66. Collision on the Basepath
"What the hell am I supposed to do about this?! That lunatic came out of nowhere and ran me over!"
"Ran you over? YOU'RE the one who popped out of my blind spot all of a sudden — what was I supposed to do?!"
Going by words alone, with no context, it sounded like two drivers fender-bendering each other mid-drive.
And going by the situation rather than the words — well, a mid-drive collision it absolutely was.
"The kid's having a seizure right now! You stuck your shoulder out on purpose, didn't you?!"
"If I'd stuck my shoulder out, would he have ended up like THAT? He was what, three meters away?! My only crime is playing the infield in!"
The only difference was that this collision hadn't happened on a road, but between players racing along a narrow white baseline.
Noh In-seong and Jeong Yong-jun. Two men separated by an age gap so vast it could turn fertile soil into caustic earth had started trading insults.
Let's rewind a bit. Top of the fourth inning, nobody out, runner on first.
Andy had just walked a batter on four straight fastballs — a rare sight indeed.
He was normally a command artist, but on his off days the ball wouldn't touch the zone even by accident.
If baseball were a video game, the description card might as well have read, "Performs according to the roll of the dice."
Needless to say, the moment that four-pitch walk landed, the pitching coach and manager urgently signaled time. Manager, pitching coach, and the entire infield converged on the mound, turning a collective glare on Andy.
"Hey, Andy! Just pound the strike zone! This is going to take all day!"
"In-seong, quit talking out of your ass. I'm nowhere near a power pitcher!"
Ugh, this lunatic. If you had the command to thread it in and out whenever you pleased, you wouldn't be suffering like this in the first place.
Two pitches hovering around 40+ on the big-league scouting scale — league-average stuff. A four-seam fastball that fell just short. A pitcher who'd spent his days grinding against velocity limits, only to cross the ocean to Korea and post numbers that made a career. Andy Cage.
The so-called trash-arm pitchers — the ones who barely scraped by — the fact that at least one of them had actually tasted major-league dirt on an expanded roster meant something. Either your command was elite, or your pitch values were.
But today, the command had gone off the rails, and of his entire arsenal only the changeup was still breathing.
Sinker, slider, curveball — all of them seemed to have been soaked limp by this humid, infuriating air, lifeless on arrival.
"Then throw a decoy pitch, you lunatic! Why on earth is your pattern outside fastball, then inside?!"
"I was planning to land both of them!"
"Oh, for god's sake, this is a disaster. A complete disaster...!!"
He'd felt achy and off since this morning. So this was what it had been foreshadowing, huh.
Well, look at that — the universe delivering today's fortune in the most spectacularly annoying way possible. Thanks a bunch, body of mine.
That was when he felt it. Something urgent stirring in the opposing dugout.
The opposing third-base coach was frantically waving his hands down there, too.
The opposing manager — normally a man wedged into the corner of the dugout behind sunglasses that didn't suit him at all — had taken the sunglasses off and even stepped out of the dugout.
...Ahh. So that's the play.
Calling for a maneuver the moment Ji Yong-jae reached base for the first time today — they wanted to test his condition. Get him running toward second, read his reaction, then feed Ji Yong-jae the next instruction.
Well then. Should I toss out some juicy trash talk to keep him from settling in?
He flashed the sign to Andy — the opposing dugout is moving, we're playing the infield in. Once Andy's acknowledgment came back, he'd drift slowly forward...
"BUNT!"
The opposition slapped down a surprise safety squeeze toward first.
Jo In-soo's voice cracked with urgency. As Andy lunged forward, scooped the ball, and fired to first, In-seong came in and covered second base. Textbook defense.
'Well, well. Look at this kid. He's not even watching where he's going.'
Ji Yong-jae was sprinting desperately toward second. Was he going to read the play and try for third?
His head was turned not toward In-seong, but toward Andy, who'd just fielded the ball.
