If You Want to Play, You'll Lower the Temperature

The 'All-Thermometer Rule' that Noh In-seong had championed was, in practice, treated as something closer to a necessary evil.

It seemed miraculous that it had been accepted at all, considering it was a blatantly aimed shot at the provincial clubs.

But the fans knew it, and so did the players. Is it easy to play or watch baseball while getting roasted under the midsummer sun?

Ever since domed stadiums came into existence, there was no great mystery behind why the teams clustered around the capital region kept posting the best gate receipts. The crowding of franchises into the metro area played a big part, sure — but being able to watch a game under air conditioning was the perfect answer to the eternal question of why exactly should I drag myself out to watch grown men play catch in this heat?

Once you'd tasted the cool air of a dome, the best an open-air park could offer was a light misting spray? That was just a buy-one-get-one deal on clamminess. The ordinary fan, long since tamed by the blessed breath of air conditioning, did not love the open-air ballpark.

A city where the water park outranks the ballpark on most people's priority list — Daegu was no more immune to that effect than anywhere else.

And so, when a sharp-tongued devil started spewing honeyed rhetoric—

"For every player, for every fan, the clubs need to step up and bring the temperature down!"

—the spectacle that unfolded featured far more of 'Damn right you are!' than 'Who do you think you are?'

The fans, by and large — especially the ones who actually went to games — welcomed it with open arms.

It had been, in truth, a half-crazed outburst born of pure heat with no real alternative in mind — but Noh In-seong stood his ground without a flicker of shame. In the post-game interview, he didn't give the reporters a single inch.

"Take the temperature at every game, and if it can't be brought below a set standard, the game ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠should be postponed."

At minimum, keep it at humane temperatures in four spots: the stands, the dugout, the mound, and the batter's box.

--Because it's too hot to play or watch baseball!

Granted, if the mound's temperature dropped, the air around it would cool with it, so the infield would be somewhat more comfortable than usual. As for the outfield, where he'd never have to set foot — well, not thinking about it from the very start was the most Noh In-seong move imaginable.

"...But who exactly is supposed to come up with this plan? You, Player Noh In-seong?"

"Ah, come on — the clubs bleeding money from all the canceled games will figure it out. Just watch the attendance crater every time a game gets scrapped."

Noh In-seong hadn't prepared any actual solutions. He was simply strong-arming the clubs with a vague figure it out somehow!

"...Surely such a rule would come with unavoidable side effects...?"

"If they want to play the game, they'll lower the temperature."

--You can't be serious. These are people who sell a product, not a service. They'd never stoop that low?

Eh, worst case, a club secretly cranks the heat on a day it doesn't feel like playing and gets a free day off. That's about the extent of it.

And if that happened, well — Baseball Association, that's for you to catch, isn't it?

Once again, all responsibility bounced right back to both the Association and the Daegu club.

The storm unleashed by one player who simply wanted an away game without suffering was far, far too big.

On this issue, the Daegu club deployed its trusty 'As you may be aware, we have no money' routine yet again. The Baseball Association, meanwhile, went into hysterics of its own: 'That means constant inspections, a whole new rulebook to draft, and who exactly is supposed to negotiate all that?'

The two camps of migraine sufferers tried to settle things with a lukewarm compromise — 'Let's just spray the mist more aggressively and manage the temperature that way,' roughly.

"He's right! We WANT to go to away games, but we can't! Is this supposed to be a ballpark?!"

"You finally make the trip, sweat yourself half to death, and what do you get for it? A beer watered down worse than horse piss and a loss!"

"Stop obsessing over gate receipts and give us a reason to come out there! It's hot!"

The consumers' appetite was absolutely ferocious. 'Don't worry about us — we've got entertainment to spare!'

"Ugh! This is insane. When is that lunatic leaving the league already...!!"

"First, let's identify the stadiums with abnormally high readings, then call the construction companies..."

"The problem is the heat index being too extreme, so as long as it stays at the levels from before In-seong said anything..."

