A Plan of His Own
I had a plan of my own.
Against my former team, the Suwon Wizards, in a three-game series. After putting on an absolute clinic the entire series…
“Wizards! Your son has returned!”
That was the interview I intended to give. Of course—
“Are you actually insane…?”
—with everyone around me trying to talk me out of it, I was prepared to tone the wording down a little. Even so, the core premise never changed: put on a monstrous performance and make the Wizards regret everything.
It had been going smoothly. Yesterday I’d even gone multi-homer. But today’s game ruined the whole thing. We won, sure—but it wasn’t a win built on the Rhinos’ or Gong Ji-hoo’s brilliance. It was a win the Suwon Wizards handed us by self-destructing.
“Tch.”
I clicked my tongue and sat in a café I used to frequent, quietly sipping coffee while surveying the table.
“I should’ve been the one to tell Min-ho hyung to tone it down a little first…”
Park Ji-han was lamenting.
“Ah, that felt so damn good! Hey, it wasn’t your fault, so quit stewing over it!”
Lee Dae-beom was consoling him with a thoroughly satisfied look on his face. But hang on—
“Is the guy who actually did the wrong thing really the one who should be saying that?”
“If you’re not a Wizard, shut your mouth.”
“Yes, sir.”
If you’re gonna be like that, don’t invite me in the first place.
An Sung-woo just patted my shoulder in silence. As expected—a man only looks cool when he keeps his composure.
“So, Dae-beom.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s the deal with your suspension?”
“I’m… getting suspended?”
Did you seriously think you wouldn’t?
“No, think about it for a second.”
“Alright, go ahead and explain it to me.”
“You little punk… Anyway, what I did—was that even a bench-clearing?”
“Uh…”
Exactly.
“Okay, what is a bench-clearing? It’s when every player from both teams empties the dugouts, right? But today?”
“Only you guys came out.”
“Wow, now you’re just calling us ‘you guys.’ That’s right. Only ‘our’ Suwon Wizards came out.”
The Rhinos players had all been standing there slack-jawed in pure disbelief. Even Manager Dong Sang-guk’s eyes had gone wide.
“So what I’m saying is, what I did wasn’t a bench-clearing! It was more like an internal team disagreement!”
“So no suspension, then?”
“Exactly! It’s basically the same as those old-school guys who used to pull the curtain and slap someone around to enforce discipline.”
Well now.
“There’s a point…”
“Right?”
“There is not.”
“Why not? My logic is airtight.”
“Okay, fine—by your definition, you could maybe argue it wasn’t a bench-clearing.”
Park Ji-han and An Sung-woo both nodded in agreement at that.
“You’re not getting suspended because it was a bench-clearing.”
“…What?”
“You’re getting suspended because you committed a violent act.”
The reason players get hit with mass suspensions after a bench-clearing is that violence almost always comes with the territory. Sure, sometimes people are out there scheduling dinner plans in the middle of it, but still.
This is the KBO that “delivers dreams and hope to children,” after all.
Violence is bad.
“That’s…”
Any baseball player would already know this.
“Then what about the curtain thing I mentioned?!”
“It never got caught on camera.”
“Ah…”
Even now there are players who still enforce “discipline” with violence somewhere the cameras can’t see. In the past that was just the default. Of course, I’d never been on the receiving end myself. In high school we were a weak team whose core was me and Kim Jae-sang, so nobody touched us. And the Wizards never had any of those old-fogey seniors.
Well, strictly speaking there was one—he just didn’t have any power.
There’d been a backup who used to compete with me for the starting job; I can barely even remember his name now. Anyway, the violence they call “discipline” never gets caught on camera, so the higher-ups at the “dreams and hope for children” KBO figure there’s no reason to punish it.
“What I’m saying is, you did it out in the open, so of course you’re getting suspended.”
“Ha… yeah, I figured.”
So you already knew.
“If even baseball-illiterate Gong Ji-hoo is saying it, I guess there’s no dodging the suspension.”
