The Kid Is Actually Decent
Ever since I witnessed that unexpected side of him yesterday, I'd been mired in a bit of soul-searching.
At first, I'd written him off as nothing but a Yankee with star disease — all vanity and attention-seeking. Because really, what other reason could there be for a guy with legit MLB potential to haul himself all the way to this far corner of Korea, a country he had no ties to whatsoever?
Which would explain everything, wouldn't it? Rating the players and the organization like a judge at a livestock show, acting arrogant in proportion to his opponent's level, trying to get tangled up with me for some kind of benefit, caring so much about playing to the media.
But apparently not. You have to be a star? It has to change? Change into what, exactly?
The fragments of Henry's words I'd overheard that day had lodged themselves deep in my head and refused to leave. Maybe that kid carried a little more on his shoulders, worried over a little more, than I'd given him credit for.
What cemented that suspicion were the stories I heard about Henry from Team Leader Park Young-chul and Seo-hee.
"Henry, you know — the more you watch him, the more you notice the air of pedigree about him, doesn't it? His family's quite well-off back in New Jersey. The school he came from enrolled him in the baseball program, sure, but it's a prestigious private school in the area, and his father's a real estate man who's been established there for decades."
That was from Team Leader Park Young-chul. An unexpected detail I'd never once considered. The kid looked like any random street punk off a New York sidewalk — and he turned out to be rich family's precious son?
"Coming from a household like that, they're nowhere near as desperate about a pro debut as other families tend to be. The son wants it, so they support him, but their feeling is — if possible, they'd rather he keep it as a hobby? That's why I pitched him on how going pro in Korea would give him a foothold in Asia, knowledge of the market on top of the baseball side of things, and—"
And then there was the fact that his parents paid plenty of attention to their son — just none of it favorable where baseball was concerned.
Even his MLB prospects had been received with a shrug; scouts had courted him hard, and he'd accepted with all the enthusiasm of a man signing a parking ticket. And once Team Leader Park caught on to that opening, he'd wormed his way in with lines like, "Joining our club gets you more than the baseball advantages — you'll build a foundation in Korea and gain real knowledge of Asia."
I'd heard that parents without money often ruin their kid's career by squeezing out an obscene signing bonus, but apparently having too much money brings its own opposite flavor of headache.
What I heard from Seo-hee was even more naked.
"They put that clause in the contract?"
"Yep. Not exactly a standard term, but what can you do."
A clause stating that the player may declare his retirement at any time, for any reason.
The usual no-competing-in-the-same-industry provision was naturally attached — once retired, no baseball-related activity — but the contract explicitly stated, in writing, that baseball was something he could quit whenever he damn well pleased.
No matter how you sliced it, this was a parent deeply displeased about the whole baseball thing. And the reason was obvious. Son, why struggle through life as a middling ballplayer when there's a comfortable, respectable path right in front of you.
But I could easily imagine how much of a weight that had been on Henry himself. Maybe part of why he'd come all the way to distant Korea was the thought of escaping his parents' shadow and standing on his own two feet.
Having learned all this, I did some honest self-reflection: had I come down way too hard on the kid? Right — no matter how weathered his face looked, like a man in his thirties, he was a rookie fresh out of high school, one year younger than me.
I'd gone straight to fury instead of extending some senior-level magnanimity to a kid like that — not exactly the behavior befitting a man whose combined age across two lifetimes was barreling toward fifty.
If you know you screwed up, you fix it. Hadn't the foreign players all vouched that the kid's a good kid, perfectly decent? And after yesterday's little episode he was probably feeling deflated today, so it was incumbent upon me, as his senior, to look after him a little. Yes. That was the plan.
Armed with that resolution, I arrived at the training ground — and the Henry who greeted me looked, well, a little different from what I'd expected.
"Hm... I'm afraid this wouldn't cut it at an American college, or even a high school program."
"Uh... right, I see."
There was Henry, issuing criticisms, with the second-team hitting coach standing beside him looking faintly flustered.
There he was, chest out, nostrils flared, in full arrogant-Yankee mode yet again — and I felt a genuine bout of cognitive dissonance. Had yesterday's scene been a dream? Weren't you the one muttering in a sodden voice about how it was all over, how you were finished?
"Oh, Kim! You're here too. Take a look at this — isn't this training method just a tad too old-school for you?"
And this was the man who'd lost the home run derby and worn the face of someone who'd lost everything — now strolling up to me all sunshine and cheer as if none of it had ever happened.
