The Tryout
A developmental player. In plain terms, someone who isn't an official member of the roster.
How can you be a professional ballplayer without being on the roster? It helps to think of it like an apprentice or a trainee. You're signed to a franchise and eligible to play in the Futures League, but you aren't an officially registered first-team player. Even so, you still collect an annual salary.
And right now, that developmental contract was precisely what I was after.
Usually, ballplayers who go undrafted in the rookie draft pack their bags, leave the diamond behind, and look for a regular way to earn a living.
Of course, that had nothing to do with me. I had quit baseball back during my freshman year of high school. It wasn't that I'd failed to get drafted; I simply hadn't entered the draft at all.
In this lifetime, I had genuinely wanted to try my hand at something other than baseball. But circumstances had changed. I needed money—and quite a lot of it. In the Korean baseball landscape of 2030, the annual salary for a developmental signee or second-team player in the KBO was fixed at the league minimum of forty million won.
That certainly wasn't pocket change, but it wasn't a massive fortune either. However, the moment you performed well enough to get registered to the first team, the equation changed completely. The first-team minimum salary was a whopping eighty-five million won.
Granted, the actual payout would depend on the number of days spent on the active roster, but where else could a nineteen-year-old fresh out of high school rake in eighty-five million won?
No matter how much I racked my brain, I couldn't think of any other way to earn that kind of money steadily and reliably. So, in the end, I had returned to the ballpark.
Confidence wasn't an issue. In my previous life, I had been an exceptional ballplayer. Even in Major League Baseball, the dream stage of every ballplayer on earth, I had stood out from the pack and even hoisted the MVP trophy awarded to the finest player in the league.
Of course, right now, on paper, I was just a nineteen-year-old kid.
"All tryout applicants, gather up with your resumes and IDs in hand!"
At the shout of a middle-aged man who looked to be a coach, the scattered crowd formed into loose lines and began to move. I fell into rank alongside them.
There was quite a crowd. Then again, professional roster spots never came easy. The mere privilege of getting paid to play baseball was a massive draw.
Besides, no other club was holding an open tryout at this time of year, so it was only natural for people to flock here.
"Whoa, look at the size of him..."
Turning my head toward the muttered remark, my eyes locked with another applicant's. A young man who looked to be in his late one-seventies scratched the back of his head the moment our gazes met.
He had a boyish, slightly cute face that didn't immediately scream athlete, though his buzz-cut hair leaned back into the territory. He offered an apologetic grin.
"Ah, sorry about that. You're just so ridiculously tall that it slipped out... My bad."
"Don't worry about it. Since we're standing next to each other, care to trade names? I'm Yoo Seonghyun. Nineteen."
"...Nineteen...?"
His jaw went slack the instant he heard my age.
"Come on, man. You're messing with me, right?"
"...I'm completely serious."
"No way. What in the world are kids eating these days to get built like that...? Ah, excuse my manners. Um, I'm Choi Kanghyuk. Twenty-two."
"Feel free to speak casually. You're the older guy here."
"Wait, you really aren't lying to me...?"
"Would you like to see my ID?"
Only then did Kanghyuk finally accept the truth. Well, if we were counting previous lives, calling him my senior would be a bit of a stretch, but having spent nineteen years in this body, using formal honorifics with older folks had long since become second nature.
"Wait a second. If you're nineteen, did you go undrafted in the rookie draft? Because if you did, applying for a developmental spot is pretty much pointless, isn't it?"
What he said was true. High school graduates who participated in the draft and went unselected were rarely signed as developmental players. If professional scouts had already thoroughly assessed a player and passed on him, it meant they had already concluded he couldn't contribute right away and possessed little upside. No pro organization was going to waste salary on a player already written off by every scout in the country.
"I didn't enter the draft."
"Huh? What kind of nonsense is that? If you're nineteen, you just graduated high school, right? You didn't even submit your name?"
"I quit baseball back in my freshman year of high school..."
"...What?"
That sparked a bit of small talk between us. Kanghyuk explained that after going undrafted, he had enlisted immediately to get his mandatory military service out of the way. His cropped hair was because he'd only been discharged about six months ago.
He mentioned that he'd focused entirely on conditioning while serving, adding that modern military bases offered enough free time to make them surprisingly decent environments for bulking up.
