Spring Camp
The contract negotiations wrapped up without much fuss. As a developmental player, the league-minimum salary was non-negotiable. However, I managed to insert the exact clause I wanted—even if it meant walking away from a signing bonus entirely.
"Ten percent of uniform merchandise revenue?"
"Yes. Is that going to be an issue?"
"Well… if you don't make the active first-team roster, that clause is completely worthless. Are you sure about this? Wouldn't you rather take a signing bonus instead? We could easily arrange around forty million won for you. Coach Kim specifically asked us to take good care of you."
"I'm fine with it. Just waive the signing bonus and include this clause."
"Understood."
The contract representative couldn't hide the twitch at the corner of his mouth. From the suppressed grin spreading across his face, he clearly thought the front office had just made out like bandits.
Well, it was an understandable reaction. Unless you were an established first-team regular, virtually no fan bought customized name-marked jerseys. And a developmental player's jersey? The front office didn't even manufacture name patches for them in the first place.
Still, hearing that the team had been willing to shell out a signing bonus was a pleasant surprise. As a rule, developmental signees never received a signing bonus. Coach Kim must have vouched heavily for my potential.
Until spring camp kicked off, I focused on bulking up at a gym near our place, dedicating the rest of my waking hours to Eunha. She was still in the fragile early stages of pregnancy, and with her morning sickness just beginning, I wanted nothing more than to stay glued to her side. Yet, with cold indifference to my domestic bliss, the date for spring camp arrived in the blink of an eye.
Spring camp: the grueling overseas training camp where teams built their physical foundations before the regular season. The crucial weeks that dictated an entire year's harvest and shaped the destiny of the franchise.
Packing only the bare essentials, I arrived early at Gimhae International Airport. The first-team regulars had already boarded flights yesterday. Gathering today were the Futures coaching staff, the second-team manager, the reserve squad, and the few developmental signees—myself included.
"Good morning, sir."
"Ah, you must be young Yoo Seonghyun. Coach Kim spoke quite highly of you."
"Yes, sir."
"I am Lee Yongjin, manager of the Futures team. I look forward to working with you."
The second-team skipper had the warm, benevolent air of a kind grandfather. He studied me with an intense, lingering gaze that felt slightly heavy—perhaps Coach Kim had laid it on a bit thick when singing my praises? Amidst the crowd of unfamiliar faces, a welcome acquaintance suddenly appeared.
"Hey there, Kanghyuk-hyung."
"Oh! Seonghyun!"
"See? Didn't I tell you your bat would get you picked?"
"Man, you weren't kidding. What a relief. Are we the only two developmental signees?"
"Hmm… didn't they probably sign at least one pitcher too?"
Shortly afterward, we boarded the plane bound for Japan… though flying economy with my frame was practically an Olympic test of endurance.
"Seonghyun-ah, could you scoot over just an inch…?"
"Sorry, hyung. I'm just built like this…"
The only saving grace was that Japan wasn't far away. After a brief two-hour flight, we touched down at Naha Airport. As expected of subtropical Okinawa, the ambient temperature hovered around twenty degrees Celsius—absolutely ideal weather for baseball.
The moment we cleared customs, we boarded a chartered bus straight to the training facility and unpacked our bags in the dormitory.
"Looks like we're three to a room."
"Yeah. You, me, and… Chae Gihyun? Is this guy a developmental signee too?"
Creak.
"Hello there."
"Ah, hello."
So it was him. The right-hander with that curiously sharp slider trajectory from the tryouts. Chae Gihyun? Looks like they bunched all the developmental players into the same room. Honestly, that suited us far better anyway.
"Nice to meet you both. You two were at the open tryouts, right?"
"Yes. I'm Choi Kanghyuk."
"Yoo Seonghyun. Looking forward to working with you."
He clearly had a few years on both of us. He was tall, easily around 185 centimeters. Just as we were settling in for some casual small talk, a summons blared through the hallway, sending everyone scurrying out to the diamond.
"Alright, listen up, everyone!"
