A Date at the Ballpark (?)
Not getting sent to a game didn't mean I had absolutely nothing to do.
Final exams were over and everyone's shoulders had loosened, but school hadn't broken for vacation yet, so there were still classes to sit through. And while team training had been retooled around the non-starters who'd actually be playing, my own personal routine still had to continue.
"Three weeks of rest? That's actually decent timing. Your muscle fatigue levels and recovery speed were still within normal range, but the numbers had been creeping in the wrong direction. Taking this chance to rest isn't a bad thing."
"So weights are still okay, right?"
"Guardian — make this kid do nothing but yoga for three weeks, and ban weight training entirely. And his weight was clearly up to 92 kilos at the start of the season, but he's down to 88 now. Get it back up if you can."
"Understood. Should I stop the other things too?"
"His daily five-kilometer interval runs are obviously out as well. If he's been practicing breaking balls by throwing bullpen sessions, stop that too whenever possible."
The moment those thoughts landed, half of my personal training schedule evaporated.
"Director, wouldn't it be better to keep some feel for his body, at least? No running and no throwing practice seems like a lot."
"If you absolutely must, let him do some catchplay. Though even that's off-limits in large quantities. Focus on recovery."
The Director was unbending. Min-ah, attached to my side like a guardian on duty, was guarding me like a maximum-security prison.
Still — she'd said catchplay was allowed.
The very next day, I went straight to find my designated catchplay partner, Jun-soo.
"Hey! Jun-soo, nice arm! Good, now give me a fastball this time!"
"Fastball, coming right up!"
Hmm... you're training hard too, huh, with a tournament coming up. Yeah, pass.
Which brings us to Kang Min-hyuk, who'd been handed the same forced rest as me.
"Kang Min-hyuk! You, an honorary member of both the disciplinary committee AND the student council, are failing basic academics? This is a disgrace to me as well. I will personally tutor you until you're not just passing make-up exams, but performing at the average level of a regular student!"
"Min-hyuk, let's actually study properly this time, okay? I'll help you."
Uh... they're busy over there too.
Am I seriously the only person in the world with nothing to do?
At first, I thought about just sleeping all day. But that had only been possible back when my body was wrecked from training and games — now, if I slept during the day, I wouldn't be able to fall asleep at night.
I racked my memory for how I'd usually handled sudden unexpected holidays in my past life.
School days: the endless cycle of class, night study, manga, sleep. I even went to school during vacation, so basically the same.
University: the cycle of class, part-time jobs, assignments, manga, sleep. Vacation meant extra semesters and even more part-time work, so basically the same.
Working life: the cycle of work, manga, sleep. Days off were spent frantically catching up on sleep.
"Huh. I was more diligent than I thought."
And here I'd assumed I was a shut-in loser, a surplus human being discarded by society — turns out I lived a pretty industrious life, didn't I?
Laid out like this, a baseball player's life actually looks more leisurely by comparison.
So there I was, agonizing over this while loitering in front of the baseball clubroom, wondering if even one soul on earth would play catch with me, when out of nowhere Manager Park Young-chul struck up a conversation.
"Haha, Yi-seon. Suddenly getting ordered to rest leaves you not knowing what to do with yourself, doesn't it? I've been through something similar, so I understand completely."
He's a gaunt, shriveled middle-aged man now, but he'd apparently been a first-round draftee once upon a time?
"Honestly, yes. Being told to suddenly rest, I really don't know what to do with myself. What did you usually do on days like this, Manager?"
"Well then, how about watching a Twins game? Watching from a spectator's seat teaches you things you can't pick up on the field. And you can double it as a date with your girlfriends."
"Watching a game in person?"
"Of course. I can arrange the tickets, naturally — and if you're lucky, even a meet-and-greet with the players."
"The latter doesn't really appeal to me... but thank you."
The weekend league had wrapped up and there'd be no filming for a while, yet Manager Park Young-chul still came by every single week. He really is endlessly devoted. Even on days when Seo-hee or the other staff didn't visit, he'd always drop in just to check that nothing had gone wrong.
Between his sincerity and the fact that I was bored out of my mind anyway, I gratefully accepted the tickets he offered.
"These aren't even general admission — they're table seats. Aren't these expensive?"
"They're for club invitations. Spending this much is the bare minimum. Come comfortably, no need to feel indebted."
The tickets were for a four-person family table seat — good seats worth twice what four general admission tickets would cost, and he was just giving them away. He'd even gotten me all three days of a Friday-Saturday-Sunday series, not just one game.
