All Bats, No Gloves
While ordinary high school students get to enjoy March 1st, a public holiday, and start school on the second, the same is not true for high school baseball players.
That's because the High School Weekend League runs its games on holidays and weekends, so opening day is always fixed to March 1st.
Needless to say, the first-years couldn't sync up with the established players at all, and their condition was that of, honestly speaking, middle schoolers who'd only just become high schoolers—so none of them would see action in the opening game.
I was the sole exception to that obvious rule, having made the starting lineup for the opener.
You'd think the seniors might have pushed back at that, but perhaps because the Jeil High students had watched my middle school exploits up close, they accepted it without a word. Even the regular first baseman quietly agreed to slide over to third.
"Alright, this is the opener. Third-years, this is your window of proof—there's not much time left to show yourselves to pro teams and universities. Second-years, this is where you prove you deserve to be regulars next year. I won't tell you to do well. You'll perform exactly as much as you've prepared. Understood!"
"Yes, sir!!"
"Let's go!"
"One, two, three—Jeil High, fighting!"
Coach only gets this fired up for games that don't really matter, which tells you just how important this stage is for Jeil High. For a weak team, proper official-game experience is something you simply can't get outside of the Weekend League.
Today's opponent is Gwangnam High. Much like Gwangnam Middle, they're a newly founded team, so the gap between us isn't huge. We're the classic pair of schools battling over who gets to be dead last in the eastern region of the Weekend League.
In other words, today's winner escapes last place for the first half of this year's league. A genuinely important game.
We start on defense. Taking the mound today is a familiar face—Choi Kang-cheol. In the original story, he was one of the few players who could actually hold his own in a fight, as long as his mentality didn't implode, so he's an excellent pick for what you'd call a bottom-feeder showdown.
Kang-cheol, having watched the batter with a calm face, delivers the pitch.
"Ooh, the ball's got great life today!"
The pitching coach wastes no praise on Kang-cheol's very first pitch. Apparently today's one of the days that guy is really clicking. The last time I properly watched him pitch was two years ago, so it seems he's grown quite a bit since then.
Like a certain goblin said to be disgusted at the sight of the weak, he unleashes total contempt for underdogs. With historic-caliber pitching, he wraps up the inning with a three-and-out in the blink of an eye. Maybe today really will be an easy one.
Kang-cheol himself, meanwhile, wanders back into the dugout with a dazed expression. Delighted, I greet him with plenty of energy.
"Ohh, Choi Kang-cheol, keep this up and you're going pro!"
"Pro? Guys like me? I'd just like to be sure I'm getting into college."
"C'mon, college is a lock for you. And if it doesn't look like it's happening, should I carry you there by the collar?"
"Coming from you, that actually sounds plausible, so don't torture me with false hope."
"Just you wait. I'll go show off in the lineup, won't I?"
Saying that, I loosen up and step into the on-deck circle.
The batting order Coach gave me today is the two-hole. I still haven't fully adjusted to wood bats, and my swing is nowhere near crisp, so I might manage contact but not much distance.
When I said as much, Coach apparently decided to give the major leagues a mock run himself and put me in the two spot.
Was his instruction to work walks and only swing when I was sure I could square one up? To be fair, freewheeling power hitting would be a stretch right now. From high school ball on, the fence distance matches adult baseball, after all.
In reality, land constraints and various regulations mean the fences average a little closer, but they're still professional-grade walls.
I step into the box with a light nod to the Gwangnam pitcher, who is staring me down hard. The senior who batted leadoff already went down on strikes, so the guy looks pretty confident. Back in middle school, he'd have just plunked me for an automatic HBP.
I spread my legs lightly, hold the bat a touch below my shoulder, and set my stance.
In the pitcher's eyes, no matter how much I flew around in middle school or how big a 188-centimeter frame I have now, I'm still, apparently, just a first-year. His first pitch is a fastball hammered hard right down the middle.
There was a time—I'm certain—when I'd have absolutely crushed a pitch thrown like that and sent it over the wall. Part of it was the closer fences, but mostly it was the aluminum bat: light yet springy, so my bat speed itself was tremendous.
As physics class teaches, F = MA. If the bat can't whip through the zone quickly, then no matter how much heavier a wood bat is than an aluminum one, it can't deliver sufficient force. On top of that, it's harder to time a swing precisely against a fast ball.
In fact, the swing I just took felt a touch late.
But so what?
Crack!
"That's our Yi-seon! No adjustment period needed, huh! Just do what you've always done—exactly what you've always done!"
Hey, even I can take a fastball thrown this honestly, dead center, and send it flying.
The ball rockets off on a nearly flat line, sails for a while, then takes one bounce before smacking into the wall. A comfortable triple. At middle school distances that's a guaranteed home run—wood bats really are brutal.
After that, riding Kang-cheol's berserk mode and my steady performance, Jeil High built a 7–0 lead heading into the bottom of the eighth. Coach pulled Kang-cheol once he hit the pitch-count limit, and since the game was more or less decided, he began trotting out bench-level players one by one.
Kang Min-hyuk takes the mound, with Nam Kang-min behind the plate. Beyond them, about five more first-year reserves filed in for defensive duty—honestly, at this point you'd have to call it batting practice.
Since the game was winding down anyway, I stood at first base with my glove on my right hand and a relaxed mind.
