The First Championship
The semifinal against Gwangnam Middle turned into a slugfest, because both our pitcher and theirs were shaking so badly they went past wobbly and straight into a dumpster fire. We ended it 10–7 after seven innings—and middle school baseball only goes seven—so you can imagine the state of things.
Still, the real turning point came in that final inning, when Coach, having no one else worth sending out, put in Kang Min-hyuk. He shut the inning down without letting up a run, and then I drove in two with a double to seal the win.
The semifinal matchup against Suwon Jungang Middle in the final four was a tight pitching duel, dead even right up until I cranked out a solo home run. 1–0, ballgame.
And that's how we found ourselves facing Donghyun Middle as our last opponent in the championship.
Meeting Donghyun stirred up a strange feeling. Of course, the manga never showed anything about Kim Yi-seon before Donghyun High. And since Donghyun High is such a prestigious program, plenty of the players at Donghyun Middle probably never make it up to the high school team anyway.
But a handful of their ace-level kids should be familiar—minor supporting characters, borderline extras, faces I'd seen in the manga.
Sure enough, when Coach handed out the Donghyun scouting sheets, four or five familiar faces jumped out at me. Two of them were pure extras who never even got names in the manga, so I barely knew anything about them and moved on. The real problem was the last one.
"Coach, hold on. This kid's a second-year and he's already racked up numbers like these? Whoa, look at his rate stats."
"Batting .500 over 20 games as a first-year? Is this sheet even accurate? Or is it just padded stats from beating up on amateurs?"
"You went hitless in three at-bats against that junior league team last week, and you're talking? A guy who can't even farm weak opponents has no business criticizing."
The seniors clicked their tongues, visibly fed up just from reading the kid's stats.
A second-year hitting ace who commanded more attention than any of Donghyun's third-years. In the manga, Kim Yi-seon's rival was the team itself, but among the hitters he faced head-on, this was the one whose psychological duels with the protagonist ran the longest.
Donghyun Middle's leadoff man, Lee Gyeong-tae, would be the key player of the championship game.
On the day of the final. Both teams exchanged polite bows, the coaches were chatting among themselves—and out of nowhere, Lee Gyeong-tae came right up to me.
"You're Kim Yi-seon, right? I watched your other games. Seriously impressive stuff. How do you hit home runs like that?"
Not a word of it was flattery—he genuinely sounded envious.
He was only a second-year in middle school, but his height and build were visibly a fair bit smaller than mine. Fitting for a character the manga always drew as tiny; he was still small now.
"I just keep my fundamentals no matter the situation. Switch up your swing trying to make contact and you end up hitting it worse."
That answer was partly the truth, partly a bit of counter-programming. But Lee Gyeong-tae just flashed an easy grin at my reply and headed back to his side.
"Really? That's the complete opposite of me. Thanks for answering, though."
A shrewd type already, even as a middle schooler. In the manga too, he was always trying to rattle opponents with utterly ordinary small talk.
This conversation was the same—a psychological ploy meant to leave the impression that I'm analyzing you right now, just to get under my skin.
So I'd left him advice that was the exact opposite of his own strengths, but as expected, he hadn't actually been soliciting sincere advice—he just laughed it off.
As Donghyun's players filed into their dugout after the light exchange of courtesies, the sight of Lee Gyeong-tae's back radiated pure confidence.
Our team batted first. Jeil Middle went down one-two-three to start—though to be fair, this was Donghyun's ace on the mound. The velocity sat comfortably at 130 km/h, the very symbol of "fast" at the middle school level, and I even caught glimpses of him touching past 140 at his peak.
His control didn't quite match, though; our first two batters struck out, but the third worked a walk.
I stepped into the box and gave the opposing pitcher a quick once-over. He was a lefty, so I took the right-handed batter's box this time. Facing a southpaw for the first time, this was naturally my first right-handed at-bat of the tournament.
A switch hitter popping up out of nowhere is an unexpected variable for a pitcher—it can throw off their emotions. But this guy showed no trace of it whatsoever. Either his scouting on me was thorough, or he simply didn't give a damn about anything like that.
