'The All-Star Break Is Just Time Off'
Noh In-seong's statements had always left a trail of chaos in their wake, as a matter of course.
This time, it was a little worse than usual.
- What the hell does this punk think the All-Star Game the fans vote for even is, to be saying stuff like that?!
- Aha, I guess he figures he'll get in every year no matter what. Fine, then don't vote for him.
- Seriously, the guy says crap like this when everyone else would kill to go. There's something seriously wrong with him.
For players, making the All-Star Game means your name goes in the record books — it's an honor voted by your peers, so of course people want it.
And Noh In-seong was saying the exact opposite, so naturally, the reactions weren't pretty.
***
After the first home game against Daegu wrapped up, I headed out for a meal with my coupon-mate, Mr. Song.
The coupon expired if we didn't use it by today, so what choice did I have, really?
"Damn it, why do I have to be at a family restaurant with a dude whose leg hair grows in thick as a forest?"
"...Funny thing, didn't YOU suggest this in the first place, you punk?"
Sure, I struck first because I knew Song Jin-wook would bring it up eventually. He's got a girlfriend, after all — got to act all superior.
Two more suckers hooked by the 50% off bait ordered pasta to go with the meat, then started stuffing their faces with complimentary bread smeared in assorted jams.
Silence held for a while.
Only after the steaks arrived did the conversation begin, and Song Jin-wook was the one to open.
"The All-Star Game. You seriously don't want it? Everyone else is desperate to get voted in. What are you, some kind of celebrity syndrome case?"
"The All-Star Game? Ah, you mean that tea-party playdate."
...Don't look at me like that. What, did you expect me to say something about 'the honor of being a player'?
I mean, sure, plenty of guys want to get voted in. Plenty...
"Not me? I'd rather use that time to rest, goof off, and prep for the second half of the season. It's not like making it earns me anything."
"B-but there's prize money! The fans love it!"
There it is. Look how desperate he's getting.
"Right, *the fans* love it. Me, not so much. Everyone else goes out there grinning and having a ball."
To me, baseball was murder... ah, no, that's not quite it.
It was a sport where one man stepped on another's crushed body to climb up and savor the winner's feast.
Winner Takes All. No sport suited the phrase better.
The lunatics who racked their brains calculating WAR values to win, and the clubs who traded players by exploiting those lunatics.
Players collided along the way, managers feuded, everyone sprinted full-tilt until they dropped —
and in the end, the guy whose fingers touched the finish line a fraction of a second sooner was the one who won.
"'Come one and all, enjoy the festival!' — in a sport like that, what the hell does it mean to ME?"
Especially since, for my entire career, I was someone who had never once touched that finish line.
Someone thirstier for that line than anyone alive — and you want me to 'enjoy myself' at an All-Star Game I didn't even want to play in back then?
Everyone else can be happy all they want. I doubt I would be.
"And here's the most important part. Have you seen the list of guys who'd be on MY team?"
The guys whose ace status I'd crushed, the sell-everything merchants, the ones I'd laughed in the face of, the mercenary bastards.
"If I go, I bet we'd all have a real happy, smiley, fun time playing baseball. Wouldn't we?"
"...You know what's fascinating about you? The more I look, the more I think you're the first guy in the history of Korean baseball to draw this much aggro onto himself."
Mr. Song had a point. In the past, no one in Korea had lived as unapologetically himself as I did.
Noh In-seong laughed as he sliced into his steak. Hemoglobin oozed from under the knife — it was an eerie sight.
***
After the two of them polished off the steaks, the carb-heavy portion of the meal arrived.
Noh In-seong twirled his pasta around his fork as he spoke.
"Actually, here's the funny part. Since All-Star voting started, I've been racking up a surprising number of votes."
"Right, you're second overall."
Considering first place belonged to Daejeon's tragic ace, that was an abnormal vote share.
Any sane person would figure only a handful of people genuinely voted for me. At best, Doubles fans?
Who on earth would vote a guy who beat up his own team's players into the All-Star Game, keeping him from even playing?