By the look of it, he planned to take a wide loop around to his left — his right, from In-seong's perspective — but apparently the heavens had just handed him an opening.
If life gives you lemons, you'd better turn it into a chart-topping song.
Miss a golden opportunity like this? Hang up the cleats, pal.
"Eyes this way, buddy. You're a TERRIBLE driver, you know that?"
Arm locked stiff, shoulder shoved out, glove extended toward first base as if he genuinely intended to take a throw.
Only then did the words seem to reach Ji Yong-jae's ears, and he whipped his head around toward second base in a panic.
He was clearly planning to swing wide to avoid In-seong and lean his body toward third.
"...Huh?!"
Not a chance. My body's already there.
"Huh? What 'huh'? Wipe the drool."
Keep your mouth open like that and you'll bite your tongue off. Consider that my minimal mercy.
CRACK—!!
Somewhere between Noh In-seong's shoulder and his bicep, Ji Yong-jae's neck got caught.
A violent collision. His neck took the full force of it, and breathing became impossible.
His legs shot up toward the sky, then — like Newton, who grasped gravity upon watching an apple drop and realized it applies to stock markets too — his body came crashing down, utterly powerless.
Like the fabled apple descending on a head that had been pondering whether to leap from a branch, he fell limp and unresisting.
There was no way to break a fall in that position. The back of his head greeted the ground with what could only be described as enthusiasm.
What followed was unconsciousness. And when the stretchered-off Ji Yong-jae finally came to...
"Doctor! The patient's regained consciousness!"
"Sir, do you know where you are? Can you tell me your name and occupation?"
"Uh... uhhh...?"
He was on a hospital bed, and not a good one. Acute concussion, neck injury, and a sprained left ankle.
And so another starting player of the Incheon Astros was traded — straight into the hospital ward.
The home plate umpire deliberated. But not for long.
"Noh In-seong — obstruction! The runner was already breaking for third, so this is obstruction!"
"Excuse me, I made a completely legitimate catch attempt!"
Noh In-seong flailed his hands frantically, arguing his innocence.
"Legitimate or not, that doesn't mean you weren't an obstacle in the runner's path to third!"
"...Tch. Understood. I won't protest any further, umpire."
He read the umpire's mood — a man clearly itching to shut this down quickly and firmly. Protesting further here would gain him nothing. This was the moment his long playing career's accumulated street smarts paid dividends.
Rules are rules. And everything that happens during a game is legal unless the rulebook explicitly forbids it.
But of course, from Incheon's perspective, swallowing that logic was another matter entirely.
Jeong Yong-jun, veins bulging, stormed over to the umpires.
"That lunatic ran into my player with INTENT! That is a flagrant violation of sportsmanship!"
"Intent, I can't speak to. Contact during the play is obstruction. Who's your pinch runner?"
"Who cares about the pinch runner right now?! Eject that madman from the game immediately!"
Jeong Yong-jun pressed the umpire with a face split fifty-fifty between wounded injustice and blind fury.
"The only one getting ejected here is YOU! A call already made does not get reversed! Manager Jeong Yong-jun — EJECTED!"
"...WHAT?! Is this right?! Is this what you call justice?! Is this even a RULING?!"
His coaches physically restrained him as the ejection was enforced.
The back of a man who plainly did not know when to quit was not a pretty sight.
When you say a team's entire center line has been wiped out, it usually means that team has ceased to function.
"A pain-in-the-ass catcher to develop, a center fielder anchoring the outfield defense, and a second baseman — the third most important infielder on the team?"
'Wait. Has the team given up on this season and decided to feed at-bats to prospects while pinning hopes on next year?'
'Correct answer! REBUILDING!'
'No wait, not rebuilding? Then a retool? But who the hell sells off their entire center line in a retool year?'
Nobody. If a team's center line is sellable in the first place, that team is the Superstars.
And the one man who could have calmed the chaos swallowing his players had been relocated — via ejection — to the stands. Banished to a place where he could no longer exert any influence from the opposing dugout.
