Minor League Yeopo Fires Up
Unlike the past, my return had been not merely successful but perfect — and yet my daily life had not changed in any dramatic way.
"Well, of course it hadn't."
Whether I hit back-to-back home runs or swung the bat upside down, it was only natural that baseball fans would have zero interest in a minor-league game.
There had been exactly one article about yesterday's game so far. Even that was a scrap of filler buried in a sports corner, just reporting the final score. A piece with a view count that didn't even crack three digits.
The only comment about me was a single line: Gong Ji-hoo, returning from injury, announced a spectacular comeback with a 4-for-4 performance.
"Tch."
After finishing a search that barely even qualified as an ego search, I logged into my usual web novel site.
"Hmm…"
The web novels Kim Phil-jung had recommended had been a welcome spark of life through the long, boring rehab. My library was full of favorites.
"I know every one of these faces."
They were all works I'd already finished reading in the past — before the regression. Which meant only one thing.
I alone knew how every one of these novels ended.
"God, I want to spoil so bad…"
The curse of knowledge was a terrifying thing.
I clicked the blinking notification.
A new comment has been posted on your work.
"Did I already start writing novels around this time?"
My memories of this period were fuzzy. After ending my final at-bat of my life in meaningless fashion and deciding to retire, I'd been a mess.
I like to think I didn't have much lingering attachment to baseball left.
I'd already been worn down to the bone, after all.
"What am I going to do for a living — that was the real worry…"
I'd retired at twenty-four without posting any real numbers in the first team. "Former pro athlete" sounded cool in theory; in practice, I was just a high-school graduate with zero work experience.
The only thing I knew how to do was play baseball. And I didn't want to do anything related to baseball at all.
Until I properly started serializing web novels, I seemed to have spent my days drowning in self-pity and alcohol. And yet—
There was a work in my memory that I didn't even remember writing?
Judging by the timing, it looked like it had been my first one.
A chill ran through me as I opened the work management window.
【Genius Batter Gong Ji-hoo】
A title so bad a passing dog could have come up with something better greeted me.
"Ah."
Looking at the title, the memories slowly surfaced.
The truth was, serializing web novels had been a kind of trauma therapy Kim Phil-jung had cooked up for me — a special measure to help me perform in the first team the way I did in the second. Of course, I'd decided to retire while I was still writing, so the whole thing had lost its point.
When he'd first suggested I try writing, I'd racked my barely functional brain for ideas. The conclusion: the only thing I knew well was baseball. So the first thing I'd serialized had been a baseball novel.
I am a baseball genius. Because I have been good at baseball since I was little. In short, I am a freaking awesome player.
"Ugh, fuck…"
Correction. This was not a novel. This was something that didn't even qualify as firewood — pure garbage on the fringe of garbage.
The moment I read the first sentence, I understood exactly why Genius Batter Gong Ji-hoo had been deleted from my memory.
If I were to offer a defense: a high-school graduate. A guy who'd spent every class period face-down on his desk sleeping. A few months of reading web novels was never going to turn him into a competent writer.
Not that I'm proud of it, but the longest novel I'd ever read before discovering web novels was Kongjwi and Patjwi. Kongjwi abusing that toad had left a deep impression.
The newly posted comment matched my own assessment perfectly. I quietly set the work to private.
I had never serialized a baseball novel. That was the official story, and I was sticking to it.
"Ji-hoo! Tell me about yesterday. You've been writing lately? What's the novel called?"
Kim Phil-jung, face flushed with excitement, pounced the moment Gong Ji-hoo arrived at the ballpark.
"Ah, no. I said I was going to start writing."
Gong Ji-hoo had never serialized a novel. Genius Batter Whatever did not exist.
"What? I heard someone called you 'Author-nim,' so I figured you'd already started posting."
"I'll start soon."
He'd already begun outlining a story yesterday.
"Have you settled on a pen name? Want me to come up with one?"
Kim Phil-jung seemed more invested in Author Gong Ji-hoo than Gong Ji-hoo himself. Gong Ji-hoo just looked unimpressed.
"Minor League Yeopo."
"…What?"
"My pen name. Minor League Yeopo."
The expression that crossed Kim Phil-jung's face upon hearing that was too strange to put into words.
The guy who said he'd rather die than hear that nickname? Did he catch some terminal disease or what?
"…You're actually okay, right?"
"About what? If anything, being too healthy is the problem."
With that, Gong Ji-hoo calmly began his training. Watching him lock in, Kim Phil-jung found it hard to press any further.
Not long after—
"Here's today's lineup."
The manager appeared, yawning, and announced the batting order. His face was twisted in a grimace; he was clearly nursing a hangover.
"Batting second. Left field, Gong Ji-hoo."
When Gong Ji-hoo's name came up, Kim Phil-jung turned to him.
"Ji-hoo. You're in the field starting today."
"Looks like it. Nice."
Kim Phil-jung studied Gong Ji-hoo's face.
"You look ridiculously happy."
Gong Ji-hoo was beaming, as if he'd just received a huge present.