What is WRONG with this guy.
What Henry was pointing at was a group of rookies and second-team players in the middle of intensive batting practice, swinging their hearts out. Apparently it did not meet his standards.
"They're just swinging for the sake of swinging — no intent, no methodology. That's the kind of thing a veteran who's already mastered his hitting uses to rediscover his feel, not the kind of training that actually improves a hitting skill."
Okay, fair point, actually. Watching that so-called intensive practice, even I could see it was just mindless volume — swing until your arms fall off.
But hadn't I told him yesterday? Don't play critic with other people's training. Does this guy have zero learning capacity?
The interpreter, perhaps thinking the same thing, shot me a cautious sidelong glance.
Hold it. Hold it in. The kid's got his reasons, his family situation, and he's just bursting with drive — there's no malice in it. What's the point of a grown adult flying off the handle every time a teenager postures a little?
And besides, an overconfident ballplayer beats a quivering, self-doubting one every day of the week. All he needed was a light adjustment of attitude. That's all.
With my temper thus soothed, I explained slowly and clearly, in terms he could follow.
"Henry, you're not entirely wrong, but that training has its reasons too. Pro games come with crushing pressure — when you step into the box in that state, your mind goes completely blank. If you try to think through your swing in that moment, your body won't cooperate. That's why they drill it like this, every day, so the swing becomes unconscious. Spinal-reflex level. Got it?"
I passed it along through the interpreter, and Henry nodded along eagerly. See? The kid's not a bad person. Open up, have a sincere heart-to-heart, and—
"I see that Kim's understanding of hitting is, shall we say, limited. No help for it — Kim is a pitcher, after all. He can't be expected to grasp hitting in full. If those players find peace of mind swinging at air like that, I won't stop them. But it's a foolish method, and one that doesn't suit me."
You lost a home run derby TO A PITCHER, you little— hey! One more derby. Right now. Let's go.
"Min-ji, sunbae. This is seriously not okay, you know? I guess Yankees just have no respect for hierarchy, huh."
Bang Min-soo had absolutely no idea what to say to this junior who came sprinting over to tattle.
For one, his name was now being mutated into a girl's name with increasing regularity, which grated considerably. For two, if that was really the problem, he wished the kid would take it to someone with actual seniority — Jo Sang-goo or Lee Hae-ryong — instead of a player in as awkward a position as himself.
"Aww, come on, Min-jeong sunbae. This is exactly what hierarchy is for. If I go straight to that caliber of senior, things get way too serious. Besides, you're my dedicated catcher, aren't you? Pitcher and catcher are one heart and soul, no?"
He wanted to ask, since when in your life have you ever cared about any of that? — and restrained himself. Getting angry at someone constitutionally incapable of listening was just wasted emotion.
After a short sigh, Bang Min-soo pointed out a small flaw in Kim Yi-seon's grievance.
"And what exactly do you propose we do about it? Stating the obvious, but my English is terrible."
The only players in this organization who could speak English were Kang Hyun-seok, who'd spent three years in the States, and the two thoughtless idiots standing right in front of him. And even those two were nowhere near conversational with native speakers, so no help there.
Or what — march over with an interpreter in tow and publicly put the rookie in his place? Yeah, good luck with that. Which meant the only real path was some private, non-confrontational setting where the kid could actually be reasoned with — and if that were easy, the world would have no fights or conflicts to speak of.
Oblivious or indifferent to all this agonizing, Kim Yi-seon declared with perfect confidence:
"Look, I watched him just now — he acts like that because he's confident in his ability. A few of the seniors just need to crush him with pure skill and he'll come to his senses. Right? A little 'welcome to the KBO' treatment."
"And why exactly should that be you?"
"Well, see, I beat him in the home run derby twice, and he does acknowledge me to a degree, but he figures I'm just a pitcher with a strong arm — not actually good at hitting as a skill. So it has to be a position player who beats him."
Astonishing. That was the grand plan he'd come up with.
The premise alone was nonsense — the idea that losing at skill would make someone meekly fall in line. What was this, medieval knights settling disputes by duel? And where, pray tell, was the objective, single-decision standard in baseball that could measure your skill against mine in one go?
And even granting that such a standard existed, and that losing to it would produce obedience — how many people on the current Twins roster did he see actually capable of beating that kid?
"I've watched him train, and he's no pushover."
"That's exactly why we need you, Min-young sunbae! Good enough to beat him, and just right for knocking that wind out of his sails!"
