TV's Shocking Return and the Weight of Unseen Struggles
Sunday. After the game, Choi Seungtaek came home and switched on the TV.
"Hello, everyone! This is Kim Ha-eun with Baseball Together. Joining me today is commentator Cho Byung-hyun."
"Hello to all of you watching Baseball Together. Cho Byung-hyun here."
The popular baseball program was just getting underway.
"Commentator Cho, another week's already gone by."
"It has! And what a week of baseball it was."
"So which team's games did you enjoy the most?"
"The Magpies, of course."
Seungtaek gritted his teeth. He wanted to turn the thing off.
"After that Falcons–Magpies game on Tuesday, I don't think I could have picked anyone else. That one was something else."
"Ah, right — that clip. The one everyone's been talking about."
It stung a little. He kept watching anyway.
"Shall we start with the Daejeon Magpies, then?"
"Let's do it."
At Kim Ha-eun's cue, Cho Byung-hyun shuffled his notes into place.
"First up — he's been the talk of the league, and at this point there's no denying it: Choi Seungtaek is back, and he's the Magpies' most important player."
"Choi Seungtaek?"
"That's right. The Magpies have been without all three of their starting-caliber catchers to injury, so they've been running tryouts on just about everybody."
Cho's graphic put two catchers called up from the second team side by side with Seungtaek.
"All three of those guys got three starts behind the plate. Look at the gap. It isn't even close."
Batting average, and every other number besides — Seungtaek lapped the field. Cho said it like a man who had the sheet in front of him and liked what he saw.
"Wow. So it's Seungtaek's job now, then. Full-time."
"It has to be. They sent him down for a bit after that blowup with Song Geumho — the one that ended up on live television — but once a player puts up numbers like this, you can't keep him there. Just like we said on Opening Day: this is Choi Seungtaek's team now."
The picture cut to Seungtaek throwing out a runner.
"And this is the clip that stopped everyone cold. The time it takes a catcher to get the ball to second on a steal — from the moment it hits his mitt to the moment it hits the infielder's glove — that's called pop time. Against the Falcons, Choi Seungtaek posted a 1.83. That is an outrageous number. And it wasn't a one-off. Against the Gwangju Pigeons he threw out three runners in a row. All three at 1.85."
Choi Seungtaek
vs. Falcons — 1.83s
vs. Gwangju Pigeons — 1.85s (3-for-3 caught stealing)
"And that's… a big deal?"
Cho Byung-hyun answered Kim Ha-eun with a slow shake of the head — not because Seungtaek had done poorly. Because he had done it so well it was almost exhausting to talk about.
"It's an enormous deal. On stolen bases, Choi Seungtaek is already in the conversation with the best catchers in the major leagues."
"Wow. That's incredible."
"And that's not even the whole story. Every game Seungtaek missed, the Magpies lost. The first week he was back, they went 2–4."
"2–4? That doesn't exactly sound like a breakthrough."
"The record's the record, sure — but you have to look at how they got there."
Fresh tables and graphs filled the screen.
"The change that jumps off the page is runs allowed. Without Seungtaek, the Magpies were giving up six or more every night."
"That's a lot of crooked numbers."
"Once he came back, they were sitting on four or fewer most nights."
"That's a completely different team."
"The biggest reason is how aggressive he is back there. He wants the ball in the zone. He does not care if it gets hit."
"He doesn't care if it gets hit… isn't that putting his pitchers in a hole?"
"Not on this club. The Magpies are shifting aggressively, and Seungtaek is calling a lot of ground-ball pitches, so hitters who go up there hacking are rolling into double plays left and right. Yes, they give up hits. They also throw fewer pitches."
Cho put the pitch counts up next.
"Night and day from the week before, isn't it? Russell, especially — in all three starts with Seungtaek, he went the distance. Nine innings. And he did it on a hundred and ten pitches. That's absurd."
"How do you even read a number like that?"
"It's lead-catching with serious guts. From the hitter's side, you want to see a pitch or two and pick your spot — except the ball is coming in the zone no matter what. You have to swing. He buries that first pitch in the strike zone, and suddenly you have no answers."
"So he makes them swing. Period."
"Exactly. Sit and you go down looking on three pitches. Hack and you roll over a ground ball. He's really good at this. And he's a kid — a rookie catcher, doing this. I already like him as the Magpies' most important piece this season. Now — as a catcher, he's doing the job. As a hitter, it's a little less pretty. If there's a fly in the ointment, that's it. Haha."