You little fox.
“You pig bastard.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The image of him planting a guy on the mound with one hand was still vivid in my mind.
“Probably a game suspension, right?”
“Probably.”
“Ha… this is all because the Rhinos sent us a defective product, isn’t it?”
What do you want me to do about it? The GM picked that pitcher. Grit your teeth and endure.
“You’re making a face like you don’t care.”
Well.
“I’m a Rhinos player now.”
“That’s true.”
Still, there was something I was curious about.
“What’s going to happen to Min-ho hyung?”
The answer came from the captain of the Suwon Wizards—Park Ji-han—who’d been sitting there blankly drinking coffee while listening to our entire conversation.
“They’re sending him to the second team. Apparently we won’t see him again this year. I heard it straight from the manager.”
“Oh…”
The Suwon Wizards’ second team, huh.
“That’s my area of expertise.”
“You’re bragging, you bastard.”
“How would any of you who’ve never been there understand how hellish it is?”
“Anyway, if I sacrificed myself to get rid of one annoying trash pitcher, that’s a net win, right?”
Of course—
“The next few games are gonna suck, though.”
Because their cleanup hitter—me—won’t be there! Having said that, Lee Dae-beom—
—glug, glug—
—downed his scalding hot coffee in one go.
What a beast…
There was one thing, however, that Gong Ji-hoo and Lee Dae-beom had failed to consider—something only Park Ji-han had vaguely been fretting over.
The fact that the pitcher Lee Dae-beom had called “trash” was the general manager’s personal pick. And the fact that, for as long as that GM kept his job, there was no one in the organization with more influence than him.
He had a plan of his own.
With outstanding foresight and bold decision-making, he would lead the team to a championship and flatten the noses of every baseball figure who had ever looked down on him. And the three-game home series against the Daegu Rhinos was supposed to be the chance to put a spectacular final flourish on the first chapter of that plan.
“How did today’s game go?”
“Rainout, sir.”
Ruined.
“Tsk. At least that’s something of a relief…”
In the Suwon Wizards’ general manager’s office, the GM clicked his tongue, unable to hide his frustration.
And whose fault is it that things got this bad?
The operations director swallowed his complaints. Such was the sorrow of a salaried man.
“My plan was perfect! You know that, right, Director?”
“Yes. Well… something like that.”
The Suwon Wizards were the 2024 season champions. They still had the firepower to contend for another title this year. On top of that, the GM had used one of the hitters he judged to be surplus power to shore up a pitching staff that had been lacking—making the team even more solid. All that remained was to take flight, right?
It’s not entirely wrong, but…
Listening to the GM’s characteristic long-winded speech, the operations director thought as much. In truth, the rest of the front office had also agreed that the pitching staff desperately needed reinforcement. What they hadn’t expected was that the GM would burn Gong Ji-hoo as a trade chip. What they had expected even less was that Gong Ji-hoo would put up numbers this year comparable to last year’s. And above all—
We never expected the pitcher we got in return would fail to adapt to the team…
“Damn it, why is the Suwon Wizards’ clubhouse culture so territorial?!”
The GM was just as frustrated. He hadn’t expected the pitcher he’d so ambitiously acquired to clash with the existing players either.
“I’m not a god—how am I supposed to foresee something like that?”
The fact that he still regarded Lee Min-ho as “an unfortunate pitcher tormented by the veterans’ hazing” laid bare the full extent of the GM’s incompetence. If he’d simply listened to the people around him, he could have grasped the truth easily enough.
Sigh, that’s not it at all.
The operations director had even mustered the courage to point out Lee Min-ho’s problems, but the GM—with his ironclad ego—hadn’t so much as pretended to listen. Instead—
“If he’s a pitcher I chose, he should have that much confidence! The other players are just being unreasonable!”
—he’d been busy badmouthing the existing roster. Probably because Lee Min-ho was going to be his first major achievement. Whether it would turn out to be an achievement or a blunder remained to be seen.
“What about Lee Min-ho?”
