Good News
Baseball seasons split into a first half and a second half around the All-Star break.
In the first half, of all ten KBO clubs, the team that generated the most headlines was, without question, the Daegu Rhinos. They opened the year with a historic ten-game winning streak. They seemed to stumble for a moment afterward, yet from Opening Day onward they had never once surrendered first place—the undisputed powerhouse of the 2025 season. Of course the fans’ eyes never left them.
At the center of it all stood Gong Ji-hoo, already said to have two of the three characters of his name engraved on the MVP trophy, anchoring a murderous lineup, backed by a rock-solid bullpen led by national-team closer Oh Jin-muk. One of the foreign starters had struggled and left a hole in the rotation, but even that had not been enough to blunt the Rhinos’ momentum. That was why every baseball fan expected the Daegu Rhinos to grow even stronger once the second half began. A brand-new foreign starter would take the mound from then on. No matter how mediocre he turned out to be, he could not possibly be worse than the guy he was replacing—that was the Rhinos fans’ consensus, and most of the league agreed.
And so the second half for the current 2025 KBO first-place team, the Daegu Rhinos, was supposed to be smooth sailing.
Or so everyone thought.
CRAAAAACK!!
I turned on a sweeper—that new-fangled breaking ball that no longer felt particularly special—and sent it over the wall for a home run. Then I quietly set the bat down and began my trot around the bases.
Ten games into the second half already. In those ten games I had launched four more homers, sitting alone atop the leaderboard with thirty-eight, and my batting average had not merely held above .400—it had actually climbed a little from the first half. Still, I could not bring myself to brag about the numbers.
“Tch.”
A leadoff solo shot in the bottom of the ninth. It had been a chase-down home run with the team trailing by three, but the hitters behind me snuffed out the tiny spark of hope with almost insulting ease.
THWACK!!
“Strike three!”
Tick.
“Out!”
THWACK!!
“Strike three!”
Final score: 3–1. Defeat.
Low-scoring games had become the norm ever since the second half began. The same Daegu Rhinos lineup that had scorched the league in the first half had turned into a plant.
At first nobody treated it as a real problem. The new foreign starter made his KBO debut in the very first game of the second half, worked five innings on only fifty pitches, and walked away with a win. The four-game set against the Irons that opened the half ended 3–1. Solid results. But the offensive drought that had been easy to ignore while the team was winning began to stand out the moment two straight losing series piled up. Tonight’s game was no different—one run from the entire lineup was the reason we lost.
(group photo of the Rhinos hitters)
Then we can’t help you.
“Hah…”
I checked the Rhinos fan community and let out a hollow little laugh. Thankfully the reaction still wasn’t outright toxic. Two straight losing series, sure, but we were still sitting in first place. Still…
If the ranking flips, who knows how ugly it gets.
Baseball fans cannot stand freefall. Calling me a “stat-padder” right now was just a joke. If the standings dropped, that joke could turn into genuine venom overnight.
“Ji-hoo, you heading home or what?”
“Oh—hyung.”
Jang Tae-wook, the guy who had cemented his “Delivery Guy” nickname by rolling up to the All-Star Game on a motorcycle, clapped me on the shoulder. He kept complaining that “no delivery guy this handsome exists,” but the man had deliberately shown up on a bike just to lean into the nickname, so he had zero room to talk.
“Come on, why waste time scrolling the forums?”
“They’re weirdly entertaining.”
Truth was, after getting burned a few times, I checked them more often than I liked to admit. I never imagined the things I had said to Song Han-su would spread through the entire baseball world via those same boards.
“Tsk.”
Tae-wook peered at my phone and clicked his tongue.
“It’s not like we’re not hitting because we don’t want to hit…”
“You’re still doing fine, hyung.”
Tae-wook had carried the form he found late in the first half all the way into the present.
“And… honestly, if this slump keeps dragging on, it really is a serious problem.”
“No way it lasts forever.”
He was right. Fans were already fretting about the return of “Three-Run Rhinos,” but even the best lineups cannot stay red-hot every single night. The current drought was almost certainly temporary. The only question was—
“When everyone else’s bats actually wake up.”
“Yeah, that’s the part that sucks.”
He dropped into the seat beside me, face suddenly serious. Anything involving the Rhinos turned the man deadly earnest in a heartbeat.
“Su-hyun hyung still not back?”
“You know the answer. Quick return’s not happening. Did you sleep through the manager’s briefing?”
“No, I’m just going down the list one by one.”
Jeong Su-hyun had left late in the first half with a hamstring issue. Everyone expected him back soon; instead the timeline kept sliding deeper into fog. Because of that, even after I switched to third base on paper, I was still spending most of my time in the outfield. At this rate I would finish the season with more games in the grass than at the hot corner.
“And Garcia…”
“Ah, don’t even worry about that guy.”
Garcia, the Rhinos’ long-tenured foreign hitter, owned the most dramatic boom-or-bust swings in the entire KBO.
“One of these days he’ll go back-to-back and scream This Body Revives!”
“Oh… yeah, that tracks.”