"Well… when you play defense too, you get to enjoy baseball twice as much."
"Since when did you start enjoying games?"
"Since my first at-bat yesterday."
Whistling, Gong Ji-hoo headed for the showers. The look on his face and the answer he'd given were both deeply unfamiliar to Kim Phil-jung.
When had he stopped enjoying the game?
Probably from the moment I stepped into the box for my first at-bat in the first team.
Standing under the harsh sunlight unique to day games, Gong Ji-hoo thought it over.
A middling fourth-round draft pick. Even so, in his debut season, simply playing baseball had been pure fun — right up until the moment he'd been called up to the first team after posting good numbers in the second.
His first at-bat, nerves wound tight, had ended in a hollow three-pitch strikeout.
Watching the home fans sigh in disappointment, he'd felt for the first time what it truly meant to be a professional baseball player. From that point on, baseball had stopped being joy and become pain.
And now, after so much time, he'd come back to the past and started over. Gong Ji-hoo found baseball—
"I never knew it could be this much fun."
His personal feelings aside, though, the game itself was not going fun at all.
Top of the first. Before Gong Ji-hoo could make any kind of play, the game was already sinking into a swamp.
The starting pitcher had thrown thirty pitches and recorded exactly one out. The bases on the scoreboard were full.
One out, bases loaded.
The same old Suwon Wizards second team.
The pitcher on the mound had already gone pale, but no one was helping him — not the players sharing the field, not the manager and coaches watching from the dugout.
Ah, I just want to go home…
Convinced today's game was already lost, the starter floated a flat off-speed pitch that sailed straight down the middle of the zone. The one silver lining:
The Futures League was still the Futures League.
Aside from a handful of outliers like Gong Ji-hoo, second-team players were all roughly the same level.
Crack—!
It was the kind of half-hearted swing that would make any baseball fan think, Yeah, that's second-team ball for you — and it still managed to drive the ball.
A fly ball headed for the outfield.
The instant the crack of the bat reached his ears, Gong Ji-hoo was already moving. The landing point rose naturally in his mind.
A little deep?
Even as he ran, he was already planning the next play.
The ball was carrying toward the warning track. Clumsy swing or not, it had been such a hittable pitch that the distance was more than enough for a runner to score.
Still, at least we got one run out of it, thought the batter who'd hit it.
Even if I'm a complete brick, that one's coming home, thought the runner with his foot on third.
Both of them thought the same thing.
Thud.
Before the ball even landed, Gong Ji-hoo had settled under it. It dropped into his glove. The third-base runner didn't even look — he just broke for home. And then—
Whoooosh—!
Gong Ji-hoo took a crow hop and fired. The ball ignored the infielder standing in the middle for the relay and rocketed home in the blink of an eye.
Thwack—!
The ball was in the catcher's mitt before the runner was even close. The catcher tagged him with the leisurely air of someone greeting a guest at the door.
"…Out!"
The home-plate umpire, who'd briefly zoned out, made the call a beat late. Inning over.
"Hey, Coach. How hard do you think that throw was?"
The manager, nursing a hangover cure tea, asked Kim Phil-jung.
"Probably around a hundred sixty kilometers, I'd say."
The manager took that in.
"Any chance Gong Ji-hoo wants to pitch?"
"Manager. Are you still drunk?"
"Yeah, figured as much."
While that conversation was happening in the dugout, Gong Ji-hoo — fresh off the assist — was thinking something else entirely.
Tsk. I just made a play that sick and there's no cheering. I want to get to the first team already.
Gong Ji-hoo hadn't fully realized it yet, but for the first time, a genuine hunger to play in front of a packed crowd had risen in his chest.
Regardless of what Gong Ji-hoo wanted, more than two weeks passed without a call-up to the first team.
During those two weeks, Gong Ji-hoo—
Craaack—!
—kept producing extra-base hits and home runs with relentless consistency, re-stamping exactly why people called him the Minor League Yeopo. And as the author "Minor League Yeopo," he was putting in solid work as well.
"Seclusion training isn't wrong, exactly… I did spend four years writing in a place nobody knew about."
The work he'd started serializing was a baseball novel. As Gong Ji-hoo's "first" baseball novel, it followed a classic formula.
A regressed baseball player devouring the KBO. Someday, he thought, it might become his own autobiography.
"My second-team numbers are overwhelming so far, at least…"
A hit in every game. Eight home runs among them.
That was the line Gong Ji-hoo had built in the two weeks since returning to the past.
Urban legends about Gong Ji-hoo singing at the plate were spreading among opposing players — catchers especially — but that was another story.
The bottom line was that even with these astonishing numbers, call-up was still out of reach, because—
"The karma…"
The karma of the Minor League Yeopo was simply too heavy.
In the middle of a tight pennant race, gambling on him was hard when his past — that flashy, empty career — was the problem.
Gong Ji-hoo himself figured he wouldn't get the call unless someone in the first team went down with an unexpected injury.
"Ji-hoo. The manager wants to see you."