"They probably just looked at the stats and went, 'Ah, our team's player can't leapfrog THIS guy! Better stick him in.'"
"...I hate dreamless bastards like you..."
Mr. Song, why are you staring at me like that? You're looking at me like you want to crossbreed me with a puppy.
"While everyone else's filming variety segments at the All-Star Game, am I supposed to play like some guy who got expelled from the majors for gambling?"
My name isn't Charlie, and I've got no hustle to speak of. But I can at least show these punks a different vector of hustle.
"The fist-swinging hustle. Its name: the study hustle."
It's the All-Star Game, after all — even if I actually hit someone, wouldn't everyone just shrug it off as all in good fun?
"What kind of lunatic spews this garbage mid-meal? Get a grip. You want to get ejected from the All-Star Game?"
Mr. Song, who'd been eating with me constantly these days, grumbled loudly — but no dice.
"Hey, Mr. Song, why don't you finish that dwaeji bulgogi pasta first? Your hitting's been looking pretty pathetic lately. Can't even eat properly anymore."
"Ugh, I was TRYING not to think about that. What a non-delicious human being I am."
Unlike his blooming romance and wedding preparations, his bat had gone completely cold lately.
In the third game in Suwon, while the team gleefully tossed Suwon into the thresher, he'd gone hitless all by himself.
He barely reached base on a four-pitch walk at the end — then, with his slow legs, got thrown out trying to score from second.
Weird how he was a red-hot bat before I got suspended, and turned into a wet noodle the moment I was gone.
And now it was just...
"If you're going one hit per ten at-bats, what are you even doing in the cleanup spot, you insane corpse of a bat...?!!"
"Hey, hey, sometimes the ball just doesn't come off the bat! It happens!"
Right. One hitter did get fans cheering despite one hit in twenty at-bats. But that was an overseas league.
Excuses, cowardly excuses, nothing but excuses — is that really you, Mr. Song, who used to hit so well? My heart weeps at your pettiness.
Thankfully, most of his hits were doubles or home runs. He was still being treated as a ceiling fan, though.
The treatment our team's three ceiling fans got after mostly swinging for the fences in today's game one against Daegu was savage.
The moment the game ended, all it took was one glance at the internet from a taxi, and the insults... whoa.
- Collect all the out counts these three motherfucking Songblower, DaebLOWER, and JobLOWER bastards serve up and you'd get free kkanpunggi
- Look, Joblower was always like that, he's got defensive value, leave him be. But Songblower, seriously...
- Song Jin-wook...sir...teacher's...defensive...metrics...are...all...red...sir...are you perhaps...a commie...??
If we'd lost, he'd have gotten a full day's worth of every insult in the book. But we won.
"You should be thanking the Cho Hyo-jin–Kim Jin-hong combo every single day for barely protecting that one-run lead, you ceiling fan."
"Tch... The ball seriously just isn't coming off the bat... Is my swing figured out?"
Figured out? The problem's standing there in plain sight. That guy's intelligence is about on par with Choon-sik's.
No, actually, Choon-sik's got the edge — even as a left fielder he at least doesn't commit errors.
Song Jin-wook, meanwhile, was treated like an idol stuffed full of every team's hopes and dreams the moment he stepped onto first base.
"Fine. That settles it. Mr. Song, you and I are having a meeting."
To the room of truth... no, wait — the room of baseball-IQ recharging.
"No! I don't wanna!"
What's there to hate about it, you insane ceiling fan? We've got to win, don't we?
Noh In-seong shoveled the rest of his pasta into his mouth in one go.
***
The next day, during pre-game practice.
"Alright, this is you when you were hitting red-hot."
"Damn, I looked good."
"Keep goofing off next to me and I might physically crumple that face of yours. Quiet."
Noh In-seong compared two videos side by side, pointing out the changes in Song Jin-wook's batting form.
"And THIS is current you — after a hot streak went to your head, swinging with a form so busted it's spraying all over the field like an idiot."