Manager Lee Yongjin scanned the assembled players one by one before speaking in a calm, measured cadence.
"As all of you know, our first team is missing a significant number of regulars due to injuries and departures. I trust none of you are foolish enough to misunderstand what that means."
A heavy silence descended over the field. What his words implied was crystal clear: perform well, and the door to the first team was wide open. Fiery ambition ignited in the eyes of every player around me. The manager smiled in satisfaction, but as his eyes swept over my impassive expression, he paused for a fraction of a second.
"Ahem. However, excessive ambition is poison. Keep in mind that your bodies are your sole assets in this profession, and focus diligently on training. Understood!?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Head back to your quarters, rest up, and get to sleep early tonight. Official training begins tomorrow sharp at seven in the morning."
Back in the dorm room, we struck up a conversation to break the lingering ice.
"Thirty-one?! Seriously?!"
"I'm telling you, it's the truth."
Kanghyuk-hyung cried out in sheer disbelief. Though I kept a poker face, I was inwardly just as stunned. Thirty-one with that boyish, baby face? He looked at least six years younger than his actual age.
"I'm nineteen. Please feel free to speak comfortably with me, Gihyun-hyung."
"Whoa, a full twelve-year zodiac cycle apart? What year were you even born?"
"Twenty-ten."
"Damn… people were actually being born in 2010?!"
"I swear, when he told me he was younger than me, I thought he was pulling my leg!" Kanghyuk-hyung chimed in with a laugh. "I still don't completely buy it. How on earth is that mountain of a man nineteen?!"
The two of them snickered and teased me relentlessly, but it hardly phased me. Even I had to admit that my build and demeanor didn't exactly scream teenage rookie. As the banter flowed, Gihyun-hyung naturally dropped to informal speech. With a twelve-year age gap between him and me, and nine years between him and Kanghyuk-hyung, seniority demanded nothing less. Soon, the conversation drifted toward mandatory military service.
"Hyung-nim, did you do active duty?"
"Me? Yeah, regular active service."
"Oh, which division?"
"Third Infantry. White Skull Division. Did you serve already?"
"Yes. I was discharged about six months ago."
"Man, you got that out of the way early."
Military service. In this life, I had initially planned to enlist quickly and put it behind me, but life had taken quite a detour. Hmm, if I work hard and win a gold medal at the Asian Games, that counts for military exemption, right?
"Seonghyun, you haven't gone yet, have you?"
"No. But I'll probably end up serving as a full-time reservist."
"Full-time reserve? Commuting from home??"
"Yes, because I have a child."
"…What?"
Gihyun-hyung's face froze into an expression that screamed, What the hell did I just hear? Well, getting married at nineteen and having a kid wasn't totally unheard of—it happened all the time in the States.
"She's six weeks along."
"Holy crap… You left your pregnant wife at home to come to spring camp?!"
"A man has to put food on the table…"
"Come to think of it, hyung-nim, what about you?" Kanghyuk interrupted. "Aren't you thirty-one?"
"Me? I got married five years ago. I've got a kid too—just turned two. Want to see a picture?"
"Wait, what the hell? Am I the only single bachelor here?!"
"Looks that way, Kanghyuk-hyung. Don't tell me you've been flying solo your entire life?"
"…N-No way!"
"Look at that stutter," Gihyun chuckled. "He's definitely a lifelong bachelor."
"I completely agree," I added solemnly.
The following morning, spring camp began in earnest. The routine opened with light jogging and dynamic stretching to wake up our muscles. That was followed by weight training and targeted pilates. Then the split: batting drills for the position players, flexibility and conditioning for the pitchers.
The program was surprisingly systematic. For a secondary squad's spring camp, the lodging was comfortable and the meals were exceptionally well-balanced. It was a world away from the gritty, bus-riding purgatory of the American minor leagues.
Of course, there were minor flaws here and there, but given the circumstances, I couldn't complain. The environment exceeded my expectations.