Naturally, once public opinion had formed this way, it fell to the Association to prove the whole thing was actually feasible. Watching the workload they never asked for clone itself like a planarian, the office staff descended into an existential spiral.

"Goddammit, there's no budget, no time, no manpower — we don't have ANY of it..."

Explaining why something can't be done is hard. Getting someone to ask 'why can't we, though?' is easy.

The lions of Daegu and the men of the Association were both learning that lesson the hard way.

And of course, the one man who'd brewed up all this chaos was busy experiencing, with his own body, exactly why the rule was necessary.

"Uuungh... dizzy..."

Noh In-seong was sitting up in the away-team hotel in Changwon, drenched in cold sweat.

"Excuse me, but why is my body in ruins, Doctor? What on earth is the meaning of this?"

"Ah, listen carefully. The patient has a mild case of heat exhaustion. In layman's terms — you got cooked."

Me? Heat exhaustion? That makes no sense... oh. Oh, right. I just played an away series in Daegu, didn't I.

When Noh In-seong woke up that morning, he discovered he had transformed — right there in his bed — into a patient.

He wasn't in agony like last time, feeling like he'd been worked over by a mob; he just felt... off. Roughly under the weather?

A hurried trip to the medical staff traveling with the team produced a diagnosis of 'you had heat for breakfast instead of a meal!' They pressed a heavily dented ion drink into his hand, handed him a second jug with orders to keep drinking, and promptly dumped him into an ice bath.

"AAAGH! That's freezingly cold...!! I only tolerate this when I'm a starting pitcher that day...!!"

"You should do this on normal days too. Do you have any idea how effective this is at bringing down inflammation?"

Under the medical staff's tender shoulder-dunking, Noh In-seong's screams climbed into full soprano.

For Game 4 in Changwon — Game 1's starter, Noh In-seong — a yellow warning light had come on.

"Hmm... it's not that he can't go, but I don't think we're quite at the point where I'd recommend it..."

Jeong Im-taek suggested Noh In-seong sit this one out, and Noh In-seong deployed his refusal of the refusal.

"So my nail might come off, so something might be busted — drink plenty of water and it's solved, isn't it?"

Wherever he'd scrounged it up from, he'd rigged a beer hat to funnel an ion drink and a water jug into his mouth like a cocktail, sipping away as he spoke.

He had a point. It was already past noon, and swapping starters meant going around begging for everyone's understanding. Jeong In-woo had rested early in the season, but what use was a pitcher whose legs had cramped so badly he couldn't walk straight?

Noh In-seong wasn't in that state. He'd walked to the trainer's room just fine. He'd eaten fine.

"...No, wait, why does this bastard have the guest candy..."

"Mm. Delicious."

Still — if a man said he could go, a team manager was grateful to hear it. On the assumption, of course, that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he could actually judge his own body correctly.

"...Fine. Go to the bullpen, throw, and we'll decide after I see the ball."

Jeong Im-taek hauled Noh In-seong — contentedly suckling on a fistful of candies — off to the bullpen.

FWOOOOM--!!

Good pitch---!!

Noh In-seong's body was in poor shape, plain and simple — but the ball itself came out fine.

"...Is he actually sick? The ball looks great to me."

"What hurts is his soul, my boy. The body's just a bit off."

Jeong Im-taek and Jo In-soo carried on with a thoroughly excessive conversation, but Noh In-seong paid it no mind.

"Kid seemed to like chocolate, so this time I swapped in a tub of hard candies — and the madman emptied half of it?"

"Hey, normally you only find thread and needles in those sewing kits. First time I've ever seen actual candy in one..."

To be precise, he wasn't ignoring them — he knew perfectly well that ignoring them would earn him a scolding. Even a madman has some situational awareness.

"...Haah. Fine. Report immediately if he gets any worse. In-soo, keep an eye on him too."

"Understood."

