Retirement Game
As deflated as the Seoul Twins' dugout had been, the Gwangju Phoenix side wasn't exactly riding high either. If anything, they were clicking their tongues in disbelief.
"Seriously, what kind of monster is that kid?"
"At least we put runs on the board. That's something."
"It reminds me of when I played in the WBC. Facing the US, Japan, Dominican Republic national teams and going up against their number one and two starters — it felt exactly like this."
They had scratched out two runs against Kim Yi-seon over six innings, but honestly, it was hard to brag about it as any kind of achievement. A quality start by the standard of an average league starter is, after all, six innings and three earned runs.
When the runs you manage come only from peak condition, sheer fighting spirit, and a lucky bounce or two, it has the opposite effect — it fills you with the same awe the Phoenix hitters were feeling now.
But they were still the ones in the winner's seat.
"If I were them, I'd be too bitter to sleep tonight."
"Too bitter to sleep? No joke, I'd be cursing out everyone — seniors, coaches, everybody."
"That goes without saying. Wow. I never thought one guy could drag an entire baseball game around by the collar like that."
The awe the Phoenix players felt toward Kim Yi-seon was, at its core, closer to what a hunter feels toward magnificent prey on a drive hunt. The kind of emotion you get watching a mammoth or a tiger, wounded and bleeding, thrashing to the very end.
And in fact, Kim Yi-seon had finally gone down at their hands. Six innings had apparently been his limit — there he sat on the dugout bench, shoulder wrapped in ice.
They'd started to think they were adjusting to his pitches, so there was a flicker of disappointment, but the joy of now facing a regular pitcher — an ordinary one — far outweighed it.
And if word reached the Twins hitters, who hadn't managed to score a single run of support for Kim Yi-seon all game, thoughts of how to carve up this new opponent would only breed arrogance.
And so came the top of the seventh. The leadoff batter stepped in to signal the resumption of play.
"Ah, Max, who had been playing left field, is being replaced — Lee Hae-ryong is coming in to pinch-hit."
"Lee Hae-ryong. His playing time has dropped this season due to nagging injuries and conditioning issues, but every time he takes the field, he delivers. He's the Twins' fixer. Can he change the momentum in this at-bat?"
The Gwangju Phoenix players watched Lee Hae-ryong's entrance with puzzled eyes.
Pulling a foreign bat and sending out a creaky old captain when it wasn't even a crucial moment? Why?
Lee Hae-ryong was a decent hitter, sure, but wouldn't it make more sense to swap out Min Sung-won, who was rotting away in right field? This wasn't some decisive fork in the road that demanded an emergency pinch-hitter.
From a Phoenix dugout full of nothing but doubts about the move—
"Manager Jung's got teeth. I can't believe he'd go this far."
Only the Gwangju Phoenix manager seemed to have grasped something, clicking his tongue softly.
Lee Hae-ryong carefully set his stance in the batter's box. He'd felt it the last time he pinch-hit, too — this body creaked less when it ran hot from playing every day as a starter than when it came off the bench cold.
He'd done his warm-up drills diligently, but the throbbing ache and stiff movements, like a rusted machine suddenly forced into motion, were plain for anyone to see.
Michael Ostead was still on the mound. His pitch count didn't leave him much room, but he looked determined to finish out this inning.
It was obvious without asking. Yi-seon had gutted out six innings before coming down, so the man was puffing up his pride by throwing one more.
Of course, he was good enough that even that stubbornness was hard to punish. The experts weren't wrong to unanimously call Ostead the best-performing foreign pitcher of the year.
The very first pitch proved it.
"Striiiike!"
"Ostead attacks with a first-pitch strike."
"Lee Hae-ryong calmly takes the pitch."
"The count is 0-1."
Ostead had seemed momentarily flustered by the sudden pinch-hitter — he clearly hadn't understood the substitution at first — but he quickly recovered his usual composure and fired in the first pitch.
Over a hundred pitches into the game, and he was still topping 150 with nasty, lively stuff. And unlike Yi-seon, he wasn't even alternating arms. That bastard was disgustingly good in his own right.
Even if Hae-ryong had predicted the location of that first pitch, there was a good chance he couldn't have gotten the bat anywhere near it. No wonder the younger hitters had been held scoreless.
But Lee Hae-ryong simply watched Ostead, his stance unchanged.
"Ball!"
"A slider sweeping off the outside corner — ball."
"Lee Hae-ryong held up nicely. Waiting on the pitch with patience."
"The count is 1-1."
The man on the mound was a superb pitcher who couldn't promise a win even against his own prime self, and Hae-ryong was an old man in a broken-down body.
The broadcast crew and the spectators probably thought he was calmly working the count, working the pitcher. The truth was far less elegant — he didn't trust himself to swing, so he just watched. That velocity was so vicious that any half-committed swing would end in nothing but a routine out.
Then why was he standing in the box at all? Had he bullied the manager into giving him the very first at-bat, only to step up here and lament his aged body?
