Spit!
The duel between pitcher and batter.
People usually say the batter holds a massive advantage.
A batter only needs to win once across countless matchups. A pitcher, though—if he loses even once, it can swing the entire game for his team.
Which ultimately means the side that can exert the greater influence on a baseball game’s victory is the pitcher, doesn’t it?
I stood on first base after collecting the first hit of the game, and from there I could go no farther.
“Strike three!”
The batters who followed me into the box—
“Out!”
—produced nothing.
“Swinging strikeout!”
They simply became outs.
“Hmm…”
I did what I could as a baserunner to rattle the pitcher. I took a big lead, stepping well off the bag. I even faked a break timed to Do Jeong-hoo’s delivery.
None of it worked on the man standing on the mound.
He just smirked, one corner of his mouth curling up in pure contempt.
The only silver lining was this:
“At least we won’t get shut out.”
The hitters behind me hadn’t gone down completely limp.
“Sixty pitches through four innings… considering that senior’s condition, he’ll probably come out around the sixth. We should aim for then.”
I listened to Lee Dae-beom and Park Ji-han talking and sank into thought.
Well… wasn’t that a little too disappointing?
Thud.
The Wolves’ second baseman Park Jeong-woo stepped in as the ninth man in the order, yet somehow he still didn’t feel like a true ninth hitter.
“Out!”
A routine fly ball so ordinary the outfielders didn’t even need to move. One pitch from the mound, and that was the result.
Still—
“He’s smiling…”
His expression didn’t look frustrated at all. He probably understood the role he was supposed to play perfectly.
“It’s not like he’s a Designated Fielder or something.”
Anyway. Park Jeong-woo’s fly made it one out, runner on second.
The starter’s grind-it-out pitching that had somehow lasted into the fifth was still ongoing. This inning would probably be his last.
CRACK!
The Wolves’ leadoff hitter put a clean swing on one.
I read the landing spot and moved my feet fast. It was a deep fly, but catchable.
Still, a runner with real speed could have challenged third on that distance.
Thud.
“Out!”
Whoosh—!
The instant I caught it I fired straight to third.
THWACK!!
“Out!”
The ball flew on a rope; third baseman Lee Se-ho’s soft hands did the rest. Two red lights lit up on the scoreboard. Inning over.
Honestly, a left-field fly letting a runner from second take third—even on a deep ball—was a little embarrassing.
“Hmm…”
“Hey!”
“Oh…”
“Gong Ji-hoo!”
“Ah…”
“Hey! You bastard!”
Whack!
“Ow! Why’d you suddenly hit me in the head?! My head’s not that great to begin with!”
I rubbed the back of my skull where Lee Dae-beom’s thick hand had come down.
A man who knows his place—that’s me.
“I kept calling and you never answered!”
“You called me?”
“Yeah!”
Still, smacking someone just because they missed a few words… this is why the sports world is the way it is.
“Instead of using that time to hit my head, you should be thinking about hitting Do Jeong-hoo’s pitches.”
“You…”
Lee Dae-beom raised his fist again, then let out a long sigh and slumped.
“Yeah… you’re right.”
“Huh? Why so serious all of a sudden?”
“Haa…”
Apparently Do Jeong-hoo was Lee Dae-beom’s perfect natural enemy. Sure, almost nobody hits that pitcher well, but Dae-beom’s personal record against him was especially ugly.
“I keep thinking it’s a pitch I can hit, then the result is always bad…”
“That so?”
“So I just want him out of there already.”
“…”
Truth was, I had been thinking the exact opposite.
“You’re not, huh?”
It must have shown on my face.
“Well, you already got a hit, and your first at-bat was a solid contact. Of course you’re confident.”
Lee Dae-beom talked rough. From everything I’d seen, his personality matched. But—
“He’s weirdly sensitive in the strangest places.”
“What?”
“Ah, nothing.”
Just like the time he’d been shocked by my relationship with Kim Jae-sang, he would sometimes get rattled over the tiniest things. It could be annoying, but—
“Hey, who isn’t weak against Do Jeong-hoo? Look at today’s game.”
Right now he wasn’t just a teammate. He was someone I could call a friend.
“You’re not the only one who can’t hit him. I’m the only one who has.”
A little teasing comfort was the least I could offer.
CRACK!
“Safe!”
Bae Jeong-ho’s single cleared the shortstop’s glove.
“Ah.”
“…”
“Well, now I can say two of us have hits.”
I was glad someone besides me had finally reached base… but the timing of that hit felt a little tone-deaf.
Bottom of the fifth.
Even after the hit, the Wizards failed to score again.
One out, runner on first. Do Jeong-hoo’s changeup danced and pulled the next batter’s bat right through the zone.
“Swinging strikeout!”
CRACK!!
The following hitter practically threw his bat at the ball; it looked like it might drop into a perfect spot—
Thud-thud-thud.
“Out!”
—but it never cleared the Wolves’ second baseman Park Jeong-woo.
Do Jeong-hoo, hero of the Game 1 shutout in the Korean Series, had taken the mound in Game 4 without proper rest and still looked flawless. He seemed ready to drag his team out of crisis once more.
