Alright Boys, This One's Gonna Take Extra Innings (1)
Game 1 of the series had every fan watching with their hearts in their throats — the kind of game you take in while, colloquially speaking, clenching it out on the toilet.
An anti-anti-aging spectacle: one team gets a laugh in, you step away for the commercial break, and when you come back your face has sprouted fresh wrinkles.
Games like that are usually followed by the message boards getting overrun with every flavor of rage — gods here, worthless bastards there.
The man who came within a hair of becoming the dumbass who lost, and instead ended up as the dumbass who barely won at the very end of the Grizzlies game — Noh In-seong dragged his worn-out body home.
It was an ironic situation: the fatigue from the trip and everything that had piled up before it dwarfed whatever he'd picked up as a pinch hitter.
He stripped off his clothes, tossed them wherever, and hurled himself straight into bed. And then, the next day —
"Did you sleep well, sir..."
"There he is. You're up, In-seong? Go wash your hands. Time to eat."
It was a weekend morning, and Noh In-seong shuffled sluggishly out of his room and took his seat at the table. His father was already busy, eyes glued to the news while spooning side dishes into his mouth nonstop, and Siyeon — for reasons only she knew — sat at the table with a faintly sulky face, filleting her fish.
"Well, well? Isn't that Siyeon's homeroom teacher?"
His father nearly choked on a spoonful of tuna kimchi stew, eyes going wide at the screen.
"That's her, all right. Same suit from the other day... but she's only got a T-shirt on with it, so she must have gone straight there after work."
It was the kind of useless detail only another woman would notice.
"Mom, were you short on money for pork or something? Why on earth is there canned tuna in... KYAAK!"
WHACK!
"This child! How old are you, and you're still whining about side dishes...!!"
Siyeon had grumbled about a menu that leaned closer to a fish farm than a proper meal, and paid for it with a spoon to the head. In this, at least, their mother treated all children exactly the same regardless of gender. She'd only ever graduated to wielding the ladle because Noh In-seong, in a league of his own, kept pulling insane stunts.
His father was staying home today too, which made In-seong think dinner would be lavish — but his father had simply been craving home cooking. The usual stew, plus grilled fish. A generous spread of his mother's signature side dishes, topped with a mountain of fried eggs.
In his past life he'd only ever known hunger before moving out on his own; his Engel coefficient had always been punching through the ceiling. By this life's standards, this table beat most decent white-rice restaurants anyway — what was there to complain about?
"Hey, this spread would cost a fortune eating out. Say thank you and put it in your mouth."
Instead of his usual immature nonsense, Noh In-seong served up a remark as iron-rich as the spinach currently in his mouth. At the very least, he was a son who never caused trouble over food.
The defining feature of weekend baseball: as long as it wasn't hot enough to make breathing a chore, they played day games. Dome stadiums in particular were almost always day games, thanks to the air conditioning inside.
Was it the cool air brushing against their cheeks? Or was it that both teams had burned themselves to ash the day before, with no kindling left to spare? Game 2 against the Grizzlies turned into a brutal pitchers' duel — the kind where even hits refused to fall.
"Our guy dealing is great and all, but..."
"Guess theirs is dealing too, huh? That ball does not look friendly..."
Yesterday, with each team's two weakest starters on the mound, all sorts of numbers had appeared on the scoreboard. Today, it was a parade of zeros — a situation colorful enough to turn even the god of mathematics pale and sickly green.
Especially the two starters. Jay Rodriguez and Caleb James. The two pitchers were sending hitters back to the dugout as if to say, Ah, you'll be returning to the dugout now, sir.
Caleb, for one, had a mountain of incentive clauses written into his contract.
"No wonder he bitched at us so much. Wins, strikeouts, innings — all the way up to the sabermetric stats."
That was the reason he'd panic over Song Jin-wook's defense and yet loved Song's hitting in equal measure. The best condition for an easy win, after all, was the offense plating runs and then marching off the field.
"Come to think of it, a pitcher that good wouldn't stay in Korea without bait like that..."
Next year, if luck held, he could squeeze back onto some struggling MLB team's 40-man roster. And what kind of valuation did a pitcher like that earn in a league graded at roughly Double-A, where finding a genuinely good arm was rare? Enormous. Enough to make the opposing hitters wail out loud, at any rate.
"...But why the hell does that drug-addled bastard keep shooting glances at me? Didn't get hit enough yet?"
"Well, you never got plunked by him personally. Dustin took the beanball."
Jay Rodriguez, who kept scraping at Noh In-seong's nerves like sandpaper, was in the same boat. A twice-dosed, fully certified chemical enhancement specimen was gritting his teeth and firing away.
A man who'd come to Korean baseball as the price of licking steroids off his fingers twice — instead of any 'Captain Dominican' career-change serum. When a human like that is dealing, there is no answer. Hitters kept squaring up their timing on four-seamers that stretched away to every corner of the zone.
VWWWOOOMM--!!
"Fuck!"
Dustin came storming back into the dugout, huffing and fuming.
"No answer to that, honestly. The way things look, they might both throw shutouts."
What especially grated was that he was unleashing full-power fastballs only for his own at-bats and Dustin's. Both trips to the plate had ended in fly outs — one of them a ball that nearly left the yard, snagged a step in front of the wall. Dustin tracked the fastball just fine, but offspeed had always been his kryptonite.
