Eighteen Pitches
“The walks are…… a little much.”
“How many are we talking?”
“Three years in the Futures League. Fifty-one walks in thirty-eight innings.”
The GM pulled his eyes off the mound and turned his head.
“How many?”
“Fifty-one. That’s 12.1 per nine.”
The air along the fence settled a beat too late.
12.1 per nine.
It meant he was handing a man first base, for free, more than once an inning. A pitcher like that had no mound waiting for him in any league.
The GM watched the rubber for a long while, then rubbed his jaw.
“Even so, you can’t buy velocity like that. It’s April. His body isn’t even loose yet.”
“And that’s a Developmental Player who never got looked after properly.”
“Which is exactly why I want to know. If somebody actually took care of him, how many miles would he have?”
“Then……”
“Bullpen’s a pass. Tomorrow at the live pitching, we see if he can throw like that with a hitter standing in.”
“Yes, sir!”
On the walk back after all fifteen pitches, Tae-oh caught himself closing his left eye and opening it again. Jae-min followed half a step behind, mitt tucked under one arm.
“Hyung, why’d you do that with your eye just now?”
“Sorry?”
“Your left eye. You shut it and opened it once before you threw. Is that a routine of yours?”
Tae-oh stopped.
In three years, not the club trainers, not the sports psychologist, not a single teammate had ever said a word about it. The first person to catch it was a twenty-one-year-old bullpen catcher he’d met today — a part-timer who had caught all of fifteen pitches.
“……It’s nothing.”
“Yeah, well. You’re throwing a hundred and fifty-seven kilometers. Who cares how many times you close your eyes.”
Jae-min laughed, easy and innocent.
Three years, and nobody saw it. He saw it after fifteen pitches?
A staffer came over with the list in hand.
“Kang Tae-oh? Tomorrow, 9 a.m. Live pitching, Group One.”
At the top of the sheet, the number 187 was written.
Live pitching. Real hitters standing in the box, and you threw to them. It was also the reason a man with a power fastball had been released.
……Tomorrow’s the real one.
Four in the morning, the next day. Tae-oh lay staring at the motel ceiling, and at six he left the room. It wasn’t the time difference. It was something he’d overheard on the walk back the night before.
Eight names, out of two hundred and fourteen.
If that’s true… I made the top eight out of two hundred and fourteen.
There was no proof of it, of course. Even so, it was the sweetest thing he’d heard in three years.
They say you don’t drink the kimchi broth before the meal is on the table… but one sip ought to be all right.
Eight-forty in the morning. The eight of Group One gathered in front of the waiting room. Tae-oh opened a translation app on his phone and listened to the staffer talk.
Five hitters, or twenty-five pitches. Stop at whichever comes first.
The hitters receive no instructions. They may swing, or they may take.
A walk is recorded as a walk.
Tae-oh slipped the phone into his pocket. It wasn’t something he could carry to the mound.
Nine o’clock sharp. More than twenty folding chairs were set out along the first-base fence. The scouts who had been ready to leave yesterday afternoon were seated before the first pitch today, not one of them missing.
“They’re still talking about nobody but you, hyung. Ninety-seven-point-five.”
Jae-min, chest protector on, gave Tae-oh’s back a light tap.
“Pitch like yesterday and a contract’s possible. Just look at my mitt and throw.”
Like yesterday. Like in the bullpen. It was the thing he had heard most over the last three years.
If it were as easy as they make it sound, I’d have been in the first team a long time ago.
Even so, the corner of his mouth lifted, strangely. It was the first expectation anyone had laid on him in three years.
What’s the worst that happens. I die.
“Number 187! To the mound!”
First of the eight in Group One. Tae-oh climbed the mound.
The leadoff hitter stepped into the left-handed box and gave the bat a short, settling squeeze.
That’s the Korean kid from yesterday. Only a fool jumps the first pitch at ninety-seven. Let me see one.
Jae-min opened the mitt dead in the middle. Tae-oh closed his left eye once, opened it, and looked at the mitt.
The edge of it had shifted, paper-thin — like two prints of the same picture laid one over the other, just a little out of true.
Here it comes again.
Crack!
“96.4!”
A hundred and fifty-five kilometers an hour. And behind the hitter’s head.
The second pitch ran away to the other side. The third beat the dirt in front of home plate. The fourth was so high Jae-min couldn’t have caught it standing on his toes.
A four-pitch walk.
The hitter heading for first glanced back once.
What is this? Is he even a pitcher? I’ve never seen command this bad.
The second hitter came up with the bat resting on his shoulder. A stance with no intention of swinging. The moment Tae-oh saw it, his breath went short, and the shorter his breath ran, the more the mitt doubled over itself.