Haha…
The laugh sat in Seungtaek's stomach like bad coffee. His average was sitting in the low .200s. Feel at the plate or no feel at the plate, it was ugly. Balls he was sure he'd squared up died in the outfield. Balls he thought were gone became routine flies. The hits he did have were mostly infield scratches — the ones that split the second baseman and the shortstop, or the first baseman and the second baseman.
"But the reason people have been calling the Magpies the 'Mag-Spice' lately — the reason they're suddenly must-see TV — is clips like these, right?"
A blooper reel of Magpies miscues rolled across the screen.
"I heard about this, actually. Manager Han Geunseong has been running them through brutal extra work every day because of these very plays."
"He'd almost have to. Our viewers are getting a good laugh, but Magpies fans have to be suffering."
Kim Ha-eun said it like she meant it.
"Ah — and here it is. The play of the week."
Of course it was. They closed on Seungtaek's glorious Zero-Point Home Run.
Ah, shit. Is there any way to get that thing taken down?
His phone buzzed in his hand.
The weekend finally let him go, and Monday brought Seungtaek his next round of treatment.
Park Gayeong had come down to Daejeon for him. She was a college student, though, with a Tuesday morning class, which meant lunch, a few hours together, dinner — and then she had to go back up.
It had been a while. He dressed for it. She showed up looking like a college student and like someone who had thought about her clothes, and Seungtaek's mouth was already turning up when he went to meet her.
"Gayeong!"
She stared at him for a second, blank.
"Seungtaek…"
"Hm?"
Something settled behind her eyes. She took his arm.
"We're going for barbecue."
"Barbecue?"
"Yeah. Hurry up. You brought the car, right? Let's go eat meat."
"Uh… okay!"
He was still catching up to her when she said it.
The meat hit the grill with a long, rising hiss.
"Gayeong?"
She had ordered a mountain of it the second they sat down, and she had been turning it in silence ever since.
"Gayeong?"
"Seungtaek."
"Yeah?"
"Tell me the truth."
She pinned him with a look.
"Nothing weird's been going on, right?"
"No?"
"Is baseball stressing you out?"
"What? No. I like baseball. I made it with this. I really do. The recent thing was embarrassing as hell, but—"
The worry on her face had come out of nowhere. He didn't know what to do with it.
The meat hissed again as she flipped it.
"Gayeong, I'll do that. I'm fine. Here, give it to me."
"Fine? You are not fine."
Her voice had gone a little wet around the edges.
"Hey, what's going on? I haven't seen you in ages."
"You're too thin. It hurts to look at you."
"Huh?"
He saw himself often enough that he had stopped actually seeing himself. He had no idea what he looked like right now.
"Thin?"
"Yeah… it looks like it's been really hard."
He got up and went to the bathroom.
Wait. Now that she mentions it…
The line of his jaw had gone too sharp. His cheekbones were just… there.
He came back and tried to talk her down.
"Okay. I'll check properly today. I might've dropped a little, yeah."
He was not skin and bone. But Gayeong only saw him in pieces, weeks apart, and in those eyes he looked terribly thin. Reassurance did not take.
"This is skinny. You didn't look like this in school. I'm feeding you until you can't move."
He had come out intending to go on a date. What he got instead, on Gayeong's absolute insistence, was eight hours and three restaurants.
Pork for lunch. A dakgalbi place — spicy stir-fried chicken — in the long stretch between lunch and dinner. Beef to finish. Protein, in industrial quantities.
"Hahh— Gayeong? I can't eat any more."
"No. You have to eat more."
The meat had started to turn on him. Then he would look at her eyes, shining and close to tears, and whatever spine he had left would fold. He packed more into a stomach that was already at its limit.
He took her to the train station and came home.
How much did I even eat?
Stuffed and a little miserable, he stepped onto the scale anyway. She had been so worried. He figured he owed her that much.
87 kg
Huh?
He was 185 centimeters. When he had first arrived in the pros, he had weighed 95 kilos.
Han Geunseong's training, start after start, and the appetite penalty had been quietly carving him down the whole time.
Damn. That was close.
Summer had not even started, and he had already dropped this much. That was worth being afraid of. Factor in the mountain of meat he had just put away, and he had probably been around 85 before lunch.
For a baseball player — for a catcher especially — weight falling off like that was not a good thing.
Gayeong caught it. No wonder I've been getting knocked off the ball…