Opening Day
Some guys step into the Opening Day starting lineup the moment they sign and smash a home run in their first at-bat.
It took me six years just to get my name on the Opening Day starting lineup.
Or longer, if you count everything before the regression.
Ah… whatever.
Call it late-blooming… no, regression-blooming talent.
“You’re thinking about something useless again.”
“…Huh? No I’m not.”
“The hell you aren’t. It’s written all over your face.”
Once a catcher’s been behind the plate for more than ten years, do they unlock some kind of mind-reading technique?
“You some kind of Gung Ye?”
“What’s a Gung Ye?”
“Uh…”
Right.
I’d said it before, hadn’t I? Put nicely, most baseball players are pure-hearted. Put less nicely, they’re complete meatheads.
Kang Ho-san was living proof of that theorem.
“So basically…”
Not that I was any better.
Gung Ye… wasn’t that the monk-king? A monk becoming king—did we have some kind of Holy Empire in our history or what?
“You don’t know either, do you?”
“…I know, I just don’t know how to explain it.”
A baseball player only needs to know baseball, okay?
“Fine… instead of that useless crap, take a look at what today’s opposing starter said. It’s a real piece of work.”
Foreign pitchers with even a scrap of big-league time on their résumé usually come loaded with pride in their own ability.
They’d at least dipped a toe in the best league on the planet, after all.
The Irons’ new foreign pitcher was one of those guys—pride dialed up to maximum.
“Ah… that one. Yeah, I saw it.”
Any player can say something like that before a game. It’s just a form of confidence.
At the very least, fans prefer that kind of swagger over some guy whining,
The other team’s players are so scary, waaah…
So.
— “A revenge series against the Irons? Weren’t they the ones who lost…?”
I’d said that myself.
Thwack!!
“Strike!”
The Gwangju Irons were a powerhouse.
Tick.
“Foul!”
A team that made the postseason every single year.
Except.
Thwack!!
“Strikeout!”
This season, that streak looked ready to snap.
The reason?
One guy leaves and the whole weight of the lineup just evaporates…
Ryu Hyun-seo.
The hitter who had defined the Gwangju Irons was gone starting this year.
He’d gone to America.
Of course the Irons had brought in a solid shortstop via free agency to fill the hole.
But still.
Tick.
A high infield pop-up.
I barely took a step and lifted my glove.
“Out!”
Filling that void was clearly not going to be easy.
Bottom of the first.
Standing in the on-deck circle watching the pitcher-batter duel, I felt something off.
—Waaaaah!!
Felt like I was on the road for a second…
Normally a ballpark puts the home dugout on the first-base side, and the home fans pack the first-base stands to cheer.
The Suwon Wizards had been like that too.
But the Rhinos kept their home dugout on the third-base side.
The rumor went that before Rhinos Park was built, the old stadium’s first-base dugout never got any shade.
So the home Rhinos claimed the third-base dugout.
And in summer—Daegu being infamous for its heat, and the old park having no air conditioning—visiting teams were already cooked before the first pitch.
Which was why the Daegu Rhinos’ summer record had always been so strong.
Or so the story went.
Whether it was pure fact or not, the tradition from the old park had clearly carried over to Rhinos Park.
A new team, then, meant a lot of things to get used to.
The batting order included.
Hitting second, huh…
Oddly enough, this was the first time I’d ever stood in the two-hole since joining the Rhinos.
But whatever.
What a hitter has to do is simple.
Just hit well.
Tick.
“Foul!”
Oh…
Leadoff man Jang Tae-wook was looking pretty sharp against a pitcher he’d never faced.
He’d already forced five pitches and was doing exactly what a leadoff hitter should.
What was the guy’s name again… Sean?
From the interview article I’d skimmed before the game, he’d introduced himself like this:
—“I can throw a lot of different pitches. I like working at a fast tempo and going right after hitters.”
Didn’t seem like a lie.
Five pitches so far, and only one ball.
Extremely aggressive pitching.
And enough variety that Jang Tae-wook, standing in the box, let out a weary sigh.
“Haa…”
Still.
Crack!
All those pitches and that aggressive approach—if they’d been perfect, he wouldn’t have come all the way to Korea as a foreign worker.
He’d still be in the majors.
After a seven-pitch battle, Jang Tae-wook lifted a diving splitter and
“Safe!”
settled in at first base.
The best play a leadoff hitter like him could make.
Not everyone can just smash leadoff homers for fun.
Which meant
“Nice work~”
I had to do my job too.
“…Ah.”
“Why the stiff face? We’re friends now, right?”
I said it while looking at Han Seong-gon’s rigid expression.
It wasn’t wrong, was it?
We’d drunk together.
Exchanged numbers.
That made us friends.
“It’s nothing.”
Whoosh whoosh.