With neither offense able to crack the other's starter, the innings blew past in a blink. In other words, the overpaid batter bastards were freeloading both at the plate and in the field.
"...Are we actually going to win today? Did you punks stay out all night or something?"
Amid the march of 0-0, Caleb — the man on the mound — grew somewhat melancholy.
Whether it was Caleb's gloom rubbing off, or simply a matter of luck, the Grizzlies drew first blood.
Top of the sixth. With a runner on second, Jeong Han-sol's infield single put men on the corners. Despite the no-outs, first-and-third jam, Caleb stayed remarkably composed and struck out two batters in a row.
Then he surrendered a single to the next hitter, and Kim Seong-ju uncorked a shot that sailed straight for the wall... except —
Pi Jeong-doo's savvy play off the wall, capped by a throw to second fired the instant he caught it, without a second's hesitation. The play at home was already too late anyway; the veteran's gamble — fine, I'll at least stare down that slowpoke — had paid off.
"Fuck yeah! What a goddamn gorgeous throw!"
Thanks to not one but two disgustingly slow baserunners, Caleb held the damage where it stood and let out a whoop. He was so fired up that he actually waited at the top of the mound for Pi Jeong-doo to come jogging in, and slapped him a high-five.
"Thanks, Bro. You just saved us a run."
"...Uh... I caught 'thanks' and 'bro,' and that's about it..."
Pi Jeong-doo offered a thumbs-up, wearing the face of a man asking, You're thanking me, right? Right? English, at times, does come bundled with a touch of stage fright.
Trailing by two, the Doubles weren't exactly twiddling their thumbs either. Even with the whole lineup's timing mangled beyond repair, there were still ways to scrape across a run.
And first, the story couldn't even begin until they pulled the red-hot Jay Rodriguez off the mound.
"Alright, listen up, everybody — do not go up there thinking about watching the ball. If it comes somewhere you can hit it, hit it."
Leading off the bottom of the sixth, Noh In-seong dispensed this steaming pile of wisdom to his team.
"The guy who's hit exactly two fly balls today has quite a lot to say, doesn't he."
Jo In-soo shot him down instantly, but In-seong remained utterly shameless.
"Put it another way — since I clearly can't hit today, you gentlemen will simply have to walk me home, won't you?"
--Go out there and grind, please. I'm cooked for the day anyway.
It was all for a bit of mental consolation: if he at least came across home plate at the end, he could tell himself he'd bought his own seat. Not quite a free ride on the teammates' bus — but a discounted fare, at least.
If your condition isn't good — but not exactly bad either — and the ball simply refuses to carry at the last moment, you have no choice but to chalk it up to bad luck. Never mind the thorny questions of dome physics and air pressure.
In a ballpark with arguably the worst park factors in the country, hitting a home run was already a tall order to begin with. It only made early-season Noh In-seong — who'd smashed twelve a month in this very yard — look like a lunatic.
"And that's why I'm up here grinding it out like this..."
On the seventh pitch, a ball came in so borderline it was impossible to say whether it deserved a swing at all. Tick!
"Hey, can you really afford to torch a precious challenge on a play like that?"
"...Worry about yourself. Isn't this the first time today you've actually reached first?"
Sheesh. On any other team, the moment I so much as said a word to them, they'd steer clear of me like I was carrying the plague. Was it because 'I' hadn't done anything rotten here yet? The responses were still alive and kicking, heartily so.
Barely two minutes after the video review began, the umpiring crew came strolling back out. They usually milked the full five minutes — coming back this fast could only mean one thing.
"Call on the field stands! Safe!"
No overturn. I stood squarely, gloriously alone at first base.
Now then — time to show that steroid-soaked bastard what premium baseball looks like.
"Hey! Hey Jay! Hey! Hey! Hey Jay!"
Tap-tap... tap-tap-tap...
Like some insufferable piece of fruit, Noh In-seong kept picking and picking at J-Lo's nerves. And J-Lo — that son of a bitch practicing torture-grade baseball instead of the premium kind — did not take the bait.
'...If I let him get under my skin like last time, I'm the only one who loses... only me...'
Falling for the same trick twice is the mark of a non-professional. Granted, falling for it three times would make you a legend, but still.
J-Lo held his composure and kept firing the ball in.
"Huh? What's this, no tantrum? Weird. 'Cause I'm mad."
This time it was Noh In-seong who flew into a rage — a truly fitting reaction from a man with zero capacity for empathy.
Apparently a three-step lead was more than enough, because In-seong took off for second. Jeong Han-sol's urgent shout rang out, and just as the opposing second baseman scrambled into receiving position came into view —
The ball had already beaten him into the glove by the time he began his slide. But the whole point of a slide is that you don't have to eat the tag.
In-seong caught sight of the fielder reaching for a safe, wide-area tag toward the chest.
"--Got... huh?!"
Noh In-seong flopped flat onto his back and stretched nothing but his leg out to swipe the bag.
"...Safe!"
The fielder's glove touched nothing but air where In-seong should have been.
The challenge came in, of course — and of course, the call stood. Two failed challenges in a single inning: a record-breaking fiasco.
Runner on second, nobody out. And a fast one, at that.
A deep fly ball, and a grounder toward first. It took nothing more than that for a run to cross the plate.