The Team's Collapse: A Catcher’s Frustrated Breakdown and the Digout Blowup
The moment Choi Seungtaek stepped into his room at a hotel in Incheon, he flung himself onto the bed, desperate to cool his head.
This is so fucking infuriating. Seriously.
He had gone up there trying to put something in play. Anything. Instead he had gone hitless in four at-bats and struck out all four times. If he had at least beaten one into the ground, the anger might have been a little easier to swallow. He had simply donated four punch-outs.
The bottom of the order hadn't all gone down looking the way he had. Fly ball or grounder, most of them had at least put the bat on the ball. That was exactly why Choi Seungtaek was even hotter.
Goddamn it… this is so embarrassing.
It was his first day hitting third, and he had put up a line like that. The shame cut deeper for it.
"AAAAHHHH! FUUUUUUUCK!"
He thrashed across the mattress, unloading every curse he had. After a while he lay there panting, and the heat piled up behind his eyes finally began to drain away. The moment it did, his mind started turning again.
So how do I hit? How do we actually win?
Once he had settled, Choi Seungtaek sat up, found a place where he could write, and sat down to work.
He had been riding reasonably high — until an elite arm named Kim Gwang-gyeon took him apart. The humiliation that followed was crushing. And that same despair, paradoxically, lit a fire under him all over again.
"A good swing has a ceiling. So does the System's help."
He called up the numbers the System had shown him.
Contact C+. Power C+. So even with a clean swing, the contact and the power are garbage, and I still can't hit?
There was nothing he could do about that overnight. In the end he would have to take more at-bats, pile up experience and information, and grow the contact; he would have to keep training, day after day, to put on power. Mechanically the swing was already finished, so he wasn't losing on form. Everything else was what he lacked.
Kim Gwang-gyeon rose in his mind again. The rebuilt swing had left him helpless, and the holes in the scouting had been laid bare in a single afternoon. The reports the club had given him had helped — they just hadn't been enough.
Yeah. I got comfortable. Focus on what I can actually do, the way I did at the start. From one to ten. Do it right this time.
In the end, the answer was to do it himself.
Choi Seungtaek was sitting on at least seven years of future technique. On top of that, even back then he had trained in America's most advanced analytics, which meant his methods of breaking a team down ran far ahead of anything here. It wasn't just about picking up a pitcher's tells. He could pull statistically meaningful information out of a staff. And last of all, he carried future knowledge on a handful of specific players. Combine all of that into a scouting report, and it would become a serious weapon.
"Start over. Then the first thing is to know our own guys. Starting with the rotation."
He looked at the starting list.
First, Russell.
Russell was a good pitcher. Not in the class of the A Grade foreigners, but he was a B+, which by Magpies standards made him first-starter material. Compared to drawing a complete bust, they could count themselves lucky to have him. Choi Seungtaek wrote Russell in as the number two starter.
The problem is Damon. His stuff was garbage. The body's still not all the way there. He might even be a fifth-starter guy.
Even so, Choi Seungtaek penciled Damon in as the four for now.
Oh Myeongwol. The de facto ace.
Oh Myeongwol's stuff had genuinely startled him. Choi Seungtaek had gone five-for-five against the Seagulls on Sunday, and the postgame interview had still gone to Oh Myeongwol — that was how impressive the outing had been.
The catch is the injuries. If he could just stay healthy…
Choi Seungtaek noted the injury history and moved Oh Myeongwol to the top of the rotation.
Ki Youngbae…
He wasn't sure what to do with Ki Youngbae. The overall impression was uncomfortably close to Damon's: the stuff was just… vague. A free-agent signing off a championship with the Daegu Eagles, and every pitch had become a disappointment. Choi Seungtaek wrote him in as the fifth starter.
And last. Song Geumho.
The most mysterious arm on the staff. The picture that came to Choi Seungtaek's mind, right now, was of a failed signing. He had caught him a few times in camp, and those looks hadn't been bad — which only made it stranger.
Why, though? Why did it fail? I can't even remember… I'll catch him again tomorrow and see for myself.
He slotted Song Geumho as the three, and because the hour was late, he went to bed.
The next day, during workouts, Choi Seungtaek got permission on purpose and went to catch Song Geumho.
It was the first day of going back to square one, the way he had when he first returned, so he built himself a new routine. Every day, without fail, he would put his mitt on the starters and the bullpen and feel the ball himself.
The pitch hissed in. Pop.
Caught live, it was fine. The breaking stuff wasn't especially sharp, but the command was serviceable, and the fastball lived between 140 and 150 km/h — good velo, good location, holding both.
Not bad at all. So why did this turn into a failed signing?
The question was still stacking up in his head when the game began.
Bottom of the first.
Huh?
Crouched behind the plate in the catcher's mask, Choi Seungtaek could only stare.
C+ Grade? What?
The information the System was feeding him on Song Geumho was deeply strange, and he wondered if he had misread it.
