Watching a Fight
They say the most entertaining thing in the world is watching a fight.
But.
“Fuck, I really can’t take this anymore!”
“Ugh… uugh.”
A pitcher dangling in midair, face gone completely white, unable to get a single word out, and a first baseman gripping the pitcher’s collar instead of a glove. Amid the players who had all poured out to break up the collision between the two, I—
“Haha, this is a total mess.”
—found it not entertaining in the slightest.
Two hours earlier.
Top of the first.
After taking first base on a hit to right field, I did the thing every player visiting his former team tends to do.
In other words—
“Hi.”
“You creepy bastard.”
—I socialized.
I’d been feeling it since yesterday. Facing former teammates as enemies was actually pretty fun.
Thwack!!
“Safe!”
“Jesus.”
As long as idle chatter didn’t get me thrown out, it was fine. I scrambled back to the bag on the pitcher’s pickoff attempt, then stood and brushed the dirt off my uniform. The funny part was that first baseman Lee Dae-beom looked just as startled—he hadn’t seen the pickoff coming either.
“Scared the hell out of me too, you little shit.”
I met the pitcher’s stare and stretched my lead again. But—
“Why does that guy look like he just won after giving up a hit?”
“Hell if I know.”
This is purely personal opinion, but most pitchers are weird.
It’s not just because I’m a hitter. They really are all weird.
Maybe because it’s the loneliest position on the field, their personalities warp just to survive the isolation.
And even among those weird pitchers, Lee Min-ho seemed a little—no, a lot—weirder than most.
In a hitter-versus-pitcher battle, once the hitter reaches base, the hitter has won. Yet the pitcher the Wizards’ new GM had judged equal or superior to me in value was wearing an arrogant expression, as if he were the one who’d come out on top even after giving up the hit.
Mental game’s solid, at least…
I didn’t think it was a bad thing. Not yet. After all, mental strength matters in sports, and a little arrogance beats getting rattled any day.
Of course—
CRACK!!
—confidence doesn’t guarantee results.
The powerful swing of the number-three hitter, Garcia, lofted the dropping off-speed pitch. The ball sailed to a place no outfielder, no matter how good, could reach: over the wall.
—“I love that in Korea you can bat-flip without catching a beanball!”
The lively Venezuelan import, who’d said exactly that, celebrated the homer with a flashy bat flip—the KBO specialty he’d polished for three years.
Huh? So the catcher really is the problem?
I was already waiting at home plate for the home-run hitter Garcia when I caught the pitcher’s voice. Thinking I might have misheard, I glanced at the mound. The starter’s arrogant eyes were still there. I hadn’t misheard.
Naturally, every Wizard infielder had heard what pitcher Lee Min-ho said.
They only held their temper because he was the starter. Winning is everything to a baseball player, and without a starting pitcher it’s hard to win a game. Still—
The broadcast booth and—
—the Wizard fans could not contain their rage at Lee Min-ho’s reverse-victim act.
Especially—
Former pitcher and color commentator Kim Jung-up was absolutely livid.
Of course, none of it reached Lee Min-ho on the mound.
Aside from the minor accident of giving up a homer because the catcher moved too obviously, I shut them down pretty well in the first.
Even if he had heard it, nothing would have changed.
“Shame…”
We’d put up two runs in the first, yet nobody could hide their disappointment.
The Wizard lineup was still plenty dangerous even without me, and the Rhinos’ foreign starter today still looked like he hadn’t adapted to the KBO.
Crack!!
Park Ji-han’s single.
Thwack!!
A walk to Shin Tae-yong, the man who was practically my benefactor for making me who I am today.
And then—
CRACK!!
—a massive double from their foreign hitter. The Wizards closed the gap by one run in a blink.
Nobody out, runners on second and third. Cleanup hitter Lee Dae-beom stepped in. The poorly located mistake pitch—
CRAAACK!!
—sailed clean over the wall for a go-ahead three-run homer.
“Hey, no matter how you look at it—”
“Shh. No bad-mouthing about how he’s getting released before he even adapts, hyung.”
Watching Kang Ho-san climb the mound to console the shell-shocked foreign pitcher, Jang Tae-wook and I exchanged words the pitcher thankfully couldn’t understand. Korean, after all.
Tch.
Just as Jang Tae-wook said, the new foreign pitcher the Rhinos had ambitiously signed this season looked like he’d be unemployed soon.
They said he was in the big leagues until last year.
Maybe the level of Major League Baseball isn’t that different either?
No way.
There was simply a reason that pitcher had come all the way from the majors to the KBO.
Still, maybe Kang Ho-san’s mound visit had some effect. The pitcher who’d given up four runs without recording a single out managed to finish the inning without further damage.
“That bastard’s still the same.”
In the Rhinos dugout, Jang Tae-wook muttered while watching Jeong Su-hyun’s sacrifice fly.
“What is?”
I handed him an electrolyte drink and asked.
“Lee Min-ho. Right now he’s thinking, ‘Ah, I gave up the run because the outfielder’s arm is trash,’ I bet.”
“Come on… no way.”
That ball had been hit so deep no outfielder on earth could have turned it into an out.
“Sometimes ‘no way’ is exactly what gets people killed, Ji-hoo.”
A remark loaded with meaning.