“Looks like he’s headed to the second team.”
“The second team? Why on earth?”
“Manager Kim Tae-sik’s decision.”
“You’re sending the victim to the second team? Does that make any sense?”
Well.
Because he isn’t the victim.
Naturally, the director didn’t say that out loud. He simply replied—
“From the field’s perspective, it was deemed necessary.”
“That damn ‘field’ again! Is Manager Kim Tae-sik looking down on me because I’m not a former player?”
“Of course not.”
Manager Kim Tae-sik had been showing the GM plenty of respect. That was exactly why he’d given Lee Min-ho chance after chance even after the repeated conflicts.
“And Lee Dae-beom?”
“…Lee Dae-beom?”
The GM pounded his chest in frustration at the operations director’s response.
“I’m asking what the suspension situation is for Lee Dae-beom!”
“Ah…”
At least he’s thinking about the team’s future, the director thought.
“Fortunately, it looks like it’ll just be a four-game suspension.”
That thought was immediately and thoroughly destroyed by the GM’s next words.
“Fortunately?”
“Uh…”
“How is that fortunate? He committed violence in a sacred baseball game. The man has no sportsmanship. A mere four-game suspension is far too light, don’t you think?”
What kind of nonsense is this?
“But the longer Lee Dae-beom’s absence stretches, the harder the season becomes to manage.”
“Director. I… I want the Wizards to be a clean organization. When something’s wrong, we fix it! When someone commits a sin, they receive firm punishment! That’s how you give the fans something worth cheering for, isn’t it?”
The fact that those same fans were currently crowdfunding for the GM’s ouster didn’t need to be mentioned. The GM already knew. He simply didn’t care.
“If we just massage the community narrative a little, it’ll die down soon enough. Especially if the team starts winning.”
In any case, the most important matter right now was—
“Let’s issue Lee Dae-beom an internal club suspension as well.”
“…Excuse me?”
“Say, around fifteen games? Separate from the KBO suspension, of course.”
Speaking as if he were the guardian of sportsmanship itself—claiming that anything less wouldn’t be an appropriate penalty for a player who had damaged the spirit of the game—the GM was, in the end, simply handing down a retaliatory suspension for the crime of planting the GM’s personal pitching pick on the mound.
This is just a grudge suspension…
“Isn’t fifteen games a bit long?”
“I personally think fifteen is too short. I’m already being generous because he’s a core hitter for the team, you know?”
An internal suspension was unavoidable. In that case—
“How about five games?”
“Fifteen.”
They had to get the severity down as low as possible.
“Seven?”
“Twelve.”
The team’s survival depended on it.
“Please, just make it around ten. I’m begging you.”
“Hmm… okay! Ten games!”
Dae-beom, I did my best…
Only then did the operations director let out a sigh of relief. Of course—
Tsk… still feels too light for how pissed I am.
—the GM had no intention of letting it go at just that.
A team already short on first basemen…
The Suwon Wizards, who had pulled off a miracle championship in the 2024 Korean Series. Their magic was crumbling in the hands of a single man.
“Who’s next on the schedule?”
“We’re heading to Jamsil for a three-game series against the Foxes.”
“No, not us. Which team are the Rhinos playing?”
“…The Swallows. It’s a Classic Series.”
“Ha. So Gong Ji-hoo’s little show ends here. He’ll wilt under a stadium full of boos at Sajik.”
In the hands of a tyrant who fretted more over the opponent who’d embarrassed him than over the team he was supposed to lead—
Sajik.
Top of the first.
The plate appearance of Gong Ji-hoo—the Swallows’ greatest enemy, or perhaps the foremost expert at making the Swallows look like fools.
—Waaaaaah! Gong Ji-hoo! Gong Ji-hoo!
Gong Ji-hoo stood there, dumbfounded by the roaring cheers instead of the icy boos he’d expected.
“What the hell is going on…”
“A little surprise our fans prepared?”
Behind the plate, Kim Jae-sang could only snicker.