No way…
And that wasn't even the end of it. The moment the hitter stepped in, Choi Seungtaek went cold. He started to put down a fastball — and the instant he did, the entire strike zone flared a violent, solid red.
What the hell is this?
Stuck in that absurd moment, he could only look blankly out at the mound.
Song Geumho tipped his head, squinting in at him. Choi Seungtaek hadn't put down a proper sign, and the pitcher was staring like something was wrong.
Ah, crap.
Choi Seungtaek hastily flashed a slider.
Choi Seungtaek's being weird all of a sudden.
Song Geumho did not like the vacant look on his catcher's face. They were in the middle of a game, though, so he nodded and threw.
The ball ripped in. The hitter swung through it. Pop. Strike.
Fortunately, the Cranes' leadoff man had chased.
Haa… maybe the System just glitched.
Choi Seungtaek put down a fastball.
Song Geumho nodded.
The pitch hissed in — and crack. A base hit, immediately.
What is going on? The pitch itself was good.
Another nod. Another hiss. Another crack. Hit again.
Okay… there's something here. This is not a coincidence.
A bad feeling crawled up his spine, and Choi Seungtaek flipped the whole sequence over to breaking balls.
Crack — a fly ball. One out, runners at first and second.
Another slider. Still one out, first and second.
One more slider. Crack.
The inning, at least, was over.
After barely crawling out of the jam, Choi Seungtaek dropped onto the dugout bench — and Song Geumho came looking for him. Being asked to throw slider after slider had not sat well.
"Hey, Choi Seungtaek. What the hell are you trying to pull with me?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why do you keep putting down nothing but sliders?"
Haa…
"That's…"
Choi Seungtaek's head started to hurt. He could hardly say, The System told me not to throw your fastball, so he had to invent an excuse on the spot.
"Your fastball kept getting squared up today, so I've been working the off-speed on purpose."
"Who the hell put you in charge of deciding that?!"
Song Geumho barked it at him, and the dugout went cold in an instant. Something kicked up in Choi Seungtaek's chest too. He swallowed it.
Jesus Christ. How am I supposed to talk him into this?
He was barely a rookie. Song Geumho was a pitcher who had already lived a long time in the league. Advising him was never going to be easy, so Choi Seungtaek did his best to talk around it.
"Sunbae, I looked at the Cranes' hitters. I think we're better off going to the breaking ball."
"You don't just call a game like that. How am I supposed to pitch without a fastball?"
Song Geumho snapped it out, irritated — and he wasn't wrong. Even a good breaking ball was worthless if the fastball was soft. Paradoxically, it was the fastball that gave the off-speed its value; dump a diet of nothing but breaking balls and you got hunted. The other side were professionals. They would know.
Having to keep selling a story this absurd only made Choi Seungtaek more trapped.
"And what the hell do you even know about the Cranes to be analyzing them? Even if you did, I'd know more than you. You gonna keep talking shit?"
Song Geumho had come over from the Gwangju Pigeons, but he had spent a long stretch of his career with the Incheon Cranes, which only made the point land harder.
In the end, Choi Seungtaek decided to go at it straighter.
"But your fastball isn't good, sunbae. You keep throwing it, they're going to hit it."
Song Geumho stared at him with a look that could kill.
"This little shit. You've got a filthy mouth, huh?"
The air got uglier. Teammates started drifting in, ready to pull them apart.
"It's not that I'm talking shit. Your stuff is just… lacking. You throw that fastball, they hit it."
Choi Seungtaek didn't fold either, and that was what finally blew the fuse.
"This bastard just won't quit."
Song Geumho grabbed Choi Seungtaek by the collar, and players and coaches lunged in to tear them apart.
"What the hell are you two doing?!"
Manager Han Geunseong, who had seen the whole thing, roared it across the dugout. Unnecessary collisions in his dugout made him furious.
"What… do you think you're doing?"
"Sorry, skip."
"Sorry."
A battery fighting in the dugout was rare. Usually it was a senior dressing down a junior, and it ended with one side taking the scolding. This time Choi Seungtaek hadn't given an inch, and the whole thing had boiled over. If he had at least been right, it might have been different — but on the merits, Song Geumho's argument held more water, which did Choi Seungtaek no favors at all.
From the outside, it was a clueless rookie catcher mouthing off to a veteran pitcher.
The head coach and the battery coach both had their faces drawn tight. Another ugly problem, at the worst possible time. Now it was a question of what was right for the club: Choi Seungtaek, the irreplaceable piece, or Song Geumho, who was holding every scrap of the moral high ground.
Manager Han Geunseong's face tightened. The headache in front of him had no clean answer. For the team's record, Song Geumho had to go. For the team's discipline, Choi Seungtaek had to go.
"Yes, sir."
The head coach answered.
"Yes, sir."
That was Choi Seungtaek's last word. He turned and walked straight for the locker room.
WHAM.
He hurled the catcher's mitt he was still holding. His molars ground together until they creaked.
For Choi Seungtaek, who had only just pulled himself back together, today had turned out even more fucked than yesterday.