And so, thanks to the shining grace of that radiant Manager Young-chul, I found myself holding table-seat tickets and wondering how to fill the four seats.
Four seats didn't strictly require four people. The Manager had told me to bring my girlfriend, after all, so Ye-eun and Min-ah should roughly balance it out.
With that breezy, carefree mindset, I asked Ye-eun first about the tickets.
"Ye-eun. I got baseball tickets. Want to go watch a game with me?"
"Really? When?"
"I got three days' worth — Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Whenever works for you?"
"When do you want to go?"
"Me? Every day, obviously."
Ye-eun smiled sweetly at that.
"Then obviously I'm going all three days too. Kim Yi-seon. Now that I think about it, it's been ages since you bought casual clothes, hasn't it? You'll be going out for this — let's go shopping."
"Huh? Uh, sure."
I didn't quite grasp the reason at the time, but in any case, swept along by Ye-eun's high spirits, we went shopping, and that day passed without a single bored complaint from me.
The next day was Min-ah's turn.
"Min-ah. I got baseball tickets. Want to go watch a game with me?"
"When should I come?"
"I got all three days — Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Pick whichever day's convenient."
"Which day would you prefer, oppa?"
"Me? I'm planning on going all three days."
"Then I'll come all three days as well."
"Huh? Sure. Let's do that."
Min-ah got strangely excited too, digging up lists of famous restaurants around the ballpark and nearby parks, even asking for my opinion on them. Thanks to that, I had a genuinely pleasant day again.
Three days at the ballpark, and I'd already filled two of them without even watching a single game? This is an absolute steal, isn't it? I was smugly entertaining thoughts like that — until Friday evening, the day we arrived at the stadium.
"...Ah."
"...Ah."
The moment Ye-eun and Min-ah, who were supposed to meet me in front of the stadium, came face to face with each other, the atmosphere froze solid.
Ah. So that's what was happening.
Normally, Ye-eun and Min-ah would walk beside me, matching my stride whenever I adjusted it. But today, even walking at my natural pace, they were already far ahead of me.
"Yi-seon. I don't usually use crude language, but allow me to ask just once. Are you, by any chance, an idiot?"
Manager Park Young-chul, who had given me the tickets in the first place, had come out to greet us in front of the stadium today. Yet even that kind man couldn't hold back a sigh at the sight of us, and that's what he said.
"This is exactly why I gave you three days' worth of tickets. You could have come comfortably by yourself on the first day, or with family, then brought one of them each on the two weekend days. Wouldn't that have solved everything?"
"You could have warned me in advance..."
"It never occurred to me that I would need to spell that out for you."
No wonder Ye-eun seemed to have put so much extra effort into her outfit today. My vague phrasing had made both of them think they were each getting a private date with me.
"It's a weekday game, so it'll end late — don't go anywhere else, just stop by that Han River park right over there on your way home. The night view is lovely there. It'll help everyone cool their heads a little."
"Thank you, Manager."
Married men really are built different. He's got the aftercare protocol down to a science.
Anyway, glancing nervously between the two of them, I made it to the stadium entrance — where I spotted a familiar face.
"Huh? Seo-hee noona. What are you doing here?"
"I heard you were coming. There's still plenty of time before first pitch, so I came to show you around the stadium."
Busy working professionals, mobilizing en masse just because I said I was bored? Isn't this kind of a burden? And from what I know, this is the middle of the season — their busiest stretch.
"You must be swamped with work, noona. We'll just watch the game on our own. Isn't the season rough on you right now?"
"Rough because of the season... it's rough, all right. But I wouldn't say busy."
Rough, but not busy? What is that supposed to mean?
"Yi-seon. Our record lately has been absolutely dismal, hasn't it? Whenever that happens, everything the PR team does gets torn apart by the fans, so these days all we do is manage public sentiment while the actual work just—"
the Manager whispered into my ear. Ah, that's why. Although — why are you talking about it like it's someone else's problem, Manager? You're part of the PR team too.
In any case, once I'd heard the Manager's explanation, the situation made sense. They were fleeing from feral fans.
I gave Seo-hee a solemn nod of the head, as if to say I knew how hard she was working. She let out one long, deep sigh, gave my greeting a token acknowledgment, and then escorted all of us — Ye-eun and Min-ah included — to our seats.
"...Isn't that Kim Yi-seon?..."
"...You know, that guy from MiTube..."
"...Wow, in person he really does look like a celebrity..."
The moment we stepped inside the stadium, murmurs rippled around us. Then, despite the presence of the Manager and Seo-hee, one woman came straight up to me.