Neither the manager nor the coaches interfered with my training. They would occasionally stroll past the batting cages, watch my swings, nod in silent approval, and wander off. Perhaps they saw I had my mechanics locked down?
That said, they certainly didn't hold back on the other players. The Futures pitching coach in particular—a Japanese coach by the looks of him—seemed to possess an endless reservoir of nagging. I couldn't quite catch what he was harping on about from across the field, but his mouth never stopped moving.
"Alright, that's it for today's session! Absolutely no extra training permitted tonight aside from light stretching! Head back and get to sleep immediately!"
Day by day, the training volume steadily climbed. It was textbook athletic conditioning: progressively overloading the body to forge peak physical stamina. Thankfully, encased in the physiological prime of a nineteen-year-old body, I barely felt fatigued.
Every evening after practice, I hopped on a video call with Eunha to catch up on her day. Then, about a month into camp, the routine was abruptly upended.
"Listen up! We have a special announcement. Starting tomorrow, we will be holding joint training sessions with the first team!"
A classic organizational maneuver. Erasing the boundary between the first and second teams served a dual purpose: it lit a fire under the complacent regulars who feared losing their starting spots, while dangling the golden carrot of promotion in front of hungry minor leaguers.
My body still wasn't at one hundred percent… No matter how I looked at it, time was running short. Still, thank goodness I had consistently maintained heavy compound lifting and cardio prior to the tryouts; without that baseline, I wouldn't have even caught the scouts' attention.
"Gihyun-hyung," Kanghyuk asked as we stretched our shoulders. "You said you played for the Fighters before this, right?"
"Well, yeah. I got released in the end, but I was on their roster."
"Did they hold joint spring camps between the first and second teams too?"
"Nope. The two squads didn't even train in the same country."
"Right?! So mixing us together out of the blue… doesn't that mean our big break has arrived?"
Kanghyuk-hyung was spinning his hopeful delusions at maximum RPM. In his mind, the first-team players were slumping, and the coaching staff wanted to pit them directly against second-team talent to shake things up.
In reality, the chasm separating the first and second tiers was vast. Concepts like 'Quad-A players' or 'fringe 1.5-tier talent' didn't exist for nothing.
The world of professional sports was mercilessly pragmatic. The law of the jungle. The weak perished, and only the apex predators survived.
"Who knows? We'll just have to wait and see," Gihyun-hyung muttered cautiously. "It's my first time experiencing a setup like this too."
Even Gihyun-hyung, who had spent over a decade bouncing between the minors and the majors, found this unprecedented. In Major League Baseball, inviting top minor league prospects and non-roster invitees to big-league camp was standard practice to foster cutthroat competition, but the KBO operated on a much stricter hierarchical tradition.
When morning broke, the first and second teams converged on the central diamonds. I kept my head down, diligently sticking to my calibrated routine and building my form rep by rep.
Unsurprisingly, the first-team manager and major coaches paid zero attention to fringe developmental signees like us. But then, an entirely unexpected figure strolled right up to my cage.
"Oho! So you're the kid who got signed off the street as a developmental player?"
"Hello, sir. Should I address you as Senior Jaehun?"
"Ayy, knock that off! What's with all that stiff 'senior' garbage? Just call me Uncle Jaehun, and I'll call ya nephew!"
Hwang Jaehun. The beating heart of the Busan Titans. Entering his second season back in Korea following a four-year stint in Major League Baseball. A true native son of Busan and the club's undisputed franchise icon.
His stat line from last season spoke for itself: a .329 batting average, .411 on-base percentage, .564 slugging percentage, an elite .975 OPS, alongside 32 home runs and 107 RBIs.
He was the solitary pillar who had carried the Titans' anemic, injury-ravaged offense on his broad shoulders all through the previous year. To think a lineup featuring a cleanup hitter putting up numbers like that had still collapsed into last place was a testament to how utterly abysmal the rest of the roster had been.
And yet, why was a legendary franchise superstar going out of his way to strike up a conversation with a nobody on a developmental deal?