"...Isn't that a bit harsh?"
It wasn't mild roasting — it was closer to a fairly brutal dose of poison medicine.
"What's harsh about it? Your swing is completely different now. That's why the ball's not meeting the bat when you think it should — you're late on everything."
"...But if I consciously adjust my swing with that in mind, won't that produce a different result?"
"Then keep showing up late and popping flies and grounding out while you eat insults for breakfast."
"......"
Second year or not, Song Jin-wook was a professional — an athlete who knew his own body.
He unconsciously ran through a swing, and it didn't take him long to realize that the compact swing he used to whip through so fast in the minors had loosened up considerably.
"Alright. Time for tee work, I guess?"
"...Yes, sir, teacher..."
Amid a scattering of snickers from the rest of the team and mostly bewildered stares, the two men's grandiose tee-batting session began.
"Still spraying it everywhere, you insane spinning-top machine, you!"
"Ack! Stop hitting me! I got it! Wrists first, no swing! Wrists first, no swing!"
A grandiose tee-batting session, of course, lightly seasoned with the lash of love.
The sad reality was a second-year player being schooled by a first-year player.
What Song Jin-wook didn't know was that, in more ways than one, he was being rescued by a veteran of veterans muttering, 'Aigo, you poor, pitiful soul.'
***
After a mild dose of humiliation and a mostly butt-kicking regimen, the sights of the rifle known as Song Jin-wook were recalibrated.
TWAAAANG—!!
A smashing success.
"Wow, his hitting had really cooled off lately. Is this the cycle? He's climbing right back up."
"In-seong! In-seong! Fuck! You were RIGHT! I was the idiot whose swing was spraying all over the field!"
"...Don't say that into the camera, you moron...!!"
Song Jin-wook had been rescued by Noh In-seong from a situation that, left alone, would have spiraled into a full-blown slump.
"Hey, Song Jin-wook. So now you're learning THIS from Noh In-seong too? Here... take this."
"Yes? What's... what is this?"
"What's it look like? You cursed on a broadcast drone, genius. That's a one-million-won fine."
"...Ack!"
At the same moment, he received a fine notice that only Noh In-seong normally collected.
Like teacher, like student.
***
"Hey! In-seong! Check out my swing too!"
"Hey! In-SUNG! How about mine?!"
"Ugh, you insane ceiling fans..."
Ever since I'd ended Song Jin-wook's brief slump, everyone kept coming to find me — apparently word had spread in the strangest way.
Even that bastard Lim Jae-min came looking for me, and now Ttogi Kim Jun-soo too?
"No, you crazy bastards. Only the ones whose FORMS went wrong come here!"
Noh In-seong booted Dustin and Lim Jae-min in the rear, marched into the room, and turned on the TV.
[In All-Star voting, Noh In-seong is currently leading with first pla—]
Click—!
He turned it off again. Damn it. Nothing on here that helps me, huh.
The results unfolding were the exact opposite of what Noh In-seong had asked for.
His comments telling people not to vote for him had, naturally, angered some people.
But the internet is always full of angry lunatics. And voting happens on the internet.
First, most denizens of the internet come pre-installed with a 'Who do you think you are?' or 'What's it to you?' mindset.
- Whatever you say, if I vote for you, what are you gonna do about it lol
- Straight-up forcing Noh In-seong into the shortstop spot, instant upvote lol
Second, there were people thinking, 'Skip YOU and vote for our team's guy, and the stat comparison writes itself...'
- Uh... if we bench the guy hitting .400 and slot in our team's .240-hitting .240 hitter...
Your conscience just committed suicide. Come join the main gallery...
Have you lost your mind, you half-wit...
And finally, the most important point of all.
"If we vote him in, something hilarious is bound to happen, right?"
"That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Let's do it right now."
In the end, there were people who voted thinking: So the players hate each other's guts — is that OUR fault?
For the first time in history, Noh In-seong had officially logged a loss — against baseball fans who were, each and every one of them, born contrarian tree frogs.