, a gambler finds himself served with a question.
All thanks to the miraculous pace of an era where the gap between insult and lawsuit had shrunk to a single day.
The army of gamblers snapping photos of their court summons and scattering questions across the ocean of information grew busier by the hour.
As for their ears — all that remained ringing in them was a long, high-pitched eeeeee of tinnitus, and the droning buzz of mail-delivery drones circling round and round.
The second game against Changwon descended into a clusterfuck of two teams flailing at each other along entirely different vectors. We lost.
Not that anyone was particularly at fault — it was simply a game where both lineups' batting timing had gone completely off the rails.
If the previous day had been a deranged, mutually-assured-destruction Cold War nuclear standoff, today felt more like two armies cowering in their trenches playing at a fake war — the score stayed that barren.
"Good lord, we lost 2-to-1. What on earth did I do wrong?"
Jeong In-woo, yesterday's starter, came sidling up to me wearing the most aggrieved expression on the planet, but what was I supposed to say to that?
"Uh... I got a hit AND drove in a run, though? Why are you giving me grief about it?"
Truthfully, if anyone else on the team had managed a single homer, we probably could've gone to extra innings — but I shamelessly kept that to myself.
"That's exactly why I'm talking to you, isn't it? I haven't exchanged a single word with anyone else today."
An answer of unfathomable absurdity came back from Jeong In-woo.
This unhinged sulky bastard... so that's why he'd been hunched alone in a corner all day.
From a man normally too busy tormenting his own younger brother to sit still, I'd genuinely assumed he was behaving for once and quietly clocking out — turns out he'd spent the whole time whining to everyone within earshot that Hmph! Jeong In-woo is sulking! with the emotional maturity of a third-grader.
"Your brother would probably look at you and think, 'How does a bastard like this even exist,' and write you off as hopeless."
"Don't worry. My brother already looks at me every day and thinks exactly that."
Way to brag, you bastard.
Noh In-seong resolved, once again, to become a slightly better older brother than that.
Some people forget a loss the moment it happens. Others can't shake it off no matter how hard they try.
I'm infinitely closer to the former. Aside from losing games where I'm the starter, nothing much angers me.
But this bastard... this hyung, apparently, was a different breed. Ugh. He clings like wet seaweed.
"Tch. Must be nice being In-seong. You can always go get yourself a hit in your own starts."
As everyone waited in the visiting clubhouse for the manager to arrive, Jeong In-woo kept begging for my attention right in front of me.
"Hyung, I'm the one starting today. Keep annoying me like that and I might just drill one straight at you on a hit-and-run."
Plastic material, sure — but the kind that wraps around your hand so satisfyingly? Wouldn't getting smacked with that be just lovely. Hmm?
"Gah..!!"
Jeong In-woo went sprinting for the trainer's room at full panty-run speed...
and the instant he burst through the door, shouts of "Ack! I'm so sorry!" and "Hey, you punk!" rang out.
"What is with that kid, bolting that fast? You're telling me a guy who threw seven innings yesterday looks that fresh?!"
The manager finally filed in, hauling both the starting catcher and the backup along with him. What took you so long, exactly?
"Alright! I bring you good news and bad news!"
"""Ooooh..!!"""
Everyone had been quietly shooting me uneasy glances all day, muttering that facing a pitcher they'd never seen, with no real data to go on, made them deeply reluctant to start swinging — another near-scoreless game, they figured.
And now the manager had walked in actually carrying data. Every eye on him was shining with something close to reverence.
"The good news is, this guy has been blowing off personal training AND team practice right up until now, and doing nothing but drinking!"
Personal training builds the body and maintains condition; team practice feeds team chemistry. Skipping all of it to do nothing at all? At minimum, it meant baseball wasn't exactly this man's first priority.
"Damn. At that point baseball's basically just a way to cover his bar tab. Nothing more, nothing less."
"And he thought he could survive in this league like that? Is there anything going on in that head of his? Honestly."