Thud. Ball.
Thud. Ball.
Jae-min stretched the mitt as far as it would go and barely hauled the ball in. Then his face changed, as if something didn’t add up.
The ball’s flying all over the place… but the spot where he lets it go is the same every time.
The second hitter walked to first without ever taking the bat off his shoulder. The third stepped in and shouted toward the bench.
“Today’s workout is a walk to first!”
Laughter broke loose over there. Tae-oh didn’t know the words, but he knew a jeer when he heard one.
……Maybe not knowing English is a mercy today.
He picked up the rosin bag and set it straight back down. No matter how he worked his hands, the fingertips would not dry.
Three hitters in a row. Three four-pitch walks.
“One more!”
Somebody yelled it from the bench, and the laughter broke again.
The fourth hitter stepped in without so much as a preparatory move. From the first-base side came the sound of folding chairs snapping shut. That sound meant they had seen enough.
……I know. I know.
Tae-oh set his teeth and threw. This time two strikes found the zone. Then four balls.
A staffer came up the mound and held out a hand. Seven pitches remained of the scheduled twenty-five, but there was no one left who meant to watch them.
Eighteen pitches. Four walks.
Tae-oh handed over the ball. He never once looked toward the seats where the club officials sat.
“That the same guy from yesterday?”
“Velocity’s the same as yesterday. Average 96.4, top end 97.5……”
“Enough. Now I see why they released him in Korea. Next pitcher.”
It was the general manager of the last-place club in the league. Much the same talk drifted through the officials’ section.
Except for exactly one man. Only the GM of last year’s champions never folded his chair — and Tae-oh didn’t see it.
Group One’s second pitcher climbed the mound. He was a full head shorter than Tae-oh.
Pop!
A strike, low and away.
Pop!
This time a strike, up and away.
Pop!
The third was a high fastball in, and the hitter swung through it.
“Strike three!”
All three of them, ninety-two miles an hour. A number as common as dirt at this tryout — and a three-pitch strikeout built out of that common number.
“What’s that guy’s name?”
The scout section turned that way in an instant, wearing the same look they’d had ten minutes earlier, when Tae-oh had taken the mound.
Tae-oh, on his way toward the shade, looked too. He couldn’t follow the words, but he could see where the scouts’ eyes were going.
Four walks on ninety-seven. A three-pitch strikeout on ninety-two. Even I’d be looking over there.
Something bitter settled in his eyes.
Five in the afternoon. The last seat under the shade along the third-base side. Tae-oh had gotten halfway through untying his spikes and then just sat there, staring, for a long time. The red Arizona dirt packed into the soles would not come off.
The screen lit with her name. It kept buzzing. He never picked up.
If he answered now, she would hear it.
He opened the reply box and typed I ate. Meat. Then he erased it. He hadn’t come all the way to America to stack one more lie on top of the rest. He turned the screen off.
I brought even Mom’s bankbook all the way here, and it ended in eighteen pitches.
……This is too much, Kang Tae-oh.
“Hyung! So this is where you were!”
Jae-min came running in under the canopy, a tablet in his hand instead of a mitt.
“Good work today.”
“Yeah! You too— no, that’s not it! Look at this!”
He dropped down beside Tae-oh and shoved the tablet at him. Tae-oh didn’t look.
“Hyung. I know you don’t want to see it. Just once. I’ve got yesterday and today, all of it, right here.”
“……”
“Release Point variance — 2.3 centimeters yesterday, 1.9 today. It actually got smaller.”
Jae-min swiped the screen.
“Spin rate, 2,470 yesterday, 2,480 today. Arm angle’s almost exactly the same.”
“……What does that mean?”
“It means your body moved the same as yesterday. No — it shook less.”
When a pitcher’s command comes apart, the delivery usually comes apart first, and so coaches start with the delivery. Get the arm out later. Leave your weight behind you. Try a different arm angle. Every piece of instruction Tae-oh had been given over three years had been some version of that. Ten pitching coaches had passed through him in that time, each of them determined to fix him in his own way. Every one of them had failed.
The delivery’s fine? Then what is the problem?
He was just about to ask when Jae-min spoke first.
“Hyung. I’ve been catching in the independent leagues for two years now. I’ve caught hundreds of guys who can’t throw a strike, same as you.”
He tapped the tablet.
“But you’re the first pitcher I’ve seen who lets the ball go from a spot this consistent. This isn’t a delivery problem.”
Tae-oh asked the thing he’d been about to ask.
“Then, the way you see it… why do you think I can’t throw a strike?”
He’ll say it’s in my head. They always do.
Jae-min grinned.
“This one’s actually simple.”