It'd be convenient if it went easy, but if not, so be it.
I gripped the bat hard and resolved to approach the at-bat exactly as I always did. A 140 km/h pitch was gradually getting heavy on the eyes, granted. Tracking where that thing was coming from was already pushing the limits of the human body.
But in the end, hitting is timing. Even a 170 km/h fastball, if you swing at exactly the right moment, connects maybe one in three times on paper and gets through as a hit—that's the game of baseball.
First pitch. The feeling came. Honestly, even when the feeling comes, you're wrong half the time—but in baseball, fifty percent accuracy is trustworthy. I swung through it clean and pulled hard.
Ping!
It was my first time facing heat this fast, and my timing came in just a hair late. Still, the ball was squarely on the barrel. Minimum a double, I figured, and took off for first.
"OOOOH! Nice play!!"
But shortstop Lee Gyeong-tae dove and snatched the line drive screaming through the middle infield. Three outs, side retired.
I had a strong premonition this game was going to get difficult.
Now it was Donghyun's turn at bat. Batting leadoff, Lee Gyeong-tae came up swinging his whole body around in that bizarre batting stance of his, rattling our pitcher's head as a bonus.
Ping!
First-pitch foul.
The pitcher's expression said he'd felt pretty good about that one—like he'd been robbed. Hard to tell clearly from this distance, but I could tell Lee Gyeong-tae was smiling like he'd seized an opening.
The next two pitches were fouls as well.
Honestly, one of those might've been a ball if he'd just let it go. But that was Lee Gyeong-tae's specialty.
Ball three. Foul four. Ball five. Foul six. Foul seven.
Foul after foul after foul, hammering home the message: throw it over the plate and I'll put it in play. Our pitcher, already thoroughly snared in the mind game, tried to paint the corners—hopeless. Lee Gyeong-tae cut everything.
And then, the eighth pitch.
Ping!
A clean line drive lifted over the second baseman's reach. The center fielder's backup was quick, so he couldn't stretch it to second, but he strolled into first base without breaking a sweat.
I could see the pitcher wobbling in real time. When the leadoff hitter drags you through a battle like that, any pitcher starts feeling like the opposing team itself is nothing but trouble. I had a word for Lee Gyeong-tae as he reached first.
"If you're gonna run, then run. Quit feeling me out."
"Why? You gonna try picking me off right now?"
He grinned and took a lead comically wide, practically daring me. Our pitcher, already teetering, completely lost the plot against a lead that looked a full step deeper than anyone else's.
Finally he couldn't take it and fired a pickoff throw—safe. Lee Gyeong-tae, as if to say keep it coming, stretched his lead even wider than before. Another pickoff. Safe.
He wasn't letting our pitcher focus on the batter at all. The truth was, this guy never intended to steal second in the first place. The moment he took second, he'd lose his leverage over the pitcher. So he just kept stretching that lead, flailing his body around exaggeratedly, keeping everyone on edge. A thoroughly nasty type.
This was exactly why, in the original, he ranked just behind Kim Yi-seon among Donghyun High's supporting cast. When the protagonist is a pitcher, a hitter like this is the kind of player you want to strangle. And the fact that his shortstop defense was genuinely excellent just made it worse for every batter who had to watch him too.
Whether our pitcher had his head stolen clean away by Lee Gyeong-tae swaying back and forth, he attempted yet another pickoff. This time Lee Gyeong-tae was late too—but instead of a pickoff out, the ump called a balk on our pitcher.
Slowly it wasn't just the pitcher anymore; Coach was starting to boil over too. And then came the confirmation kill.
"HEY! HEY, KID! You're a middle schooler and all you've learned is dirty tricks already! Ump! Is this even legal?!"
Standing on second, Lee Gyeong-tae kept conspicuously flashing signals toward the batter in the box. Coach and our whole dugout erupted the moment they saw it. Sign stealing. Though really, in middle school baseball, where would anyone even learn the opponent's signs to steal?
Sure, you could maybe relay the pitcher's grip or his general tells before a delivery, but that wasn't the point. It was pure theater—an attempt to shake the opposing pitcher, and by extension the entire opposing team.
