vs. Major League (Real Deal) The Best Hitter in the Domestic League (2)
"What did you just say?"
The manager's face went blank with bewilderment.
Well, of course it did. A guy who had thrown right-handed all through middle and high school, who had naturally debuted as a right-handed pitcher, suddenly asking to borrow a left-handed glove? If I were him, I probably would've cursed me out twice over.
"A left-handed glove, sir. I didn't bring one of my own."
For a long moment, the manager just stared at me, speechless.
It was the pitching coach who finally broke the awkward silence.
"You're not still hurt, are you?"
"No, sir!"
"Doesn't seem like you're not..."
"Come to think of it, Coach, aren't you a lefty?"
"Uh... yeah, I am?"
"Then I'd be much obliged if you'd lend me your glove!"
"Er... well, uh, sure..."
Dazed, the coach dug out his own glove and handed it over.
"Thank you, sir!"
I snatched up the coach's glove and slipped it onto my right hand.
Under normal circumstances, the fit would have felt hopelessly awkward—but I was in a completely different state right now.
This was a left-handed glove I'd worn and practiced with for tens of thousands of hours.
A little stiff, maybe, but natural enough for this.
When I took the mound again, San Wool-lim's senior face lit up with interest.
"What's this? A switch pitcher? You're a genuinely fun kid. Hahahaha!"
This time, I swear, I'm going to get a hit off you.
It was common knowledge, plain and simple, that right-handed pitchers had trouble with left-handed batters.
No matter how many delivery changes I pulled, how much nonsense I flung at him, if he had the overwhelming skill to simply *click* me into submission, then the only answer was to lean on the platoon advantage.
Add a little unfamiliarity on top of that...
I exchanged signs with Ho-ji again.
That's right. Even if it gets absolutely launched, the first pitch is a fastball. No question.
With the pitch locked in, I settled into my windup.
Steadied my breathing. Focused my mind.
Throw it!
Bending my body as low as I could, I released the ball from a low arm angle.
Left-handed submarine.
It would likely be a pitcher type he'd never encountered in his entire baseball life.
The ball zipped in and smacked the upper, outer corner of the strike zone.
Strike, no question about it.
Apparently unable to believe his eyes, the manager stared blankly for a moment before belatedly making the call.
"...B-Ball."
"Ah!!!"
THAT'S a ball?
Well, the machine judges it, so it must be accurate, I guess.
The manager wasn't the only one dazed by the unexpected left-handed submarine pitch—San Wool-lim at the plate and Ho-ji receiving the ball were all staring into space too.
"Hey! Give the ball back?"
"Huh? Oh... s-sorry..."
Completely checked out.
Then again, when would the guy have ever caught a left-handed submarine pitch before?
After I barked a hearty lion's roar at him, he finally snapped to it and threw the ball back.
Pitch two.
Ho-ji wiggled his fingers furiously between his legs, rattling off the pitch-selection chant.
A slider breaking away toward the outside.
Oh, you'll get it. I'll serve it up nice and juicy for you.
Underhand again.
I am the legend of Korean submarine pitchers.
Channelling the spirit of BK-hyung, I hurled the ball with everything I had.
The ball left my fingertips and carved a crescent-moon trajectory, sweeping out toward the right-handed batter's box where no one stood.
"Whoa—!"
It moved so violently that even Ho-ji, a promising catcher in his own right, couldn't come close to catching it.
This time, too, San Wool-lim simply watched, bat still cocked at his shoulder.
"Wh... what the hell..."
The ease had drained from his face, replaced by something darker.
"...Ah, ball!"
Once again, the manager's ball call came a beat too late.
So when the pitches are too fascinating to resist, he just stands there and watches them instead of swinging...
In that case, I wouldn't bait him into a whiff—I'd just jam the ball into the zone.
This time I flashed the sign to Ho-ji first.
Same slider as before.
Right down the middle.
Drawing a deep breath, I threw from the same submarine posture again.
The ball shot in fast, bearing down on San Wool-lim's body.
"Wh—whoa!!"
Instinctively, he twisted away to avoid it.
THWACK!
"STRIKE!!!"
The ball smacked into the catcher's mitt, and the manager's strike call rang out.
Even though I'd thrown it, the movement was genuinely a work of art.
A ball that came screaming at a lefty's body before being sucked into the strike zone—something you could compare to a Beckham free kick.
Ah, call me the Beckham of the mound, please.
San Wool-lim, having ignominiously ducked out of the way, now wore a fairly grave expression, his competitive fire clearly stoked.
I can't lose either, you know.
My own expression had grown equally serious.
The count was 2-1.
This time I threw a forkball that dropped dead below the zone.
San Wool-lim watched it calmly, but the feel was different from before—he hadn't been frozen in shock, just unable to react in time.
He was filtering out the bait pitches with genuine focus now.
Before I knew it, it was 3-1.
A count that badly favored the hitter.
Time to steal back a beat of his timing with a fastball.
He'd seen plenty from the submarine by now, so this time I came sidearm and tucked a fastball in tight.
CRACK!
The moment the ball appeared to be in the zone, the bat came around, and it caught the barrel.
Thankfully, it was a glancing contact, and the ball sailed out beyond the foul line.
Full count, then.
Now was the real battle.