Since it was the dead of winter, his thick winter jacket concealed his frame, so I couldn't evaluate his physique properly. But judging by his confidence, he must have put in serious work.
"I've got plenty of confidence in my bat... but my defense was kind of a disaster, which is why nobody drafted me. After getting discharged, I was playing in the independent leagues, and then I signed up the second I heard they were holding a tryout here."
"Is that so? Where are you from originally?"
"Me? Born and raised in Seoul."
"Ah, your accent sounded different, so I wondered. How did you get all the way down here?"
"Took the train south, then hopped on a bus. The usual grind..."
"Still, a tryout in January is pretty unusual."
"Wait... Seonghyun, haven't you heard the news...?"
"What news?"
"Are you telling me you applied without even knowing why the Busan Titans opened this tryout in the first place?"
"Well, I know the broad strokes. A starting position player got into a car crash, they lost another core contributor in free agency, and so on. I heard they opened this up ahead of spring camp to find immediate depth from college grads or independent leaguers."
"Don't forget the drunk driving incident on top of that. Ah, looks like our turn's coming up. Either way, best of luck, little brother."
"Thanks. Good luck to you too, Kanghyuk."
Our conversation trailed off as we reached the front of the line. I handed my prepared resume and identification card to the coach seated at the table.
"Age... nineteen? Height 197 centimeters, weight 108 kilograms. Applying as a position player. Primary position... 'Any / All'? Ha! Is this that Gen Z attitude people keep talking about? Look here, kid. Seonghyun, was it? You wrote down that you can play literally every position. What's the meaning of this?"
"It means I am capable of playing every position on the diamond."
"Is that so? Haha. Even though you haven't played organized baseball since your freshman year of high school?"
"...I will demonstrate it with results."
"I certainly hope so. The paperwork says you were a pitcher until your first year of high school. Any particular reason you switched to fielding?"
"Ah. I kept growing, and my control completely fell apart, so I switched."
"Hmm. Fine. We'll see about that during the skill assessment."
Ah, he looks a little irritated. But I was confident I could pull my own weight at any spot on the field. Class was permanent; I was a former big leaguer, after all. The only real hiccup was the gap years after walking away in my freshman year.
My main concern was physical conditioning. If I hadn't stepped away from baseball, my body would probably be around sixty percent complete by now. Most players reached physical maturity around twenty-three or twenty-four.
Then again, since I was still actively growing, who could say? I was already at a size where I didn't need another millimeter.
In fact, growing any taller would actually be a detriment, given that the strike zone scales with height. I would gladly pass on any further vertical growth.
"...Your registration is processed. Go warm up over there."
"Understood. Thank you."
Shrugging off my heavy winter coat, I tuned out the staring eyes around me and began loosening up my joints.
"Hey, Seonghyun."
"Oh, Kanghyuk."
"I thought they'd test us right away, but they told me to wait a bit."
"Same here."
"By the way, are you testing as a pitcher or a hitter?"
"Hitter, for now."
"Really? Our positions don't clash, do they?"
"Where are you trying out?"
"Me? I'm planning to test at second base... though honestly, I don't feel great about it. Truth be told, I wanted to apply for first base, but Cap Hwang is planted there. There's zero room for me to squeeze in."
"Cap Hwang?"
"Man, do you even watch the KBO? Even as a Dragons fan, I know Hwang Jaehun is the Titans' captain... How do you not know him?"
"Ah. Hwang Jaehun."
A familiar name surfaced from my memories. Hadn't that man spent about four years in the Major Leagues? We hadn't been on the same club, but I remembered facing him as an opponent.
"Hwang Jaehun will probably hold that spot down for at least another two years," Kanghyuk continued. "Which means first base doesn't exist for anyone else in the meantime."
"Besides, Kanghyuk, your height isn't really the prototype for a first baseman."
"True enough. First basemen are usually towering giants."
"Still, wouldn't two years in the Futures League give you enough time to polish your craft until an opening appears?"
"First base is usually reserved for sluggers with serious power, you know? And since I'm still young, if I want to make real money when I eventually hit free agency, I need to develop legitimate middle-infield defense."
"Mmm. Fair point."