Those big, sparkling eyes of this incorrigible brat of a junior.
As established before, to Bang Min-soo baseball was just a job. A catcher wasn't a field general or a pitcher's partner — just one player among nine. And so, like most office workers, he worked exactly as much as required, trained at the level needed for a decent performance review, and considered interpersonal relations perfectly adequate so long as nobody's face got bloodied.
Naturally, the correct course of action was to refuse this absurd proposal with a single decisive stroke.
"Sunbae."
"...Fine. I'll do it. Stop staring at me like that."
The problem — the only problem — was that the person making the request was Kim Yi-seon. What office worker on Earth dares build a wall against the employee who's dating the CEO? That's not declining to play politics. That's volunteering to be destroyed by them.
Intended or not, Kim Yi-seon wore his heart on his sleeve, and the moment that boy went moping around the facility, it would be a catastrophe. When the CEO came by with a soft "Yi-seon-ah... is something wrong?", just try letting your name surface in that conversation.
Bang Min-soo surrendered everything and trailed after Kim Yi-seon, who marched ahead at the front with magnificent, unearned dignity.
"Alright! Lose this one, and you're learning what RESPECT actually means!"
"Respect? I believe I have shown ample respect."
Kim Yi-seon was practically hopping with rage. Honestly, from what filtered through the interpreter, the reply didn't seem worth that level of fury — and he had no idea what had the kid so fired up. Even with his miserable English, Yi-seon could catch crude insults when he heard them, and Henry hadn't even sworn at him outright.
Guess it sounded pretty insolent to anyone with actual English, he figured, and settled into his stance.
Kim Yi-seon had prepared roughly three mini-games as the proving ground for their "baseball skills."
First, a test of defense via throws: fielding hard, off-target tosses — one of the five tools. Second, a home run derby to gauge hitting. Third, base running to measure pure speed.
And somehow, not a single one of these was an event Bang Min-soo felt confident about.
For a catcher batting .200 — barely — in the first team, with exactly one home run on the season, a home run derby was a nonstarter. And for a man whose speed was not merely average but slightly below it, what was base running supposed to prove?
Yet Kim Yi-seon was preparing all of this under the serene assumption that Min-soo would obviously win. That was a lot of faith to place in a man who had confidence in nothing but the catching portion.
While he was entertaining these doubts, the first event began: catching Kim Yi-seon's wild throws to first base.
He stood at first base with a sour expression as Kim Yi-seon, from around shortstop, wound up into a running throw.
—?!
CRACK—!!
"Nice catch!"
This lunatic. The trajectory itself had been ordinary — but that ball must have been 180 kilometers an hour to the naked eye. That was no loosening-up toss; that was a full-power bullet!
Worse, he'd visibly twisted his whole body into it with zero regard for control. If the line had drifted even a little, it would have been buried in his ribs. Bang Min-soo was a first-team catcher, yes, but a ball like that was nobody's easy grab.
Just as the ferocity of it made his head swim, the voice came again.
"Here comes another!"
CRACK—!!
CRACK—!!
CRACK—!!
An unbroken barrage of insane laser throws. This wasn't even the long-toss the lunatic did to loosen his shoulder — what was this?
After fielding who-knew-how-many of those bullets in a state of razor-sharp panic, he finally heard:
"Phew. That should do it. Okay."
Kim Yi-seon said it with a satisfied grin. Okay? OKAY? Did he throw even harder than necessary in the name of being "fair"? No rookie, not even one flying high in America, could be expected to field those — that wasn't catching a throw, that was catching a person.
But Henry, far from wilting, was set alight by competitive fire and stepped forward proudly.
"Good. I'd like to try that myself, quickly."
"That little rich-kid punk. You just WAIT right there!"
Even more worked up now, Kim Yi-seon took his position for the throw, wound up with his whole body twisting into it, and unleashed another maniacal laser—
"Huh?"
Slow. No, not slow next to an ordinary player's throw — but definitively slow for something out of Kim Yi-seon's shoulder.
And it flew honestly, straight toward first base. Almost directly at him.
Did he take something off it, feeling bad for a rookie? Even for a mood-swinging lunatic like Kim Yi-seon, that seemed unlike him.
That illusion lasted all of half a second.
"Phew. Not easy, that."
"...You caught it? Good job."
The ball... had curved. Partway through its flight to first base, it dropped, abruptly.
Not like a curveball. It was a curveball.
