Hey, You Bastard
The 2025 KBO Opening Series was over.
For a league as wildly popular as the KBO, every game of the Opening Series had sold out. And the player who had drawn the most eyes of all was not Howard of the Rhinos, who had thrown a complete-game shutout on Opening Day, nor Do Jeong-hoo of the Wolves, nor even Park Ji-han of the Wizards, who had hit the first home run of the 2025 season.
It was Gong Ji-hoo, stepping out in a brand-new uniform this year.
And of course—
"Tch…"
—people's attention was never going to be purely positive. Especially not when the player in question was someone like Gong Ji-hoo.
"Just a flash-in-the-pan, and he acts like…"
Monday. A man checking the internet news flung his phone away in irritation. Of course, since it was a brand-new model he'd only just bought, he tossed it onto a soft bed.
"Two games, eight at-bats, six hits, two homers… sure, he hit well. But is that really something that deserves this much noise?"
In his own way, he had a point. Gong Ji-hoo's Opening Series numbers had been impressive, but a few other players had posted similar lines.
"It's all because that bastard never shuts his mouth. Coward."
The man muttering a steady stream of abuse about Gong Ji-hoo was Kwak Jun-hyeong—the starting pitcher the Incheon Stars coddled like a prized possession.
In the so-called draft of the century, the 2020 draft, he had been the Stars' first-round pick. And his hostility toward Gong Ji-hoo ran deeper than most.
"Why the hell… why would Kim Jae-sang pick that guy!"
There were four players widely regarded as the ones who ruled the KBO.
Do Jeong-hoo. Oh Jin-muk. Ryu Hyun-seo. And Kim Jae-sang.
Among them, for every player who had come out of the 2020 draft, Kim Jae-sang's stature was in a league of his own. The rest were all seniors. Kim Jae-sang was a classmate—and his genius had already been famous since middle school.
Kwak Jun-hyeong was, among that cohort, a near-religious devotee of Kim Jae-sang. Back in high school, one look at his swing in a tournament and Kwak had fallen for him on the spot. The moment a pitch he'd thrown with everything he had cleared the fence was something he still couldn't forget.
Someday, he had dreamed, he would play on the national team alongside Kim Jae-sang and earn his recognition.
The problem was that while Kwak Jun-hyeong was a first-rounder himself, he was no genius like Kim Jae-sang. Where Kim had locked down the starting catcher job the moment he signed and proceeded to detonate the league, Kwak had been a classic ceiling pick—only last year had he finally started to show his face in the first team and put up real numbers.
He hadn't thought he was late. Sure, players like Park Ji-han, Lee Dae-beom, and An Sung-woo had claimed starting jobs from day one of their debut seasons—but those guys were just hitters. He was a pitcher.
Just watch. 2024 is going to be my year.
That was what Kwak Jun-hyeong had believed. Reality had other plans.
"No matter what anyone says, the 2024 season belonged to Gong Ji-hoo!"
It had not been his year.
"Fuck…"
The Wizards' golden generation? If those guys had gotten that kind of praise, it would have stung, but he could have accepted it. But Gong Ji-hoo? That was a guy who'd been sneered at as nothing more than a Minor League Yeopo—a bottom-feeder who had never even registered on Kwak's radar. And after two good months, he was supposed to snatch the praise that should have been Kwak's?
How was that fair?
And then—
"Gong Ji-hoo? That guy's my one and only rival."
His idol. The classmate whose recognition he had always wanted. Kim Jae-sang himself had named Gong Ji-hoo as his rival.
Kwak Jun-hyeong didn't even subscribe to his own team's Incheon Stars YouTube channel. And yet, on the Busan Swallows channel he had subscribed to solely because of Kim Jae-sang, Kim Jae-sang himself had driven a dagger straight into his heart.
His teeth ground together. Even now, just thinking about it made him shake with rage.
"That should have been my place… not some third-rate scrub like you…"
Kim Jae-sang was surprisingly softhearted. He was probably just hyping up a nobody like Gong Ji-hoo because they went to the same high school. Or maybe Gong Ji-hoo—who had a natural gift for drawing aggro—had strong-armed him into it.
Which meant—
"I'm going to smash him to pieces…"
Tomorrow's game was a fight to save Kim Jae-sang. And a fight to wake up every baseball fan currently being played by Gong Ji-hoo's three-inch tongue.
Tuesday. Home game for the Incheon Stars. Starting pitcher against the Rhinos. Kwak Jun-hyeong wore a twisted smile.
Of course, the catcher currently lying in bed in Busan, scratching his stomach, had no idea who he even was. And neither did the third baseman currently eating makchang with a senior teammate's family in Daegu.
The Rhinos' home park, Rhinos Park, and the Stars' home park, Stars Field, both ranked among the KBO's three biggest ping-pong stadiums.
Fans of both teams would get into heated arguments over which one was more hitter-friendly. But for someone who had to play consecutive series in both of them, I was pretty firmly in the camp of—
They're the same damn thing…
And the Rhinos players seemed to feel the same way.
"Ugh… every time we face the Stars, home or away, it's a bloodbath. Such a pain."
"That bad?"
"Yeah… maybe because both home parks are bandboxes. Homers fly out every other pitch and every game turns into a slugfest."
Kang Ho-san shook his head like it already hurt.
"And thanks to that, catchers like me are the only ones who get yelled at. 'Your pitch-calling sucks, that's why you keep giving up homers' — and then, 'Why can't you hit one out?' My head's already spinning, kid."