The manga played him as a first-rate villain, and having now experienced him firsthand, I could confirm the guy was a genuine piece of work. Then again, I suppose even that counts as a skill, in its own way.
The game went on with our entire team worked up into a lather.
In the end, our starter barely made it out of the third inning—nowhere near the fourth—before the pitch-count limit forced him off the mound. Total runs surrendered: four. With the mood what it was, Coach agonized long and hard over who to bring in.
"Coach. Give Min-hyuk a shot."
"Min-hyuk?"
"Yes sir. Look at him over there right now. Even in this mess, he's just doing his job."
And there I was, smoothly slipping Kang Min-hyuk's name to Coach. The guy had always been the perfect antidote to trickster hitters like this, ever since the original story.
Coach hesitated, but with no better option on the table, he got Min-hyuk warming up.
I caught Kang Min-hyuk on his way to the bullpen and passed along one piece of advice.
"Just don't give him any attention. He's a total attention-seeker—cut off the spotlight and he's useless."
"What about his hitting? From the dugout, his contact looked exceptional. That's a difficult type for me to handle."
"Ah, that? Let him hit, honestly. Even if you serve one right down the middle he can't homer. Just feed him the bases and get everybody else out—what's wrong with that? You might even turn a double play. Win-win."
He probably found my reasoning absurd, but Kang Min-hyuk gave a quiet nod that said he understood and disappeared into the bullpen. Well, of course—this was exactly the countermeasure Kang Min-hyuk had worked out as a second-year in high school in the original.
The pitcher problem was solved, but we'd need runs to actually win this...
Ting!
A ground ball to the infield, nasty hop and all, and Lee Gyeong-tae gobbled it up effortlessly and threw to first. Two outs. Forget the runs for a second—was Min-hyuk even going to get enough time to loosen that shoulder?
Then the next batter whiffed spectacularly—swung clean through three straight, a full-ceiling-fan strikeout—and our half of the inning fizzled out into nothing.
Thankfully, my judgment proved right: Kang Min-hyuk slammed the door on their entire lineup. Opposing team or ours, everyone wore the same baffled expression—how does he keep getting outs with those slow, boring pitches? But that's the protagonist's gift for you.
The problem was our own batters. The talent gap against their pitcher was just too wide, and though we scratched out a baserunner here and there, we couldn't buy a single run. Coach got desperate enough to call for sacrifice bunts and sacrifice flies, but those went over like a lead balloon.
And so the game wound its way around to the final inning. The top of the seventh had worried me a little when the pitch limit pulled Kang Min-hyuk—but Choi Kang-cheol, of all people, came in and pitched beautifully. Even so, the score still sat at 4–0.
I was loosening up in the on-deck circle during the seventh when the batter ahead of me went down swinging.
So here I was at the plate: bottom of the seventh, two outs, bases loaded. By all rights I shouldn't even have been getting this at-bat, but a miracle big inning had arrived and granted me one last turn in the box.
My line for the game so far: a grounder straight at the shortstop, a double, a walk—and now this.
Those days of settling for a token extra-base hit were over. Now I had to clear the bases, no two ways about it. And the run deficit sat at an almost suspiciously perfect four. The board was laid out like somebody had scripted it.
The opposing pitcher hadn't been on the mound long and was still fresh. But his command had been shaky—a walk here, a hit batter there, even a surprise bunt single allowed—so the pressure had to be gnawing at him.
Under those conditions, even the opposing coach might consider a change—but whether he'd burned through all his arms in the semifinal and today's game or not, he showed zero intention of pulling anyone.
The pitcher prepared his delivery with an expression I couldn't read—nerves, or resolve. A pitcher frozen stiff like that was going to throw one thing and one thing only. He'd want to prove he wasn't scared, so he'd come with his best fastball, right down the middle. And if that's the case, did I really need to think twice?
First pitch.
Ping!
Every head in the stadium turned at once. The pitcher sank to the mound where he stood.
No need for any clever schemes, not like some people. The best defense is a strikeout, and the best team play is a home run.