Declaration of Intent
Tsk... What's the point of a practice game against a third-rate league, anyway?
It had been roughly ten years since the Daegu Rhinos settled on Okinawa as their spring training site. Playing practice games against Japanese teams had long since become an annual tradition for the club. But Yamamoto, who had taken on the heavy responsibility of managing Seibu for the first time this year, was far from pleased about this particular matchup.
After all, compared to the NPB, the KBO was a lesser league. And this was a game where even Oh Jin-muk wouldn't be taking the mound. Yamamoto had briefly considered canceling, but a promise was a promise, so he had no choice but to go through with it.
...If I think of it as filling the players with confidence, it's not so bad.
Victory was a given. It was just a KBO team—and a middling one at that, a club that had finished fifth the previous season. There was no way his team would lose.
Thwack!!
"Strike!"
That conviction of Yamamoto's began to waver the moment he saw the velocity on the first pitch from the baby-faced starter who took the mound.
— 155 km/h
And then—
Crack!
"Out!"
Crack!
"Out!"
Pop!
"Out!"
Three up, three down in the top of the first, and the Seibu lineup went quietly. Yamamoto told himself it was only one inning, but he couldn't stop a flicker of unease from rising in the back of his mind.
Thwack!!
"Strikeout!"
Fortunately, starter Uehara punched out the opposing leadoff man on three pitches, and Yamamoto was able to wash away some of that lingering discomfort.
"As expected..."
His gaze shifted to the number-two hitter.
"So that's Gong Ji-hoo... Hmph. Nothing special."
Yamamoto knew who Gong Ji-hoo was. Plenty of Japanese baseball fanatics followed other countries' leagues—including the KBO—with real interest. Still, he remained skeptical of Gong's ability. Even if the performance Gong had shown in the fall playoffs was entirely his own, Yamamoto was largely convinced it wouldn't hold up against NPB-level pitching.
CRAAACK!!!
But the single swing Gong Ji-hoo produced was more than enough to prove that judgment wrong.
"Tch..."
Uehara had been careless. Yamamoto repeated that to himself, but deep down he couldn't help the admiration that slipped out.
That was a perfect swing...
It was the kind of picture-perfect cut that anyone who loved baseball would fall for. Of course, if Yamamoto had known that Gong Ji-hoo was privately calling every Japanese player on the field "Yamamoto," the admiration would have turned into curses on the spot. Unfortunately for him, he possessed no such ability.
"Man... already a home-run factory."
Kang Ho-san said it from the bench. He wasn't even playing today, and yet somehow he was only now showing his face in the dugout—as if he'd been the busiest man alive.
"It was an easy pitch."
"You say that to Tae-wook and he'll get hurt."
"Isn't that just the confidence every Rhinos player is supposed to have?"
"Huh... fair point."
"So why are you only getting here now, hyung?"
Kang Ho-san cleared his throat.
"A player of my caliber stays busy with interviews. Of course..."
A mischievous smile.
"Today I was late because I was doing special color commentary until just now."
"Special commentary?"
"We're a media-friendly team? Is that the right phrase. Anyway, that's the kind of club we are."
"You didn't say anything weird, right?"
"Of course not. I just did the commentary and came over."
I stared him dead in the eye.
"Ah, fine—I only said you looked like a total maniac, okay!"
"That's nothing special."
"It was a compliment! A compliment! I meant you hit like a maniac!"
"Sure, let's go with that."
At least he wasn't the type to trash his own teammates.
"More importantly—your swing's already this hot. You sure that's okay? What if the bat goes cold the second the season starts?"
"Hmm..."
Hitting feel. Some people treated it like the most important thing in the world. Me?
"I don't know. I've never really paid attention to it."
"Oh... so you're saying you've got the confidence to show peak form every single time."
"That's not it."
Before the regression, I'd always been in the worst possible state—no room to think about secondary things like hitting cycles or feel. After the regression, I just loved playing so much that nothing else crossed my mind. In the end, even though I was now a legitimate mid-career player in my sixth year, it meant I was still short on experience.
"Then what about you swinging like garbage all through spring camp, hyung?"
"Huh? ...Haha! Caught me. It's feel management. Feel management. You have to suck now so the bat comes alive right when the regular season hits."
There was a tiny pause between the words. In other words—
"Is that so~"
It was a lie.
"Hey! You don't believe me!"
"No way. I absolutely never thought hitting feel was some kind of illusion."
"Ugh..."
"Gong Ji-hoo. Come here a second."
Manager Dong Sang-guk's call. Leaving a dazed Kang Ho-san behind, I hurried over to the manager.
"You good?"
"Of course."
"Then we stick to the plan."
"Yes, sir."
"Bottom of the third's about to start, so get ready. You're leading off."
In practice games, locked-in starters rarely played full games. These matchups existed to sort the real talent from the rest ahead of the regular season. But today, I had no substitution scheduled through the ninth. Half of it was a real evaluation of third baseman Gong Ji-hoo.
"Those bastards were straight-up looking down on us. Shouldn't the Korean Series MVP show them what's what?"
The other half was Manager Dong Sang-guk working out his frustration.
Bottom of the third. Seibu's backup catcher Ito—whom Gong Ji-hoo had decided to call Yamamoto 2—was having a rough time.
Before the game, Ito had also dismissed the Daegu Rhinos as nothing more than a KBO club, beneath an NPB player. That attitude had long since evaporated. The starter who had completely shut them down through three innings with mid-150s heat and clean secondary stuff was a rookie who hadn't even debuted in the first team yet. The only player who'd scored a run was essentially a mid-career newcomer who'd only started contributing the year before. You couldn't look down on the Rhinos as "just a KBO team" anymore.