He had clearly thought this through. His physical stature really didn't suit first base. Standing in the high one-seventies... while I generally believed height wasn't everything in baseball, first basemen were an exception. The taller they were, the better.
Baseball was a game where a fraction of a second when stretching for a throw decided safe or out.
"At least it's not freezing down here."
"You think this isn't freezing...?"
"Try living in Seoul, man. It's night and day compared to down here. It was minus five Celsius back home today."
"That sounds miserable."
We helped each other stretch and work through our warm-ups. Once his coat came off, Kanghyuk's physique proved that his earlier confidence wasn't unearned. He was in remarkably solid shape. For someone outside the Major Leagues, that was a thoroughly respectable build.
Just as we finished loosening up, the coach who had glared at my resume earlier began wheeling a heavy, bulky piece of machinery toward the mound alongside several stadium staff members.
Oh? That's a Traject Arc.
Those machines were ridiculously expensive. To think the KBO had them on hand. I had always assumed the league lagged behind in modern tech, but this forced me to reconsider.
The Traject Arc—colloquially known as the 'pitcher copier.' It was an advanced robotic pitching simulator capable of replicating an actual pitcher's release point, pitch repertoire, velocity, and spin rate down to the millimeter.
I knew they were holding this tryout to find immediate contributors, but bringing out an elite piece of machinery just to screen developmental walk-ons was unexpected. Then again, leaving it to collect dust in storage served no purpose either; they might as well put it to use.
"Alright! All position players, listen up! You will be hitting off this machine! Each applicant gets three plate appearances. The pitch type is locked to four-seam fastballs. For the record, every single pitch will be delivered directly into the strike zone!"
Noticing Kanghyuk staring at the contraption with a puzzled expression, I gave him a quick rundown.
"A pitcher copier?"
"Yeah. Since they're hunting for players ready for immediate first-team action, it's probably programmed with the pitch profiles of actual first-team arms."
"Ugh... first-team velocity..."
"It's only going to throw four-seamers. As long as you stick to your mechanics, you should be fine, right?"
"I mean, theoretically, sure... but I've only ever faced independent league pitching. *Sigh.*"
His confidence wilted visibly. With that kind of mentality, how do you expect to survive as a pro?
Regardless of his jitters, the tryout proceeded without delay. One by one, applicants stepped into the box, but most failed to demonstrate convincing contact quality or raw power.
Before long, Kanghyuk's name echoed across the field. Muttering that he'd give it everything he had, he stepped up to the plate.
A left-handed hitter. And that batting stance is wild.
His bat rested almost completely horizontal across his shoulder, his upper body bent forward in an extreme, deep crouch. It was an extraordinarily bizarre posture.
A stance like that made it easy to generate rotational torque between the hips and torso. However, a posture crouched that low usually made catching up to high fastballs a nightmare.
—CRACK!
—CRACK!
—CRACK!
Wait, what? Why is he hitting so well?
How on earth had a guy with this kind of barrel control slipped through the draft?
"Good! You there, grab a glove and field some balls!"
"Yes, coach!"
Three swings, three rockets. The ball had met the sweet spot of the barrel every single time. The simulated fastballs had comfortably surpassed the mid-140s km/h mark, yet he had met them with crisp contact, surprising gap power for his size, and impressive bat speed.
Sure, he wasn't matching up to everyday big leaguers, but his hitting profile looked squarely between Double-A and Triple-A. How in the world had this guy gone undrafted?
The coach operating the machine nodded in satisfaction and immediately ordered him to test his glove work—a test none of the previous applicants had even been offered. Let's see what he's got.
"We'll start with a routine pop fly!"
—THWACK!
"Oof!"
...He missed it?
I watched with a wince of secondhand pain as Kanghyuk took the falling baseball directly to the face and collapsed onto the dirt. A regulation baseball hurt like hell when it collided with flesh and bone. Ouch. His face was already turning beet red.
"...Are you alright, son?"
"I-I'm fihe, sir!"
"Right... Can you keep going?"
"Yes, sir!"
And so the defensive drills began in earnest. Within two minutes, the burning question in my mind—Why on earth didn't this guy get drafted?—was thoroughly, unequivocally answered.
"A-Aargh!"
Just look at that fielding footwork. Any scout who had entertained the thought of drafting him for his bat would have taken one look at that defense, panicked, and bolted for the exit.