"Ball!"
"Dug in hard at the hands. Two balls."
"This is what a big game looks like — neither pitcher nor hitter giving an inch. Ostead's courage to pound the inner half is impressive, and Lee Hae-ryong watching that pitch without so much as a flinch is equally remarkable."
"The count is 2-1."
Paradoxically, it was because his confidence was overflowing.
Baseball is a cruel sport. As a young man, he'd believed he had a magnificent body and talent that no one could match — and yet he'd known almost nothing about baseball itself.
Only now, in this worn-out old body, had some small understanding of what baseball actually was finally come to him. Just like the old saying he'd once heard at a lecture, all those years ago.
Easy it is for a boy to grow old; hard it is to master a craft. Wasn't that how it went?
The fourth pitch came flying in. Ostead probably thought he'd managed his expression well, but he couldn't fool Hae-ryong's eyes.
The slight tremble in his shoulder, the faint flicker at his fingertips — unmistakable signals that something in his feel for the ball had gone wrong. Lee Hae-ryong had been waiting for exactly this.
Every pitcher, no matter how great, makes one critical mistake in a game. And a hitter who seizes nothing but those mistakes can rise above average and become truly exceptional.
If this realization had come ten years ago, back when he was in his prime, maybe he could have chased the majors like Hyun-seok-hyeong. Or at the very least, he might have been remembered not with some lukewarm "he was a fine captain," but as a genuine legend of the team and the league.
But this much was enough. His old body could no longer crush a home run deep over the distant wall, nor muscle a jammed pitch into a hit through raw exit velocity. But it was more than enough to deliver what this moment required.
CRACK!!!
"Fourth pitch — hit! He shoots it the other way! Over the first baseman's head, into right field! The runner is going! He's running! At first base — safe! SAFE!"
"What beautiful technique on that oppo push! And look at Lee Hae-ryong's sprint out of the box — total conviction from the moment of contact! He took off the instant the bat met the ball. A fraction of hesitation and he'd have been out... astonishing."
"Runner on first, nobody out. The Twins finally have life!"
That's how it's done. Pushing a hanging slider that stayed up and drifted toward the middle of the plate the other way was no trouble at all.
And there was Ostead, his expression crumpling just slightly after taking that one punch from an old man.
He'd given up hits earlier in the game too. For his face to twist like that over this one—
"And there's a pitching change. Michael Ostead is being replaced by Jo Hyeong-bin for the Gwangju Phoenix."
"Ostead was clearly running on fumes. By a starter's pride, getting pulled without recording a single out in an inning is a humiliation — but this is a game you make sacrifices for, and that's the picture here."
A pitching change, just as expected.
Which meant that bastard had now officially thrown fewer innings than our blockhead. He hadn't planned it that way, but the side benefit put a grin on his face all the same.
Right. If this was the last stage for a pair of washed-up relics on their way out, then they ought to show everything they had before walking off.
He was standing at first base waiting out the pitching change when the base coach approached, apparently with orders from the dugout.
"Hae-ryong. You holding up all right?"
"What's there to not hold up?"
He knew exactly what this was. The dugout knew his legs weren't what they used to be and was weighing a pinch-runner. But a pinch-runner? They'd already burned the foreign bat just to get him into the game — swapping him out now for a runner would only complicate things.
He was staying in. He had more to give.
"Save the chatter and just tell the manager to flash me the green light for one steal."
"The green light?"
Top of the seventh. Lee Hae-ryong had delivered exactly as promised. On a body that might as well have been courting a career-ending injury with that kind of sprint, he'd even gone into a slide on the steal fake.
Thanks to him, the Seoul Twins had managed to flip the momentum of the game.
The bottom of the seventh had arrived, and at last, the game was tied.
All that theatrical thievery amounted to nothing in the end — Lee Hae-ryong never actually completed the steal — but by rattling the opposing pitcher's nerves so thoroughly, he'd coaxed a double out of the next at-bat. He'd gained more than a successful stolen base ever would have.
"Honestly. Never thought I'd be rolling around in the dirt at my age."
Which was why he now looked like he'd been dragged behind a truck.
He grumbled about being covered in dust with a laugh, but Kang Hyun-seok knew the bravado for what it was. The man was practically emptying a whole tube of pain-relieving balm onto his joints — only a fool wouldn't notice.
"Quit the tough act and get your heat packs on properly. We're at the age where bones don't knit anymore."
"That's for you top-four old-timers. I'm still a three-hitter, you know?"
"Like a couple spots in the order makes a difference."
His shoulder was already well warmed up. No — "warmed up" wasn't quite right. These days, even a handful of warm-up tosses set it blazing hot. Aggravating a broken-down machine was the more accurate way to put it.
Back in his prime, he'd never broken the 100-mile mark, but he'd touched 160 km/h at his peak. That same arm could now scrape past 145 maybe once or twice a year. It was completely shot.