I took a few practice swings and stepped into the box.
“Man… romance is dead.”
The count started ticking on the separate scoreboard they’d installed.
The new rule that had filtered down from the majors all the way to the KBO.
The pitch clock.
Supposed to shorten games.
Fans loved it, but from a player’s seat it was something you had to keep half an eye on.
Runner on, so he has to throw within twenty-five seconds… and I have to be set before eight seconds, right?
Weirdly loose and tight at the same time.
Thwack!!
“Ball.”
“Changeup?”
“…”
“Not answering, huh. That hurts.”
“Yeah, it was.”
First pitch: a changeup out of the zone.
Pretty passive for a guy who’d bragged about loving the battle with hitters.
Probably
Han Seong-gon hyung’s call.
Not that it mattered either way.
This wasn’t the postseason where every single plate appearance was life or death.
And the Rhinos weren’t so weak that I had to solve everything myself.
All I had to do was walk if he threw it outside, and hit it if he threw it in the zone.
“But he really does throw a lot of stuff. Four-seam, two-seam, slider, splitter, and a changeup?”
“That’s why calling signs gives me a headache.”
Still.
Whoooosh!!
Among all those secondary pitches Sean owned, not a single one looked like a true put-away pitch that could overwhelm a hitter.
Crack!!
Which made them easier to hit, actually.
Whirrr.
A low line drive.
I tossed the bat and started running.
The ball skimmed through the hole between first and second.
Jang Tae-wook, the runner on first, touched second and kept charging toward third.
I touched first and decided trying for extra bases was too much.
Still only the first inning…
I stayed put and watched how Jang Tae-wook’s dash to third turned out.
Whoooosh!!
The right fielder fielded it cleanly and fired.
The shortstop took the throw, glanced at me once, then fired straight to third.
The result:
“Safe!!”
Nobody out, runners on first and third.
The table-setters had set the table perfectly, just like the name said.
Mercenaries.
In other words, foreign players.
They were basically on borrowed time.
In a league like the KBO where foreign talent carried so much weight, a bad stretch could get you cut in as little as a month.
There was a reason people called them foreign workers.
But the Rhinos’ foreigners were different.
Opening Day starter Howard had been wearing a Rhinos uniform for six years already.
And the three-hole hitter now stepping in, Garcia, had been the Rhinos’ reliable cleanup man for three solid years.
Who would call guys like that mercenaries or temporary help?
If anything, I was the one who’d been traded out of nowhere and felt more like the hired gun.
Anyway.
They shared the long-tenured foreigner label, but their personalities were complete opposites.
Where Howard was rock-solid, Garcia was a pure mood guy.
And that personality showed up crystal clear in how they played.
Kang Ho-san put it like this:
—“It’s whether you’ve got a family or not. The stability’s totally different. And if you’ve got kids on top of that? The desperation multiplies. Ever heard of the milk-money buff?”
Well.
I didn’t have a family either, so I wouldn’t know.
Garcia’s production rose and fell purely with his mood.
When he felt good he could go deep in consecutive at-bats; when he felt bad he could stay silent the whole game.
And today,
CRACK!!!
“Yeah!!!”
his mood was excellent.
A majestic swing sent the ball sailing clean over the wall.
Jang Tae-wook on third touched home.
I touched home too, then waited for the hero of the homer.
“Hey, Ji-hoo! Today is my day! You just get on base! I’ll take care of the rest!”
“Is that so…”
I answered half-heartedly to Garcia’s nonstop chatter and headed back toward the dugout.
“Ji-hoo…”
“Yeah?”
Jang Tae-wook, uncharacteristically hesitant.
“You… don’t tell me you actually understand everything Garcia says?”
“…Huh? Of course I understand it. That’s why I answer, right?”
Jang Tae-wook’s face went blank with shock.
A flicker of betrayal even showed in his eyes.
“I thought you were a pure baseball player too…”
“What does ‘pure baseball player’ even mean?”
I asked, but I already had a pretty good idea.
I’d said it myself.
Baseball players are
“meatheads who only know baseball…”
That’s the baseline.
“I’m not just a player, you know.”
“Right! You’re the novelist!”
Of course, writing novels and speaking English had zero connection.
Mine was just everyday conversational English.
“A baseball player just needs to be good at baseball. What else matters?”
“That’s true. Still… don’t you think you need English to really understand baseball? All the newest theory comes out of the States.”
“…”
Really.
Even as a senior, this guy was fun to mess with.
“But! For a veteran of your caliber, isn’t the experience you’ve already built more important than the latest theory?”
“…You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
“Just a little. Of course a player from a prestigious franchise will forgive me with his generous heart, right?”
Opening Day.
Three runs already in the first inning, and a warm March breeze was blowing through the Rhinos dugout.
Come to think of it, did the coach make it to America okay?