Waaah
The Rhinos' final boss.
The national team closer.
Oh Jin-muk was depressed.
His team was running away with first place. His ERA sat at a dominant zero. By every measure, his life should have been overflowing with things to celebrate. And yet he was depressed.
Well… I didn't get into a game again today.
Appearances had become vanishingly rare. People liked to say that freeloading on a paycheck was every office worker's dream, but for Oh Jin-muk this season, that was not the case.
This season was supposed to be his showcase for a Major League move.
"Oh. With your talent, you don't even need to prove yourself. Plenty of clubs will want to bring you over."
That was what the agency he'd signed with for his overseas push had told him. And why wouldn't they? Who turns down a pitcher who throws 103 miles an hour? He was already the undisputed best closer in the KBO, a league that commanded a fair amount of respect in its own right.
But the thing Oh Jin-muk wanted to prove wasn't his stuff.
Durability questions were practically a birthright for Asian pitchers. Pair that with velocity rarely seen even in the majors, and a pitcher who had already lost an entire season to injury? He didn't need the agency to spell it out. He knew plenty of clubs already had their doubts about him.
So he had gone out of his way to ask the new manager, Dong Sang-guk, to work him as hard as possible…
"Look, Jin-muk. What can I do? The situation just isn't there. The situation for you to come in."
The team was simply too good.
Ordinarily, a closer's appearances drop when the team is losing a lot of games. With the Rhinos, it was the opposite.
The Rhinos won far more often than they lost—overwhelmingly so. They weren't sitting in first place by accident.
Games that stayed save situations into the ninth? Extremely rare.
When they won, they won big—so big that their closer never needed to set foot on the mound.
In the end, it all came back to Gong Ji-hoo.
A hitter people half-jokingly, half-reverently said was on a 100-homer pace. A player who had locked up the March–April MVP without anyone needing to cast a ballot. A monster expected to put together the greatest single season in KBO history even if his current pace eventually crumbled.
Being on the same team as a player like that was a blessing for Oh Jin-muk the Rhinos pitcher—and a curse for Oh Jin-muk the impending Major League free agent.
Of course, he knew full well that this not-quite-complaint of his was the definition of a first-world problem.
Ho-san hyung even said getting paid without playing was a good deal…
Oh Jin-muk was well aware that he was a hard person to get close to. On the Rhinos, the only one he could confidently call a friend was Kang Ho-san.
His timid nature and blank expression made for a strange combination, and the result was someone people somehow found difficult to approach.
"Hey! Being a closer is about guts! Guts! The poker face is everything!"
He sometimes found himself resenting the pitching coach who had turned a fast-armed coward into the best closer in the league—but Oh Jin-muk simply didn't have the personality to rib his benefactor about it. If he had…
"Ji-hoo~ take it easy, will you? Hyung wants to get into a game too."
…he might have been able to joke around with Gong Ji-hoo like that.
"Hoo…"
He had never really talked much with Gong Ji-hoo at all.
And yet he gets along so well with my little sister…
The memory of his sister's face, practically bragging that they were grabbing a meal together again on tomorrow's off day, made Oh Jin-muk's expression harden for no good reason.
"Uh. Senior. Good work out there."
"…Yeah."
Swallowing every thought that had risen in his chest, Oh Jin-muk gave a short reply to the greeting Gong Ji-hoo offered with a careful glance at his face.
Gong Ji-hoo bowed and walked off. Oh Jin-muk checked the schedule—and let out a sigh.
"Ah…"
It's already that day.
The next game was May 6th. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been just another date on the calendar, but May 5th was a Monday—a day without baseball—which meant the sixth had become a game they absolutely had to win. And win big.
Because the joy of the kids in the stands mattered more than the petty question of whether he got to pitch or not.
Every game matters to a player. But some games matter more than others.
Rivalry derbies, for instance—though the Rhinos didn't really have a proper rival—or matchups between teams fighting for first place. Or…
"All right. We win this one no matter what. Understood?"
"Yes, sir!"
…Children's Day.
While everyone else was firing themselves up for battle, a slightly frivolous thought crossed my mind.
"Ho-san hyung. So, uh…"
"Hm?"
"This isn't our home park."
"And?"
"A lot of the kids who came out to watch are probably rooting for the other team. Doesn't that make us the villains?"
"Ji-hoo."
It was the usual pregame nonsense I used to shake off a little tension. But Kang Ho-san looked at me with a seriousness I almost never saw from him.
"Hyung's gotta be serious today."
"Yeah?"
"My kid came to watch on Children's Day. We have to win. Obviously."
"…Fighting?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
Kang Ho-san cracked a smile at my cheer and clapped me on the shoulder.
Come to think of it…
Every player wearing an unusually serious face today had one thing in common.
They're all married guys.
Married guys with kids, specifically.
"I guess that's a feeling I still can't understand."
"Right?"
At my comment, the pure-blood franchise star of the Daegu Rhinos cut in out of nowhere. His love for the team never wavered, but his love for women blew whichever way the wind did—a playboy who acted just like Derek Jeter. Jang Tae-wook agreed with me.