"…Fighting?"
"Look at that. Not a single gram of soul in it."
The only people who really understood me were friends who shared the same pain, Kang Ho-san sighed, and said as much.
"Friends who share the same pain? …Ah. The Stars catcher?"
"Yeah. Lee Chi-yeon from the Stars, plus Jang Seo-yul from the Gamers — we've got a whole Ping-Pong Park Scapegoat Catchers Club, Ji-hoo…"
Catcher was, without question, a position that took a lot of abuse. That said—
Who put a knife to your throat and forced you to be a catcher?
I kept that one firmly inside my mouth. Judging by the faintly unhinged look in Kang Ho-san's eyes, saying it out loud might have gotten me actually stabbed.
"Hmm… hyung."
"What."
"If you're going to get yelled at either way, isn't it better to win and then get yelled at?"
"What did you just say?"
Giving up home runs was something a mere infielder like me couldn't do anything about. So—
"Let's win first and take the abuse later! Hyung-nim!"
"Why does that feel so slimy coming out of your mouth."
Must have been his imagination.
From what I'd been told, today's opposing starter for the Stars was a classmate of mine.
Kang Ho-san had said—
"Hey, if you were in the same conference, didn't you run into each other at lunch sometime?"
—but honestly—
Nothing in the memory banks…
He was a first-rounder, so he couldn't have been a bad player. He would have been a known name in the regional circuit. It was just that too much time had passed for me to remember. An old occupational disease of regressors.
Whap!!
"Strike!"
A pitcher who'd only started making a name for himself last year, and already he was showing gutsy, aggressive pitching from the first pitch. A fastball that drove deep into the inner half of the zone. Lead-off hitter Jang Tae-wook flinched but didn't move.
But then—
Tick.
"Foul!"
—true to his reputation as the Rhinos' immovable lead-off man, he snapped right back into focus.
Whap!!
"Ball."
And Jang Tae-wook started working the count, fouling off pitch after pitch.
"Whatever the result of the at-bat, that hyung really does play in the most annoying way possible."
I had my own fair share of expertise in running up pitch counts, but watching Jang Tae-wook's stubborn battles from the on-deck circle still drew genuine admiration out of me sometimes.
After a seven-pitch duel—
Whap!!
—the result of the pitch the opposing starter gritted his teeth and threw was—
"Strikeout!"
Jang Tae-wook, for all that he'd just been punched out, simply grinned.
"You see that?"
He didn't look the least bit upset. He said it to me — the next hitter — with a smile, then strolled casually away.
"Not really much to see…"
All I'd confirmed was that he was exactly what the analytics team had described before the game: a pitcher with the guts to lean on his fastball and trust his stuff, even while working in a hitter-friendly park.
"Appreciate the hard work~"
I took a few practice swings, whoosh whoosh, and looked up at the pitcher on the mound. But—
"Excuse me…"
"…"
"Sunbae-nim?"
"…"
"Lee Chi-yeon sunbae-nim?"
"Ha… Ho-san hyung told me not to talk to you if I could help it, so I was trying not to answer… what is it?"
What kind of smear campaign was Kang Ho-san running against a precious teammate? I felt a flash of indignation, then got to the question I actually needed to ask.
"Did I do something to that guy? He's staring at me like he wants me dead."
The pitcher's eyes had not looked normal.
Lee Chi-yeon tilted his head.
"Beats me. How would I know what goes on between you two."
"Yeah, fair."
"You're classmates, right? Don't you know each other?"
Minor League Yeopo Gong Ji-hoo was the kind of guy who, even after five years on the same team, had never once spoken to his Wizards classmates.
"No chance of that…"
"Then maybe he just really wants to get you out. You're famous, Ji-hoo."
Me?
"Right now you're basically being treated like a golden goblin. Fancy title, but you look easy to take down."
That was a little—
"Okay, now I'm mad."
I finished the conversation and stepped into the box.
Haa…
So after Minor League Yeopo, it was Golden Goblin. I'd steeled myself for the fact that I still wouldn't get a proper evaluation, but hearing it out loud still—
Irritated the hell out of me.
Shuuuuk!!
And the absurd middle-middle fastball flying in only made it worse.
I got that he trusted his stuff. But no matter how I looked at it, a pitch right down the middle was just him disrespecting me, wasn't it?
It didn't look like a miss, either. In that case—
CRAAACK!!!
I unloaded on it like I was working out every ounce of frustration.
The ball left the bat at a ridiculous speed and sailed clean over the fence.
Whirrr.
From the moment I flipped the bat to the moment I touched first base, every player on the field stood frozen like ice.
So refreshing.
My chest felt as clear as if I'd just taken a digestive. That said—
Those eyes look like they want to kill someone…
—the murderous light in the opposing starter's gaze had only gotten thicker, and that left a faintly unpleasant aftertaste.
Top of the third.
Shuuuuk!!
"Ugh!"
Gong Ji-hoo, standing in the box, took a pitch off the thigh and let out a groan.
"Ah… hit by pitch. Is Kwak Jun-hyeong starting to unravel…?"
Even the broadcast booth — and privately every one of them was thinking that looked intentional… — went quiet for a beat as a hit-by-pitch with that much deliberate intent settled over the stadium.
"Hey, you son of a bitch!!"
A voice thick with raw fury roared out of the Rhinos dugout and rolled across the entire ballpark.