"Hey, In-seong. I had no idea you hated opposing teams this much."
Jo In-soo eyed him with genuine concern.
"Take your hand off your mouth, please. Where exactly are you performing?"
"Ah, you got me. But listen up."
Jo In-soo's mouth hung open toward the heavens, tracing not even a half-moon but the sliver of a crescent.
They must have instinctively realized it: there wasn't a shred of fight left in them.
Opposing fans shuffling dejectedly toward the parking lot, cheers abandoned. The opposing pitcher, eyes glazed over, mechanically handing the ball to the next man.
Kim Jun-soo, grinning ear to ear after his base hit.
And an absolutely furious opponent shoving Kim Jun-soo... wait, what?
"Hey! What the hell! Get out of here!"
"Who is this guy?! A bench-clearing breaking out NOW of all times?!"
Players came pouring out of both dugouts in a rush. Everyone had thought the day's drama was over — turns out it was just getting started.
The start of the war-like three-game series was nowhere near finished.
For Kim Jun-soo, a base hit was the surest daily guarantee of his spot in the lineup.
He'd always been weak at the plate, forever one slump away from losing his starting job — and in fact, Noh In-seong had already taken a position from him. If only Song Jin-wook hadn't been so hopeless in the field, Kim Jun-soo's innings as a starter would have been limited to the days Noh In-seong took the mound.
For a hitter with offense that meager, every single hit was a bargaining chip: my bat's alive, so leave third base to me.
To a man in his position, even a gift-wrapped hit like that one was precious. He was feeling so good he raised a single arm in celebration.
"What's with this punk? Hey! You just hit a single and you're doing a CELEBRATION?"
"We're up by double digits and this idiot's fanning the flames of a house fire as hard as he can?"
The opposing pitcher and first baseman came stalking over, rage radiating off them.
"Uh... uhh...?!"
Kim Jun-soo wanted to scream: I don't care about your score, my roster spot is what matters here! But common sense was far away and fists were always close — especially for a light-hitting slap hitter with no power to back himself up.
Fortunately, standing right there were Noh In-seong, his face twisted into something demonic, and Dustin, a freshly rising deity of the team.
And thanks to the crowd of bodies packed between them, the whole thing fizzled into a momentary incident. They'd already lost the game — push any further, and next it would be that lunatic winding up a punch.
From Incheon's standpoint, they'd delivered their warning, and in their own minds their fighting spirit had been thoroughly rekindled.
"Alright! Tomorrow we WIN! No excuses!"
OOOOHHH—!!
Inside the Incheon clubhouse, everyone huddled together, stoking the flames of determination for tomorrow's game.
"Let's be honest here. Why exactly is a big deficit the one situation where you 'can't afford to lose'?"
Noh In-seong carried that flame straight into the enemy's house. And threw in a jerrycan of accelerant, free of charge.
"Today, Incheon openly admitted that the moment they fall behind, they're a trash team with no capacity to come back."
A remark dripping with the implication: if that's not who you are, then apologize for how you behaved today.
"In a league where teams have shown they can flip a 15-run deficit — and you're telling people not to score?"
And on top of that, the sheer audacity of attacking the very team that had suffered that record comeback.
"What, should we just change the rules so the first team to score one run automatically wins?"
— Why bother with all that painful throwing and hitting? A trash sport that can't even mount a comeback.
He'd gone so far as to propose reducing the great game of baseball to a pointless game of catch.
By the next day, when the Astros tuned in, Noh In-seong had left an entire arsenal of spirit-crushing remarks waiting for them.
"...No, um, we were actually hoping you'd talk about the injuries today, and the incident with our manager..."
"Not sorry about any of that, and I hope it hurts for a long, long time. Serves you right."
Refusing to answer the one question he was actually asked, Noh In-seong heaped his rice bowl with everything he wanted to say and walked off.
This was Noh In-seong now — a man who'd started conducting interviews entirely on his own terms.