Min-soo would swear it on his life: if that ball had been thrown to him, he would never, ever have caught it. But that monster of a rookie tracked the dropping ball all the way down and pulled off a sliding catch — and kept the tip of his foot on the bag through the whole thing, which was somehow even more absurd.
And the throws kept coming.
Second, a changeup. Third, a four-seamer that sailed up over his head. Fourth, a slider with terrifying bite — where had he even learned that? Fifth, a curveball dropping straight out of the sky again.
Should this even be called throwing? It was more like pitch design built to retire a hitter — a cascade of demented baseballs, one after another. And Henry caught every single one.
"...Ten to ten. You both caught everything, so it's a draw."
"Let's call it that. I'm not a petty man."
Kim Yi-seon's face was contorting; Henry looked positively regal.
Min-soo was halfway through the thought that he'd seen that exact pose somewhere before when Kim Yi-seon bellowed:
"NEXT — HOME RUN DERBY!"
Dragged along by the leash of a thoroughly enraged Kim Yi-seon and planted in the batter's box, Min-soo then watched him declare — again — that he would not use a pitching machine or batting-practice tosser, but deliver every ball personally.
A home run derby with Kim Yi-seon as your personal batting-practice pitcher. Probably the most luxurious derby in all of KBO history.
But Kim Yi-seon blazed at him with laser eyes, as if he'd forgotten he was supposed to be the pitching machine — and then started throwing at a level that wasn't full-game intensity, but would absolutely pass for live bullpen work.
"Strike one. Out."
"Yi-seon-ah, a derby means you throw the ball so he can HIT it."
Kim Yi-seon announced "one out" in a perfectly flat voice and showed zero reaction to Min-soo's protest.
He wound up for pitch two.
This is killing me. How did I get dragged into this.
And as he thought it, the next ball came in.
"Two outs."
In that instant, Min-soo understood exactly what Kim Yi-seon was doing.
This one had good velocity — genuinely fast — but there was nothing left on the end of it. A dead ball. A turd ball. Whether it was a changeup or just deliberately bled of grip pressure, the thing went limp and wobbly in the last third of its flight.
Not one single thing does this guy give you straight and easy, huh. Fine. Have it your way.
Third pitch. Kim Yi-seon threw the exact same dead-fish ball again—
CRACCCCCCK—!!
Kim Yi-seon's chicanery continued unabated after that. Where Min-soo had gotten velocity with a dead finish, Henry got slightly slower pitches with movement squeezed into every inch of them — wobbling, dancing trajectories, delivered with scrupulous attention to an unfair pitch mix.
Even in base running, the one event that seemed resistant to cheating, he pulled out every trick imaginable — rigged start signals, cleats suited to the ground, water scattered across the field, whatever it took — and somehow tilted the whole thing in Min-soo's favor.
But the result of all that effort was—
"Hm. Mr. Bang and I came out nearly even in every event. Shall we call the whole thing a draw?"
"SHUT UP!"
All that remained was Kim Yi-seon, horns fully out.
Nearly even? Not even close. The home run derby ended only after Kim Yi-seon abandoned the games entirely and threw pure game-intensity heat — that was how wide the gap had been between Min-soo and Henry. And in base running, yes, Min-soo won, but only because Henry slipped and fell once on the paths.
Still, Bang Min-soo couldn't understand it. This was a guy who normally couldn't care less what anyone did, who lived his comfortable life utterly unbothered — why was he acting like this toward Henry of all people? Honestly, the rookie wasn't even that disrespectful.
"This, too, is simply the mindset a star must carry. And I accept wins and losses with perfect grace. Mr. Bang — or in the Korean way, would that be 'sunbae Bang'? Excellent skill, truly."
And the moment Henry addressed him, Bang Min-soo understood everything.
That oddly grating tone. The sense that the speaker genuinely meant nothing by it. No discernible malice — and yet the attention-seeking streak brimming clear to the top.
He turned his head toward a certain junior who was still huffing and puffing with rage, and thought: they really are alike.
"Ah. So it's his own kind he can't stand."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Nothing. No need to interpret that."
Having reached that conclusion, and watching Kim Yi-seon bounce off the walls in fury, Bang Min-soo felt an inexplicable satisfaction fill him from top to bottom.
That's right. You go meet a junior just like yourself and suffer a little too.
It had been an exhausting day — but somehow, Bang Min-soo suspected he'd fall asleep that night feeling lighter than he had in a long while.