"Go on up ahead of us~"

Perhaps it was the ion drinks dutifully chugged before the game, the cool rest, or the generous sugar resupply — but an hour before first pitch, Noh In-seong's condition had largely recovered.

......*Grrrumble*......

"...Yesterday the sun was blindingly brutal, and today it's pitch black. Fantastic. Just fantastic."

The Sun God, who had worked himself to the bone yesterday, had declared today a day off. Dark clouds hung heavy over Changwon NC Park, and a chill wind was beginning to blow through.

The game was tumultuous from the very start. The wind wasn't blowing consistently — it was blowing however it pleased.

"...This wind... is this even legal?"

From a mound where the dust whipped up enough to make you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wince, Noh In-seong delivered his first pitch. The four-seamer left his hand at 160 km/h and curved along a trajectory unlike anything it had ever shown — the wind was that strong.

He'd clearly aimed it up and away. By some act of magic, it arrived up and in.

"Strike!"

"...Wait, it bends THAT much?!"

Unlike the umpire, who saw through ABS instantaneously and intuitively why that was a strike, the batter stood there dumbfounded. The velocity had dipped, but it was still fast — except unlike a normal incoming pitch, this one rode the wind and came in sideways and wrong. The difference was small. But to the hitter staring it down, it was a case of what in the world is this?

Then, abruptly, the wind died.

"Strike!"

This time the curveball broke in exactly the trajectory he'd studied.

"...This is enough to drive a man insane."

Just as the thought began to form — his velocity's down, In-seong must be off his game —

"Swing, strike three!"

The slider rode the wind and broke just a hair sharper than usual — and by exactly that margin, it skimmed past the bat. Noh In-seong, who was usually the one abused by the weather, had the weather working for him today, and cut down Jeong Jin-woo with ease.

As a hollow-eyed Jeong Jin-woo trudged back to the dugout, the next hitter was already stepping into the on-deck circle.

"Hey, his stuff's off today."

"...And yet you went down awfully fast for someone facing an 'off' pitcher, didn't you?"

Stung by the cleanup hitter's jab, Jeong Jin-woo stormed into the dugout, snapping that he'd like to see anyone make sense of the information he'd been given. In baseball, a sport judged purely by results, condition means nothing if you don't put up runs.

"...He really is off, though. The ball's moving pretty differently from anything I've seen from him before?"

"You struck out too, genius."

The number-two hitter was far too busy telling the number-four hitter the same thing, and the number-three hitter, having made the third out, was off to fetch his glove.

Noh In-seong was receiving the weather's fickle, capricious love.

Astonishingly, it seemed Noh In-seong wasn't the only one the heat had cooked — the Doubles' lineup was quiet across the board. Facing neither an ace nor even a hired gun, both sides competed as if to prove who could hit worse. Out. Out. Out.

Some innings, recording three outs felt roughly as long as an entire advertising break.

The fans watching at home were tearing their hair out. With both teams locked at 0-0, four innings blew by in the blink of an eye — and then the weather threw yet another tantrum.

*Grrrrrumble....*

"Huh? Huh?!"

Just as the wind began to falter, thin little droplets of water started to fall.

And then those thin droplets became a solid curtain of rain.

"AAAAH, THE SKY'S LEAKING!"

As if to prove Noh In-seong's scream truthful, the infield dirt began darkening before anyone's eyes.

Shaaaaaa.....

"...Suspending play for now!"

By the home plate umpire's discretion, the game was halted. The tarps began rolling out across the field.

"Oh, come ON? We were almost done?!"

Hollowed out, Noh In-seong pulled on his jacket with a thousand-yard stare. It was meant to keep his body from cooling down — but there was nothing on earth that could keep his motivation from going cold.

Watching the canvas drape itself over the bases, players from both teams filed back to their dugouts wearing identical expressions of weary resignation.

"Man... did I even need to bother going out there? Should've just stayed resting..."

Crouched under the dugout's awning, all Noh In-seong could do was glare up at the heavens and zone out, cursing the sky that had betrayed him.