Which left—
“Park Hyun-woo, Kim Chang-yong, Han Seon-ho.”
Park Hyun-woo filling center because of Su-hyun’s injury. First baseman Kim Chang-yong and second baseman Han Seon-ho. The bottom of the order was also ice-cold, but—
“Not exactly a crisis.”
I wasn’t dismissing them, but the bottom of the order is the bottom of the order. Nobody puts those guys in the lineup expecting fireworks.
“Young-su’s been solid too.”
“Without him we’d be completely screwed.”
My draft classmate Kim Young-su was holding down third base and playing well. The day Su-hyun returned, Young-su would slide over to first and never leave. Honestly—
Having your everyday first baseman nicknamed Designated Fielder is just ridiculous.
Left-handed hitters were flooding the league and first-base defense mattered more than it used to, but first base was still the position where even a telephone pole could usually manage. You put a guy there for his bat, not his glove.
“Next up…”
“Ho-san hyung and Han-su hyung.”
The real reason the Rhinos lineup had turned into a houseplant: the two right-handed power hitters the franchise boasted about were both ice-cold.
“This one’s probably…”
“A stamina issue.”
Kang Ho-san was catching every single game because the team had no true backup catcher. Song Han-su was pushing forty. Both men were bound to wear down.
“Ho-san hyung’s a freak athlete, so he’ll bounce back eventually, but…”
Song Han-su was different.
“Han-su hyung’s age is age… hard to say.”
“We gave him as many DH days as we could and you can still see the fatigue.”
Then again—
“Why are we even worrying about this?”
“Huh? …Good point.”
Ah.
“I thought you were about to pull some genius solution out of thin air.”
“I was actually counting on you.”
“Me?”
What am I, exactly?
“Both me and Han-su hyung got our swings back after talking to you. I heard Young-su did too.”
Well…
“That’s true, but—”
“So I figured you’d pull another miracle this time.”
“I’m not a god.”
“Fans were calling you one five minutes ago.”
I was just one more hitter. The best I could offer was some half-baked mental coaching. So—
“We should just do our own jobs, right?”
“Yeah… I guess so.”
Problems like this—
“are for the bench and the front office to solve.”
“Unless…”
Tae-wook’s final suggestion was truly—
“They’re trading for Kim Jae-sang?”
—not even worth considering.
“Does that sound remotely realistic?”
It was pure nonsense.
“Kim Jae-sang is…”
“Impossible.”
Inside the Rhinos general manager’s office, the two men who ran the franchise were deep in conversation.
“To pry Kim Jae-sang out of the Swallows we’d have to rip out our own foundation. Probably…”
The GM smacked his lips.
“Even if we offered Oh Jin-muk they wouldn’t take it.”
“Figured as much.”
Oh Jin-muk was leaving for the majors next year. For a Swallows club already locked in a death struggle with the Powderz at the absolute bottom of the standings, he was a completely unattractive chip.
“Gong Ji-hoo might be the only name that moves them.”
“That is never happening.”
CRAAAAACK!!
On the television replay, Gong Ji-hoo crushed another majestic home run. The two men looked at each other and nodded in perfect sync.
“Already thirty-eight.”
“Yes.”
“At this pace he really might break fifty-six.”
“Honestly, the way he’s going, it’s entirely possible.”
Fifty-six home runs—the single-season KBO record. The GM felt genuine gratitude that the player most likely to shatter a mark held by a Rhinos legend was wearing a Rhinos uniform.
Best decision we ever made.
He silently congratulated himself and Manager Dong Sang-guk for the foresight that had brought Gong Ji-hoo to Daegu.
“Still, the lineup needs reinforcement.”
“I know. That’s why I asked you here today.”
Front office and field staff were already aligned, so the conversation moved fast.
“Our side of the deal would be…”
“Bullpen arms, obviously.”
The Daegu Rhinos were ready to bet everything on a championship this year. If necessary, they would accept real blood loss.
Oh Jin-muk leaves next year… Song Han-su is retiring. This is the window.
The Rhinos bullpen was deep. More than deep—it was excessive. For years they had used high draft picks almost exclusively on pitchers.
“Once Jin-muk walks next year it gets a little scary, but…”
“What matters is this year.”
And bullpen arms, to put it bluntly, were consumables. Consumables the Rhinos could replace with relative ease.
“The clubs that have the kind of player we need…”
“We need a power bat, and nobody hands those out lightly.”
There was even a saying: “You die with your power hitters.” Their value was simply too high.
“One high-leverage reliever isn’t going to cut it.”
“The Rhinos pitching warehouse is well stocked.”
Even so—
Not many GMs will put a power bat on the trade block…
The Rhinos general manager kept turning the problem over until the answer clicked into place, the way it always did.
“Ah!”
“GM?”
He looked at Manager Dong Sang-guk’s puzzled face, a thin smile already forming.
“I forgot we already have the perfect trade partner.”
His expression brightened.
“I should be able to bring you good news soon.”
The same general manager who had been crowned Stove League MVP last winter for trading for Gong Ji-hoo was on the move once again.