“Haven’t seen him in a while, and his tantrum disease has only gotten worse.”
Lee Min-ho’s nonstop complaining was loud enough for the opposing Rhinos players to hear too.
“Was he like that when he was here?”
“Come on… no way.”
The Rhinos position players—
“You can’t act like that if you don’t want to get your ass beaten.”
—weren’t a Gyeongsang-do team for nothing. Every last one of them had a strong personality.
“I’m more surprised by the Wizards than by Lee Min-ho.”
According to Jang Tae-wook, Lee Min-ho’s tantrum disease was a constant, so it wasn’t surprising. What he couldn’t understand was that the Wizard players weren’t voicing a single complaint.
“Hmm…”
“You know why? They were teammates until last year. Are they all saints or something?”
Not quite.
“Ji-han’s probably suffering for it.”
“Park Ji-han?”
Starting this season, Park Ji-han was the captain of the Suwon Wizards. He claimed he didn’t feel any pressure taking the role, since his role model was Ryu Hyun-seo.
“He’s got a good personality, that guy.”
“True enough.”
Soft leadership, they called it.
“He’s probably working behind the scenes to avoid any clashes as much as possible.”
Even so—
“I get the feeling it’s going to blow up soon.”
Anyone could see Lee Dae-beom was seething. It was the clear omen of the accident that would arrive not long after.
Gong Ji-hoo’s prediction hit dead-on in the top of the fifth.
The score was still 4–3, Suwon Wizards leading.
Jang Tae-wook’s softly stroked ball dropped into a perfect spot. Nobody out, runner on first.
Number-two hitter Gong Ji-hoo at the plate. The moment Lee Min-ho threw the first pitch, Jang Tae-wook broke for second.
Sliiiide.
“Safe!”
He stole the base with ease. The timing was so perfect the catcher never even thought about throwing to second. Naturally—
“Damn it! You can’t even catch that?”
—Lee Min-ho lost his temper.
Whew… still feels good to get a word in, though.
In truth, Lee Min-ho himself was aware that his behavior was excessive. But—
Nobody can touch me anyway.
—he believed he had the Wizards completely figured out, and judged that his actions hadn’t crossed the line.
Unlike the Rhinos, who used to suppress a pitcher’s rightful anger… the Wizards actually respect their pitchers.
Of course, that was pure delusion on Lee Min-ho’s part alone.
No matter how good-natured captain Park Ji-han was, he had no intention of tolerating behavior that poisoned the team atmosphere any longer. And in the dugout, Manager Kim Tae-sik was already thinking that today was Lee Min-ho’s final chance.
Until now he had endured as much as possible under front-office pressure, but a manager naturally found it unpleasant when a player kept crossing the line.
“Ha. Instead of Gong Ji-hoo we get this guy.”
Manager Kim Tae-sik had never held any particular prejudice against non-drafted players, yet this trade inevitably made him think, So this is why non-drafted guys get a bad rap. He still remembered how shocked he’d been at the news of Gong Ji-hoo’s trade. And on top of that—
The pitcher they’d acquired had a serious character flaw. A flaw so large that even Manager Kim Tae-sik, who normally never intervened in player conflicts, was seriously considering stepping in himself.
Manager Dong Sang-guk had once called a certain pitcher “a bastard who doesn’t even look like a pitcher.” The phrase fit Lee Min-ho perfectly.
Having earned the “Pitcher-Who-Doesn’t-Look-Like-One Mark II” label from his own former manager, Lee Min-ho’s second pitch to Gong Ji-hoo was a fastball thrown while hyper-aware of Jang Tae-wook, who’d already stolen on the first pitch. Naturally—
CRACK!!
—Gong Ji-hoo did not miss it.
Ah, didn’t clear the wall.
The ball caromed off the fence. Runner on second Jang Tae-wook strolled home, and batter Gong Ji-hoo lightly touched second base. The balance of the game, which had tilted ever so slightly toward the Wizards, was restored.
And Lee Min-ho—
“The fence play was sloppy!”
—was extremely displeased by that.
And—
“Fuck, I really can’t take this anymore!”
—Lee Dae-beom was extremely displeased with Lee Min-ho.
Cursing and snorting, Lee Dae-beom charged the mound. With one hand he seized Lee Min-ho by the collar and hoisted him clean off the ground, then slammed the pitcher he was holding straight down.
Lee Dae-beom showing raw violence. Lee Min-ho trembling in every limb with fear. Gong Ji-hoo watching blankly from second base.
It was an unprecedented bench-clearing brawl against one’s own team.
Looks like we won the game, but…
It was going to be hard to simply savor the victory. Staring at the mound now packed with Wizard players, Gong Ji-hoo thought exactly that to himself.
What Lee Min-ho called the “Lee Min-ho Derby,” and what most people called the “Gong Ji-hoo Derby,” ended its second game with the Suwon Wizards’ self-destruction.
Manager Kim Tae-sik regretted, “Did I care too much about the front office?” Park Ji-han lamented, “Should I have said something to Lee Min-ho first?” And Lee Dae-beom self-assessed, “Still, it felt damn good.”
Naturally, the angriest of all were the Wizard fans. In the end they—
—pulled out the ancestral heirloom, the “truck protest,” less than a month into the season.