"You're Kim Yi-seon, right? I've watched every one of your videos on MiTube — I'm a genuine fan. Could I ask for an autograph?"
I couldn't tell whether I'd genuinely gotten more famous than I'd realized, or whether it was just because this was Jamsil, the Twins' home turf, but everyone around us clearly recognized me. This fan in particular had guts, and the crowd kept nervously watching how the situation would play out.
"I appreciate the thought. But this is a professional baseball stadium, you know. I'm an amateur — signing autographs here would be a little embarrassing for me, and it wouldn't really be proper either. If you come find me at school or during one of our games sometime, I'll happily sign then, I promise."
"Oh... you really can't?"
The fan looked genuinely disappointed. But personally, I felt like this crossed a line. If I were in some completely unrelated field, maybe — but I'm a high school baseball player. Signing autographs inside a pro ballpark just feels off, doesn't it?
The fan only backed off after I politely declined a second time. That was partly thanks to the staff badges the Manager and Seo-hee were wearing, I'm sure.
Even after we sat down, the stir around us continued.
Ye-eun and Min-ah didn't seem particularly bothered, so it was fine for now. But without the club staff's help, the fans might have swarmed us badly enough to make watching the game impossible. So that's why Seo-hee came along as an escort.
After personally asking the surrounding spectators for their understanding one last time, the Manager stood up.
"Then I'll be off. If you'd like to meet the players or see the club's facilities, just ask the Team Leader here — I'll have everything arranged at all times, so don't worry about a thing."
"Thank you very much."
So now I can't even watch a baseball game without staff assistance. Keep this up and I'll catch celebrity disease.
I couldn't quite bring myself to say a word to Ye-eun and Min-ah, who both still looked like their moods had curdled, so I quietly steered the conversation toward Seo-hee instead.
"Noona. Has it been rough lately?"
"...A little."
Her face looked far more worn down than it ever had around the baseball club. What on earth had happened?
"...Fine, I'll admit the team got weaker when the veterans left during the rebuild. But the team was already cratering before they left, so how does all of that become the fault of a hasty rebuild, of the front office? Not one of the foreign players we brought in has earned his paycheck, our nominal ace is old and running on fumes — he's hot and cold every start — the number two starter's out on the Tommy John list, and our starting center fielder just got suspended for drunk driving. And that's somehow the front office's fault for the team not winning?"
The more she talked, the more worked up she got, her voice climbing.
"The old-timers are too gassed to play, so when we ease rookies in through the rebuild, everyone screams we're only fielding newcomers. If a traded-away player has one good game, they turn the club's official social media into a war zone. We post content built around our second-tier prospects, and they go 'is this the Twins account or the Twins' farm team account?' We post first-team videos, and it's 'worry about playing baseball, not making videos.' And when your videos go up, your fans flock to them, so they can't say anything there — so they run wild on every other video and every other social media account instead!"
Then, as her voice reached its peak, it suddenly deflated — thud — trailing off into a quiet mutter.
"What exactly do they want from me...? If I do anything, the PR team has no shame while the team's losing. If I do nothing, the PR team is a bunch of freeloaders living off their salaries. What rhythm am I supposed to be dancing to here?!"
The stress was clearly no small matter. And yet a part of me felt guilty — because every single one of those complaints was something I myself used to say back in my past life while watching baseball.
With a twinge of guilt, I started consoling Seo-hee.
"That's just what baseball fans are like. Honestly, watching this psychiatric ward of a sport with a fully sane mind is the impressive part, you know? So don't let it get you down too much."
If you tried to respond to every single unhinged fan meltdown over one lost game — the ones acting like the world was ending — you'd never see the end of it. When I gave her back a few gentle, sympathetic pats like that, she seemed to recover some of her energy.
"...That's exactly why I'm here with you. You know what the PR team's biggest task is these days? Community sentiment patrol... Just today, Assistant Manager Lee got banned for thirty days from the Seoul Twins Gallery for defending the club too hard..."
That's a tough one to shield, noona. Isn't that just a little bit pathetic?
And so I learned a shocking truth: the infamous community "club shills" from my past life — they actually exist.
"Everyone, let's take a quick bathroom break. Okay?"
Time flowed on, and the game reached the seventh-inning stretch after the fifth inning. Ye-eun and Min-ah, who had been locked in a subtle cold war with Kim Yi-seon caught between them, apparently decided on a temporary ceasefire at those words.