And then—
On the TV broadcast camera, Gong Ji-hoo’s face was faintly visible.
And he was smiling.
Watching that, I wore a faint, complicated smile of my own.
When a pitcher is grinding through a “just-survive” outing, who suffers the most?
The pitcher throwing the ball, the manager watching every close call, the fans screaming their lungs out—all of them have it rough. But—
Thwack.
“Out!”
The fielders have it worst. Of course, that’s a purely fielder-centric view.
“Haa…”
I sprinted full-out and snagged a ball that nearly split the left-center gap, then exhaled hard. Luckily no one had been on base.
“Hey, you okay?”
I looked up at the voice while catching my breath.
“I’m a little worn out, yeah.”
“Take it easy. You just need to hit.”
It was center fielder Bae Jeong-ho.
“You’re pretty much the only guy who looks like he can do something at the plate right now. You can’t go and tire yourself out on defense.”
Leave the fielding to the guys who can’t produce anything on offense, he was saying. But—
“Didn’t you just get a hit last inning?”
“That was a lucky bloop that fell in. Doesn’t count…”
Was he always this timid?
I hadn’t talked with him much, but that didn’t seem like his personality. Maybe the performance Do Jeong-hoo was putting on simply felt that oppressive. In that case—
“That so? Then I’ll leave every left-center ball to you, senior. Hang in there.”
“…R-right.”
Bae Jeong-ho stammered, clearly not expecting me to actually say it.
“I’ll pay you back at the plate.”
I meant every word of that.
Contrary to Gong Ji-hoo’s prediction that the starter would come out after five, the Wizards’ pitcher took the mound again in the sixth and, unlike before, retired the side with almost insulting ease.
His final line for the day: six innings, one run allowed.
More than just doing his job as a starter—he had pitched well. Yet still staring down a possible loss, he simply chewed his lip and watched the bottom of the sixth unfold.
Tick.
“Safe!”
Leadoff man An Sung-woo dropped a surprise bunt no one saw coming and reached base.
Now batting, number one, left fielder, Gong Ji-hoo
—Waaaaaaaa!!
A massive roar greeted Gong Ji-hoo as he stepped in for his third at-bat.
Please… please…
The Wizards’ starter clasped both hands and began to pray.
Please don’t make me hear any “you fought well even though you lost” nonsense.
“Good work out there!”
I threw the greeting before I even reached the plate.
“Jesus! Why so rushed?”
“Trying not to get beaten to the punch like last time.”
“Heh…”
Do Jeong-hoo was sitting on eighty pitches. Looking at the Wizards’ lineup today, that was enough to push for the sixth and maybe even the seventh. Of course—
“Overuse is scary, though…”
“What?”
“How can you make a guy who threw over a hundred in Game 1 throw ninety-plus again?!”
I had no intention of letting him see the seventh. Purely for Do Jeong-hoo’s shoulder. A national-treasure arm had to be protected, right?
“What kind of nonsense is that now…”
“They say a battery is a soul partnership. Senior, don’t you feel even a little sorry for Do?”
THWACK!!
“Strike!”
Lee Mun-woo just shook his head and started the at-bat without answering.
Same spot again. That thing really does come in like a knife.
The Wolves battery was attacking me exclusively with low pitches on the inner half. Their will to force a grounder toward second was completely transparent. They weren’t even trying to hide it.
I let the first pitch go by, then—
Hoo.
—took a deep breath and locked in.
Lee Dae-beom and half the Wizards lineup had said the same thing: wait until Do Jeong-hoo comes out. Manager Kim Tae-sik had definitely heard those conversations in the dugout. The fact that he hadn’t said a word meant he was thinking the same thing deep down.
…The moment Do Jeong-hoo leaves, the game will start to tilt.
Maybe in the late innings after he was gone, the lineup would explode and we’d come back. But—
What if, by some chance, the Korean Series went the full seven games and Do Jeong-hoo took the mound again?
A guy who threw a shutout in Game 1 and was throwing a scoreless gem in Game 4—could the Suwon Wizards lineup really beat him? I didn’t want to believe it, but wouldn’t they start flinching, just like Lee Dae-beom a moment ago?
I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it the entire game. So—
In this at-bat, I take Do Jeong-hoo down somehow…
I show everyone that even that pitcher is just one player. Like Bae Jeong-ho said, the only guy in the current Wizards lineup who could do it—
Whoosh—!!
—was me.
CRAAAAACK!!!
A cutter-like trajectory. Unlike the first pitch I’d watched go by, this time I swung hard.
Huh?
I always try to stay conscious of the feel of my own swing. That’s how I knew.
This swing felt different somehow.
Not that I’d swung wrong. Looking at the ball climbing high into the sky, it couldn’t have been wrong. Still—
There was a tiny, tiny difference…
I’d have to check the video later.
But first—
I started circling the bases.
There’s a story about a hitter who once ruled Major League Baseball. No matter how many times people asked him how to beat the defensive shift, even after he’d already given an answer, he finally said this:
Then just hit it over the fence.
Exactly like I just did.
“Ptoo!”
As I rounded the bases I saw Do Jeong-hoo spit on the mound.
Hmm.
Maybe the old man had some painful past where all his nice friends ended up dead.