The problem was that he seemed to be the only one who thought that way.
The newly appointed Manager Yamamoto was still seething that they couldn't even get on base—let alone score—against what he considered third-rate league players.
"Bakayaro! Why can't you even get on base!"
And Uehara—Yamamoto 1—whose outing would end after this inning, still hadn't learned his lesson even after getting lit up for a careless pitch.
"That last at-bat was just him getting lucky! My pitching is perfect!"
"Appreciate the hard work~"
The batter stepped in with unfamiliar Korean. Ito answered with a nod and resolved to face him carefully once more. Except—
Changeup diving out of the zone.
He shook his head.
Fastball barely nicking the edge of the zone.
He shook his head again.
A pitcher-hitter battle wasn't something that worked just because the catcher was being careful.
Ha...
The old theory that catchers ran the game and once dominated Asian baseball had been nothing but exaggeration. Ito, who'd grown up dreaming of catching after reading famous baseball manga, was just another victim of overblown advertising. Pitchers never listened. There was too much to worry about. Almost nobody gave you credit. And your crotch hurt. On top of that, in Korea and the United States the arrival of the machine god known as ABS had rendered even framing—one of the few skills unique to catchers—basically meaningless. At this point, wasn't a catcher just a guy who caught the ball?
Why had he ever chosen this position? If he ever met his past self, he'd slap him across the face.
He's going to throw it down the middle?
Idiot. Uehara was personally proving why he was stuck as a semi-regular. They said a lion gives its all even when hunting a rabbit. This was a wolf half-assing a hunt against a lion.
"Tsk."
Ito clicked his tongue without meaning to. In the end—
Do whatever you want.
—he gave up. It was only a practice game. Getting hit one more time might finally wake the guy up. Still—
I did my best...
Even so, a fastball was out of the question. Uehara might be full of confidence in his own stuff, but a mid-140s pitch was nothing but free meat to the hitter standing in the box.
Middle of the plate is fine. But a cutter instead of a four-seamer.
Uehara wore a sulky expression. Looking at that thoroughly un-cute face, Ito clenched his teeth and shoved the mitt out as if to say there would be no further compromise. In the end—
Whoooosh!!!
Uehara bent only halfway, and the pitch left his hand. The result—
CRAAACK!!!
—was another ball clearing the fence.
"Thank you."
The same polite thanks as the first at-bat, and the hitter started his trot around the bases.
This guy's a lot better than Uehara.
Even though he was the enemy, Ito—Yamamoto 2—found himself thinking the batter was preferable to the bastard on the mound.
I'd been a little tense before the game, but the practice match against NPB's Seibu turned out to be more than manageable. No—honestly, it was easy. Probably because it was a practice game. There were even guys who claimed they were deliberately swinging poorly to tune their feel. Whether that was true or not, from my perspective the satisfying part was this:
Crack!!
I fielded a ball headed toward third with natural footwork and fired to first.
Thwack!!
"Out!"
Through five innings, no real mistakes on defense. And with the bat, I'd shown everyone exactly the Gong Ji-hoo they'd been waiting for. The game was past the midpoint now—bottom of the fifth. My third at-bat was coming up.
Yamamoto 1 had been pulled after the third. From that point on, the pitcher holding the mound for Seibu was a left-hander—Yamamoto 3. I didn't follow the NPB, so I wouldn't have known, but—
"Oh, that guy's coming in... Rookie who debuted last year. Throws well. He's in the high-leverage bullpen role for them."
—apparently that was the case. I'd heard the name, too, but it was hard, so I decided to keep calling him Yamamoto 3. Anyway, his aggressive pitching from the fourth inning on had completely locked down the Rhinos' lineup. The team's only baserunner was—
Crack!
—the bloop single Jang Tae-wook had just scratched out as the leadoff man.
"Whew... almost embarrassed myself. I'm counting on you, Ji-hoo."
Jang Tae-wook brushed past me as he was being replaced by a pinch runner and said it like that. On the mound, Yamamoto 3 didn't seem particularly bothered by the runner.
Whoooosh!!!
Inside fastball, huh...
Power versus power. Any bullpen arm confident in his stuff preferred that fight. And so did I.
CRAAACK!!!
There was no need to watch where the ball went.
"Gong Ji-hoo, you're done."
"What? You said through the ninth, didn't you?"
"You hit too well. There's no point anymore. Their noses are broken by now. What era do they think the NPB is living in?"
"Yes! And with that, the practice game against Seibu ends in a Rhinos victory. We can't wrap up without an interview with today's player of the game, can we? Gong Ji-hoo!"
An unfamiliar broadcast booth. Facing the camera, I bowed my head.
"Hello. Gong Ji-hoo of the Rhinos."
"The blue uniform suits you well."
"Haha! I think so too."
"Shall we talk about today's game? Three straight at-bats, three home runs... truly incredible."
"I got lucky—no. I just think I did well."
"That confidence looks good on you."
Caster Lee Han-young laughed heartily.
"Any thoughts on today's game?"
Well.
"Easy."
That was all there was to say. The rest of the interview rolled along without incident.
"Last question. A viewer wants to know Gong Ji-hoo's goals for this season."
Simple. Become a player no one can replace. In other words—
"At minimum, a Golden Glove. At maximum, MVP."
That was my declaration.