"You look like you're thinking something extremely disrespectful right now."
"…Just a tiny bit?"
"Ji-hoo. It's hyung…"
"Yes, hyung."
"Ahem. You and Ho-san hyung were talking about something fun?"
Jang Tae-wook forced the subject elsewhere.
"Oh, that. What do you think, hyung?"
"That we're stuck playing the villains… hard to say."
"Hmm. Is the Children's Day series somehow different? First time for me, so I don't really know."
Did the fans all hold hands and sing "We Are the World" or something? I'd never seen anything like that on the TV broadcasts.
"Pfft. It's not that… Never mind. Just experience it yourself."
"Huh?"
"It might even bring back some old memories."
Top of the first. The moment the game started, I understood.
Ah. So that's what Tae-wook hyung meant…
—Waaaaaah!!
An away game, not a home one. And the stadium was a sea of blue.
South Korea is the Republic of Seoul. You can tell just by looking at the KBO—three teams call Seoul home.
Too baseball-centric a way of thinking? What's a baseball player supposed to think about if not baseball?
Two of those teams shared Jamsil Stadium, that legendary pitcher's park: the Seoul Wolves and the Seoul Foxes.
A "two families under one roof" arrangement, and naturally they were the defining rivalry of Seoul—no, of the entire KBO.
The Foxes had settled in Seoul first and carried the deeper roots. The Wolves had been a perennial powerhouse and, through the 2020s, the best team in the league.
Back when I was still eating school lunches, the Foxes had been scraping the bottom of the standings alongside the Swallows, so the Wolves had dominated most of their matchups. But rivalries aren't decided by win-loss records alone. Two teams sharing Jamsil were rivals by universal consensus—and even more so once the Foxes finally climbed out of their long dark age.
Which left the odd one out among Seoul's three.
What kind of team were the Seoul Jaguars?
While the other two Seoul clubs had claimed names from the canine family, this scrappy expansion team had gone and taken a feline for itself.
In a KBO that almost never let franchise stars walk, they were the team that fit the label "selling club" better than anyone. And more than that—
In an era when baseball's popularity was through the roof, while every other team was selling out even exhibition games, they had partnered with the Gamers for a single-day attendance of 768 fans. A humiliation for the ages. The definition of an unpopular team.
That was the Jaguars.
It was only natural. When your team identity is "the moment you start to care about a player, he gets traded," popularity was never going to follow.
If they kept producing Major League talent year after year and earned some ridiculous nickname like "the MLB military academy," maybe it'd be different.
But come on. As if.
Unlike the Wizards or the Gamers, who at least got lumped in with them as fellow unpopular clubs, the Jaguars had never even won a championship. They were, without question, the least popular team in the KBO.
"Least popular team. Kind of an ironic superlative."
And yet—
—Waaaaaah!! Gong Ji-hoo! Gong Ji-hoo!
Looking out at Gocheok Dome packed so full of Rhinos fans you couldn't tell whose home park it was, I couldn't think of a phrase that fit better.
Jang Tae-wook, you were wrong.
Old memories, he'd said. Even among unpopular teams, there were tiers. Even the Wizards had more home fans than visitors when they played at home.
"Good to see you~"
Nobody on, runner on first. I stepped into the box with my usual greeting.
"Good to see you!"
The catcher answered right back.
Nice energy on that one.
It put me in a good mood for no particular reason.
"Gong Ji-hoo. Go easy on us, please."
"Waaah."
"…Excuse me?"
I answered the unusually polite catcher the only way that felt right for Children's Day.
What? Why not? I'm the baby of the Rhinos too.
I didn't have any kids of my own, so if I was going to focus on this game, I might as well become one myself.
"You're every bit as weird as I've heard."
"Goo-goo, ga-ga."
"This guy's insane."
Wait—that last voice hadn't been the catcher's. I glanced back.
"Get ready."
Yep. That was the home plate umpire. A player who gets called insane by the umpire. That would be me.
I wasn't particularly proud of it.
Thwack!!
"Ball."
The first pitch missed. Given the ridiculous stretch I'd been on lately, every pitcher approached me carefully.
I liked aggressive at-bats and swung at anything in the zone, and four times out of ten it turned into a hit, so I couldn't really blame them.
"Gong Ji-hoo. Did you know?"
"Waaah?"
"I'm actually a lot younger than you."
"…Oh. Are you?"
Of course he was. How old could the players on a selling club that dumped guys the moment they hit free agency really be? Catchers tended to be veterans, so I'd just assumed on my own that he was my senior.
"Shit…"
That was mortifying.
I could feel my face burning. And then—
Whoooosh!!
The pitch came in, and I swung without a second thought.
Crack!!
I just wanted to get out of that box as fast as possible. Even with the urgency, the contact was clean—the ball ripped through the infield and dropped in front of the right fielder.
Jang Tae-wook, who'd been on first, held up at second. I reached first base, covered my face with both hands, and sank into a crouch.
Acting like a baby in front of actual children. If there had been a mouse hole nearby, I would have crawled into it.