Pitch six.
Overhand delivery, a big-dropping curveball falling into the zone.
CRACK!
Contact again. His timing was late—foul ball.
Pitch seven.
Fastball.
CRACK!
Foul.
Pitch eight.
CRACK!
Foul.
Pitch nine.
Foul.
Pitch ten.
Foul.
Pitch eleven.
Foul.
Pitch twelve.
Foul.
Now it was time to throw pitch thirteen.
"This is genuinely annoying."
I understood why the major leagues bothered to poach talent like this.
When I threw bait pitches, he laid off them; when I jabbed pitches into every corner of the strike zone, he cut them all off.
From a pitcher's perspective, an absolute nightmare of a hitter.
Control worries me a little if I throw it as a finishing pitch... but he couldn't touch this one.
I gripped the slider and flashed the sign to Ho-ji.
Ho-ji tilted his head, then sent the sign back again just to double-check.
Yeah, that's right. You saw it correctly.
It wasn't as if I didn't know what he was worried about.
The slider I'd honed through bloody, grinding practice.
Even by my own admission, its movement was jaw-droppingly filthy—but that was the product of sacrificing a fair amount of command.
By maximizing the breaking angle, even I had trouble predicting exactly where the ball would end up breaking.
And this was my off-hand, on top of everything.
Effort had made me comfortable enough, but an innate awkwardness remained that no amount of work could fully erase.
Still, this was the moment to take a gamble.
The one pitch San Wool-lim hadn't managed to lay a bat on in this entire at-bat with me throwing left-handed.
Worth a shot.
San Wool-lim was maintaining a level of concentration he hadn't felt in ages.
Maybe even more than when he'd stepped into the box in the bottom of the ninth of the Korean Series with a walk-off chance staring him in the face.
He'd come out to the second-team ballpark with no particular expectations. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined he'd be savoring this kind of tension in a batter's box.
He'd only tagged along after the manager because there was supposedly an interesting pitcher to see.
And somehow, somewhere along the way, he'd found himself locked in a thirteen-pitch war with the kid.
At first, he'd thought the effortless delivery changes were the kid's selling point.
Interesting. Promising, even.
Yes, it'd be nice for the domestic league to have a character like this. Just that much, he'd thought.
Then he'd faced him a second time and realized that for a craft pitcher who cooked hitters with a varied repertoire, the kid had guts to spare.
Maybe he could even hold his own above the league average?
And now.
The final at-bat.
The kid who had thrown exclusively right-handed was now switching hands, throwing left.
And he was varying his delivery left-handed too?
Even a pervert wouldn't go this far.
This dog-piss feeling, one he hadn't tasted in a long, long while.
That melancholy, tingling itch set fire to San Wool-lim's quietly smoldering heart.
Man, it's been forever since I felt something this dirty.
Pitch thirteen.
What on earth would the kid throw this time?
He was actually starting to feel a flutter of excitement.
When Jang Han-sae finished signing with the catcher and began his windup, San Wool-lim's body tensed in response.
Submarine delivery this time.
No surprise there.
The ball left Jang Han-sae's hand and climbed as it flew, rising toward San Wool-lim's body.
San Wool-lim read the spin off the incoming ball with his eyes and got a rough fix on the pitch.
You think I'm falling for that again?
A familiar trajectory.
Just as he'd expected, the ball that looked one heartbeat away from drilling the batter began to break, bending back toward the heart of the strike zone.
San Wool-lim swung lightly and connected with Jang Han-sae's slider.
Bit off the end.
The ball, striking away from the sweet spot of the bat, dropped beyond the third-base foul line.
Pitch fourteen was waiting.
And then, right then, Jang Han-sae bellowed something unexpected from the mound.
"This is the real, final showdown!!! Whether it sinks or swims, this pitch ends it all!"
God, this kid is fun.
"Let's go!"
San Wool-lim had faced countless pitchers over the years.
Imported aces, grizzled veterans with bones as thick as tree trunks, brash rookies oozing swagger, even legendary players who clearly operated in a different dimension altogether.
Not one of them had escaped his conquest.
Pitchers that cocky were, as a rule, the pride-driven type.
And those types, more often than not, came back with the exact same pitch—the very course they'd been taken deep on.
A rookie dying to reach the first team, with everyone watching? Of course he'd want to stamp a decisive mark on the moment.
He'd already seen through the kid's nerve.
Declaring a head-on showdown made it all but certain: the ball would come on the same course as the one he'd crushed for a home run.
The professional world is a cruel place. Let me give you a proper, valuable lesson.
So thinking, San Wool-lim pictured the fastball thrown from the submarine delivery in his mind.
A rising fastball, surging up from below.
He steeled himself, vowing to send it over the wall using the exact same feel as before.
Just as he'd predicted, Jang Han-sae threw from the submarine posture.
Fastball, just like I thought.
The fastball, hugging the ground as it came, began to bounce up just in front of the strike zone.
Everything was unfolding exactly as he'd seen it.
Gotcha!
San Wool-lim swung the bat without fail, a smile of victory on his lips.
But what rang through the ballpark afterward was not the sound of a bat splitting the ball in two—it was Manager Ahn Jeong-won's thunderous strikeout call.
"STRIKE~!!! OUT!!!"