His natural stamina held up well enough that he'd wrung out those fading velocities season after season — 200 innings, then 190 — but even that was apparently ending this year. He'd barely passed 170 innings this season before his arm stopped answering in the second half.
Still, it was more than enough to burn one final flare before retirement.
"Taking the mound now — the heart of the Twins, Kang Hyun-seok."
"Veterans matter enormously in games like this. Under that crushing pressure, in what's effectively a one-game sprint, experience weighs heavy. Manager Jung Jin-haeng may have made this call with exactly that in mind."
The bottom of the seventh brought the Phoenix's 2-3-4 hitters to the plate. There were no easy outs in this lineup from the very start.
And look at Tyrone, the Phoenix's number two hitter stepping in now. From his stance to the way his eyes bored in, nothing about him looked easy. At the very least, you'd hope he'd relax a little against a washed-up old relic — but he clearly had no such intention.
But Hyun-seok was confident. If he hadn't been, he wouldn't have climbed the mound swaggering about confidence in the first place.
"The sign conversation between pitcher and catcher is dragging on."
"In a way, this pitch matters more than the first pitch of the game. Taking his time is only natural."
Before today's game began, the conversation he'd shared with Hae-ryong hadn't been idle talk. The gist of it: you and me, we're making today our last stand, so let's play like there's no tomorrow — no thinking about what comes after.
Neither of them had actually said those words out loud. Truthfully, there'd been no need for a conversation at all. From the moment their eyes met in that first meeting, he'd known and Hae-ryong had known. Same thought.
Four years ago, most of the teammates who'd shared that glory had transferred or retired. Even then, people called it a team past its cycle forcing a Win-Now championship, so maybe it was inevitable.
And a team that burns through everything in one great sprint — when it collapses, it falls without a floor.
The Twins had lived exactly that. Dead last in the combined standings two years running. For a team that had made the postseason eight straight years, the fall was sudden and devastating.
Which was why Kang Hyun-seok had once thought: maybe if he hung on longer and passed down everything he knew to the promising young players, the team could climb back. Maybe he'd have to swallow his pride and stretch his playing career as long as it would go.
But it turned out he didn't need to. How arrogant he'd been. Good young players were coming up in droves without him, and the Twins were charging toward a championship again.
So what was the point of saving his body now?
"The pitcher comes set — and delivers!"
If he could run on full power for today alone, then losing the use of his arm starting tomorrow would be a joy.
"Striiiike!!!"
"...First pitch, strike!"
"Uh... Kang Hyun-seok. He hasn't thrown anything close to this velocity in recent memory... and more than that — that delivery just now was pure prime-era form, wasn't it?"
"Yes, let's go to the slow-motion replay."
"Ah, there it is. See it now? That signature motion — the arm lifted nearly vertical before hammering down from above. That's the unmistakable form of Kang Hyun-seok from his MLB challenge days."
Ignoring the electric pain in his shoulder and the ache in his elbow and wrist, Kang Hyun-seok set himself to pitch again.
For him, this game was still a long way from over.
Manager Jung Jin-haeng watched the field with a heavy heart.
Even after the dramatic game-tying run in the seventh, the lineup remained stubbornly stuck. More runners were reaching base than before, but the runs were refusing to cross the plate by the narrowest of margins.
And on the mound—
"Striiiike! OUT!!!"
"Called strike three! Strikeout! Kang Hyun-seok rescues his team from the jam yet again!"
"Truly the heart of the Twins — Kang Hyun-seok keeps showing us why he's at his best when the pressure is highest."
"This game moves on to the 11th inning!"
Kang Hyun-seok was still out there, standing tall. In a game that had refused to produce a single run and careened into extra innings, he'd kept clawing his way back to the mound.
The velocity and delivery that had first made everyone wonder if his prime had returned were slowing, pitch by pitch. His walk back to the dugout between innings looked stiff and labored, and he was burning through heat packs and pain balm by the fistful.
But he was holding. Against the Phoenix, the fiercest beasts of the Southern Division, no less.
"What exactly are you planning to do next year?"
"Next year? Coming from a man who knows better than anyone, that's rich."
He'd been sitting there expressionless, grinding through the pain — and the moment the manager spoke, Kang Hyun-seok broke into a wide grin. The manager felt no desire to ask anything further.
"Manager. This much ought to be enough for a retirement ceremony, don't you think?"
"Retirement ceremony, my foot. If the great Kang Hyun-seok's farewell is this, the Twins fans will run me out of town."
And after that, neither of them paid much mind to how the game would actually end. Naturally so.
Because Lee Hae-ryong was stepping into the box.
CRACK──!!!!
Just as the hot-hitting, gold-gloved Lee Hae-ryong of his prime would have, he'd finally uncorked a perfectly timed swing — and the ball sailed clean over the wall. The manager and the aging veteran talked instead about the next game.
The Korean Series, that was.