Signs flash between mound and plate. First pitch. I don't know which number weapon this is for Kang Min-hyuk, but apparently he's learned yet something else—a splitter, screaming in on a perfect course that leaves the batter's bat whiffing through empty air. Except—
"No need to rush! Take it slow!"
Nam Kang-min can't secure the dropping ball. A passed ball. Well, splitters are genuinely tough to receive.
The next pitch follows—this time a slider darting slightly off the outside edge.
"Uh, uh?!"
It wasn't a wildly breaking pitch, yet he loses it entirely and it squirts behind him. The dugout starts to stir—Coach and the whole team.
What is this?
Kang Min-hyuk, clearly conscious of his catcher who keeps letting balls slip, shifts to attacking closer and closer to the zone. Even so, his command stays razor-sharp, and somehow we limp along.
"Hey! Nam Kang-min! Get your head in the game, you punk!"
And then, finally, the big disaster. The curveball with which Min-hyuk punched out the next batter never lands cleanly in Nam Kang-min's glove. The batter, having clearly anticipated a strikeout-dropped-third, bolts for first, and Nam Kang-min is a beat too slow finding the ball. Safe.
Something Min-hyuk once said suddenly drifts back to me, faint but unmistakable.
—"Well, can his defense actually live up to his hitting?"
Hold on. Is this for real? His defense is going to be so bad that the bat and everything else just goes up in flames?
Could Yasin be watching me right now, with the whole universe conspiring to smear me?
And it's not just Nam Kang-min—a parade of defensive disasters rolls on.
The keystone combo of Sung In-hoon and Kwon Ji-wook are a half-step slow on everything, and balls keep punching straight through the infield.
Cha Il-sung in right field has a genuinely great arm, and that's about it.
The Jeil Middle first-years already playing with us? I knew what their defense looked like. They're warm bodies, nothing more.
In the end, Kang Min-hyuk had to grind through a full 25 pitches just to escape the inning, charged with 2 earned runs. But in my eyes, not a single one of those runs was his fault.
Still, now it's our turn at the plate. Right. These are the guys the manga always showed off through their hitting, aren't they? If they give up a couple runs, we just score that many more. Simple.
First batter of the inning: Kwon Ji-wook.
True to his manga characterization as a cerebral, psychological-warfare type of hitter, he's already dragging the count deep, grinding out a stubborn at-bat.
And when the pitcher leaves one over the heart of the plate, he doesn't miss—
Tick.
Huh? Not crack—tick?
No, judging by the ball and the bat coming together, that shouldn't have been a jam-shot trajectory, right?
The ball wobbles off with no life on it, and just barely evades the shortstop's glove. And that's only because the opposing shortstop botched it—with a competent fielder, that's a routine out.
Through it all I can see him sprinting with gritted teeth, but despite his small, nimble-looking frame, his speed is criminally bad, and he barely makes it to first safe.
Um...
Next up is Nam Kang-min. Even now, the kid's build isn't bad. Upper 170s is hardly short.
He's clearly a see-it-and-swing type, pulling even the first pitch as it drifts in on an ambiguous path.
Crack!
But... why is there no distance on it at all...?
It carries a short way, then plops gently into the left fielder's glove. Out.
The Jeil Middle boys who follow need no commentary—they're either human fans or mass-producers of groundouts and pop flies, and the inning just... ends.
This is...
I start stealing glances at Coach beside me. Unexpectedly, he sits there calm, as if this were all according to plan.
"Why are you looking at me? You're the one who said these kids would break out."
"I still didn't expect it to be quite this bad."
Coach chuckles and turns to look at me.
"Yi-seon. One look at the scouting reports and I knew exactly how much they'd show today. Especially the ones who never even took defensive reps after joining our team—how did you expect them to field?"
"Still, that's pretty harsh."
"Yi-seon."
There's something in the way Coach looks at me—a kindly, elder-teaching-a-child sort of gaze. It stings.
"Those kids. While I was out scouting, meeting them face to face, I learned something. They all stayed on their teams because they love baseball—but they get no playing time, and team practices revolve around the regulars."
"So they've probably never received proper defensive training. I was exactly like that in college. And do you know what happens then?"
"What happens?"
"They swing from their heels in hitting, because endless batting practice gives them at least some confidence there, and then they keep committing errors on defense. That was me in my first starting lineup."
"And that's when it hit me: ah, I need to train my defense. Until you go through it yourself, no amount of telling will make you understand."
"So the reason you put those kids in today was... let them get burned once and figure it out for themselves?"
"Putting it unkindly? Yes."
"And the reason you're telling me all this?"
"Well, you're the one who told me to recruit them. So you're going to take responsibility and work them hard on defensive drills alongside them. That's what I'm saying."
"Shouldn't that be the hitting coach's or YOUR job?"
"The hitting coach and I are busy teaching the second- and third-years."
"Wow, seriously, what the... you make me scout, make me drive in runs, make me run drills. At this point, isn't this not Jeil High anymore but Team Kim Yi-seon?"
And I'm slated to do the pitching instruction eventually too. At this rate, Coach ought to be paying me a salary.
Coach just laughs heartily, gives me a couple of thumps on the back, and ends the conversation there.
That day, Wirye Jeil High capped off their High School Weekend League opener with an 8–3 victory.