Just as hope began, petal by petal, to bloom across the room —
"And the bad news — worse than bad, game's-over bad — is that this bastard still throws a rock-steady 158 to 160 kilometers per hour, on the dot, all the way up to pitch sixty."
"""......"""
Beside the footage of the bleary-eyed Hispanic pitcher mechanically firing pitch after pitch at Changwon's second-team hitters, the pitch-speed readout from the scouting data scrolled across the screen as subtitles, solemnly confirming every word out of Jung Im-taek's mouth.
"Well, what can you do? The sky's not exactly fair, and you all knew that already."
Talent is something you're born with. And no matter how thoroughly a man rots that talent in real time, the ones who are good are simply good.
A truth that applies across baseball, basketball, soccer, and every sport known to man descended upon them like a verdict.
"...And where is Alves?"
"He, uh... came in quite a bit late."
Having barely salvaged a win the day before, Changwon manager Kim Chang-soo had been denied even a moment to exhale before the next crisis landed — and his face creased all over again.
"Good grief... should I be thanking him for at least showing up to work, or chewing him out..."
"Well, at least he's drinking inside the hotel this time."
— At his last club, in Japan, he got released after a full-scale brawl in a bar outside the team dormitory, after all.
The words came from his own hand-picked pitching coach, but the consideration-free fact buried itself in Kim Chang-soo's ribs with brutal precision.
"Why is it that whenever our front office brings in one good foreign pitcher, they have to balance it out by importing one piece of garbage...?"
The one who'd fled back to his own country before the weather even warmed up had been bad enough, but this emergency transfusion was practically bacteria-grade.
'The numbers are excellent. At this league level, only a handful of hitters can touch a fastball like that.'
That was how the analytics team had sold it — bring him in, and if they could just make him usable, he'd be a magnificent joker card.
Fair enough. Live batting-practice data against second-team pitchers doesn't lie, at least.
"The problem is that this bastard is a troublemaker with genuine psychological issues, and not a single soul on the roster likes him."
The blatant contempt in people's eyes, the total absence of commitment to anything, the glazed-over stare and nightly drowning in booze.
Then rolling out of bed at noon the next day, shambling onto the field, half-assing his warmup, and wandering off to throw up because his stomach was 'acting up.'
"We're in the middle of a rebuilding season as it is. I'm sure this makes a wonderful role model for the young players."
He hadn't brought in a joker card — he'd brought in a card that was going to turn the manager into the joker. Into this situation, Kim Chang-soo exhaled a long, deflating sigh.
"We're live from Changwon NC Park, where the Dinosaurs and the Doubles are playing game six of their season series — welcome, everyone!"
"Yes, hello out there, fans. Game one went to the visiting club, game two to the home side, so the series is split so far."
"Changwon's probably feeling it's about time they started climbing back up the ladder, wouldn't you say? And they've just swapped out their foreign pitcher."
"Yes — Alves. He was with a Tokyo club until quite recently, actually. Among anyone who follows Nippon Professional Baseball, he's famous — for all the wrong reasons."
Even for Lee Chang-young, a commentator who had watched every game under the sun, this was a familiar player.
A setup man whose stuff was genuinely decent — but who was far better known for his escapades than his ERA.
"In Japan, he hit a batter with a pitch and was laughing about it, and when the opposing side got angry, he went and plunked the next batter too!"
"He's also just the type with a freakish gift for painting the inside corner — how do I even put this."
A man famous, in interviews, for offering not a shred of remorse: 'The hitters should just dodge my pitches, shouldn't they?'
"...Huh?"
"Something about this... feels strangely familiar."
It was after the top of the first inning had ended in a three-up, three-down retirement, and the visiting team took the field to set up their defense, that the commentator and the caster finally arrived at their answer.
"...Oh. Right. You're absolutely right."
"We did have one more pitcher of that exact type, didn't we. This one has no lifestyle scandals or adjustment issues, but..."
A pitcher who had, at the very least, claimed a vastly larger body count — Noh In-seong — strode up onto the mound.