Having neither eaten nor drunk anything, I didn't need the bathroom. I sent all three of them off and stayed behind alone, looking around.
At first the surrounding crowd had buzzed restlessly, every eye drifting toward Kim Yi-seon, but once the game got going, they settled down and simply cheered for the team like well-mannered spectators.
Seeing fans this decent, it was honestly hard to imagine the lunatics and lunatic-adjacent individuals from the community boards and social media being actual human beings. I wonder — are one or two of them hiding among these perfectly normal-looking people right now?
As I was scanning the crowd, Kim Yi-seon came right back. Men really are faster in the bathroom than women, no question. But instead of returning to his own seat, he plopped down next to Han Seo-hee.
"Did you have fun, Seo-hee noona?"
Technically I'm the host here and he's the invited guest, so shouldn't it be me asking him that? But there he was, asking me with a completely earnest face. He seemed conscious of me being part of the group too — he kept carefully checking my reactions throughout the entire game.
"Hmm? Honestly, watching you was more entertaining than the game."
So I told him my honest impression, hoping he'd stop second-guessing himself. A guy frozen stiff, wedged between two women and unable to move an inch — that was a far better show than any baseball.
With a dopamine-spiking scene playing out right beside them, the fact that the surrounding spectators kept their eyes on the game instead marks them as true gentlemen.
"Getting all full of yourself already, at your age. Hmph!"
I poked Kim Yi-seon's cheek teasingly. His enormous frame makes me forget sometimes, but he really is still a kid — the feel of it was far springier than I expected.
"Well, I'm glad your stress got relieved, noona. You're not thinking about those horrible people anymore, right?"
And then he beamed at me, bright and innocent. That's the problem. This little swallow of a boy.
"Nooona~ (that's you, Seo-hee noona)?"
Already has two women and still wags his tail at anyone in reach. The little rascal. To punish this wicked child, I grabbed his cheek and gave it a long, slow pull. One of these days, I'm going to scold you properly, I swear.
Just as I was mid-tease, the crowd around us suddenly started stirring. What now?
"...Noona. I think the two of us are on the screen."
I turned toward the jumbotron — and there we were, Yi-seon and me. And right above our faces, the words: KISS TIME!
"Do we... have to...?"
His head tilted slightly toward the camera.
"Like hell we do!"
I waved my hands frantically, holding up my staff badge and demanding the camera move along. The camera operator — whether they'd failed to recognize Yi-seon or simply made an honest mistake — immediately panned away.
What kind of airhead is running that thing? I'm finding them later. For real.
As I stood there fanning my burning face, Ye-eun and Min-ah returned from the restroom.
"What? Did something happen?"
"No? Nothing happened?"
Kim Yi-seon's face, stiff as a board for absolutely anyone to see, might as well have been confessing, something happened, officer. The boy is pathetically incapable of hiding a single expression.
Not that I'm in any position to talk right now.
The game itself went well — the Twins pulled off a win for the first time in a while, the mood was bright, there was even a home run, and it made for genuinely entertaining baseball. By the end, even Ye-eun and Min-ah looked satisfied.
To be precise, what they'd enjoyed wasn't the game itself so much as the cheering sections and the energy in the stands.
Now, if we just made a stop at that Han River park the Manager had mentioned, we could smooth over the day's fiasco more or less completely.
"Noona, thanks to you I had a great time at the game today. Please tell the Manager I said thank you as w— noona?"
I hadn't paid attention during the game, but now that I looked, Seo-hee had gone quiet again. Head bowed, clutching her own face, she was murmuring something under her breath — '...between us, ...adult, ...younger brother' — turning the words over and over.
Even if she'd caught her breath spending a little time with me, the moment the game ended and the thought of going back to work crept in, the stress must have come flooding back. Wading into a wasteland of toxic online sentiment for the first time is no joke.
"Noona, you really shouldn't take it all to heart like that."
"Wh-what? Huh! Yi-seon, I get it, so just — give me a minute, give me a minute, could you back up a little?"
She jolted in surprise, so overwhelmed she hadn't even noticed me leaning in. I suppose no matter how much the online communities feel like a cozy second home to shut-ins, once it becomes your actual job, it has to be agonizing.
With all the sympathy I could muster, I took Seo-hee's hand in both of mine and squeezed it tight.
"If it gets hard again, tell me. Just venting stress out loud already makes it lighter, you know. Actually — it's not like I'll have much to do for the next three weeks anyway. Should I come by every day? Just so you can breathe a little."
"...No, it's fine now, so let go of my hand, please..."