The Unfair Ballpark (2)

The game opened with Wirye Jeil High at bat, playing as the visiting team.

Stepping into the box was our leadoff hitter, Sung In-hoon. His swing had been in good form lately — he'd gone three-for-six in the last game alone.

On the mound for the opposition stood a pitcher who was, from his art style alone, obviously an original-work character — yet a background extra whose face I had zero memory of. I'd confirmed his name while studying the scorebook before the game: a third-year called Jeon Jung-seo. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill high school pitcher with no standout strengths worth noting.

True to form, his delivery was as generic as they came — a motion that looked like it was wringing every last drop of strength out of his whole body by force. That desperate, white-knuckled effort produced his first pitch.

"Ball!"

Looked like a slider, but without much angle to it and nothing special in the way of velocity. I figured he'd thrown it as a chase pitch, but if anyone swings at that, the problem is with the guy getting fooled.

After a brief exchange of signs with his catcher, he came back with pitch number two.

Crack!

"Oh! Attaboy!"

Another slider, but this time Sung In-hoon simply decided he was going ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to murder it. He had a bad-ball hitter's streak in him — even on trash like that, he'd swing hard and square it up.

The trajectory looked good too, dropping ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into that in-between gap between the center fielder and the right fielder. A clean hit course. Sung In-hoon seemed certain of it himself — he touched first at a sprint and was already coiling to turn it toward second when—

"Out!"

"What the hell was that? Did that ball just curve?"

Sung In-hoon's line drive, which had been hit a long way from the center fielder, got sucked straight into his glove with a snap. Beside me, Cha Il-sung blinked in open disbelief, sunglasses flicking on and off his face — which only made him look like even more of an idiot.

"It curved, all right. What did I tell you? This ballpark is wrong."

Now, I hate the lazy logic of calling any park "unfair" just because it's big or small. How is a field built to regulation an unfair park? It's just baseball being baseball — you adapt and move on.

But when it comes to Wonsan Dome being an unfair ballpark, I will argue that point to my dying breath.

Because Wonsan Dome was built by Yasin — a manga author with a hard-on for Japanese baseball — as a stadium stuffed to the brim with slanderous, spiteful features cribbed from a certain team's home field.

Inside Wonsan Dome, there is wind.

You might ask what wind there could possibly be under a covered dome, but even a fully sealed one has to let people in and out, and it has to be ventilated — and Wonsan Dome isn't even fully sealed to begin with.

So take all the airways and vents, the contours of the ceiling's interior, the overall shape of the dome, and twenty-five thousand packed spectators besides. When all those variables pile into the airflow, you get swirling gusts far stronger than anyone expects.

"And those wind channels mostly funnel from the outfield edges toward center. So a ball hit diagonally toward the gap gets dragged back toward the middle, and anything hit straight through the middle rides the wind and carries forever."

It was a ballpark that read like the characteristics of a certain Japanese stadium interpreted with genuine malice. One look at it and you could guess whose favorite team Manshin was rooting for.

"So on defense, we shift a little more toward center than usual?"

"That's where it gets tricky."

The problem is that this wind blows at a considerable height above the field. A shallow fly ball drops before it ever reaches the wind stream, so you have ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to play those normally.

"And the wind isn't even the end of it. This is a dome, so anything hit too high smacks off the ceiling and drops dead. See that line painted across the ceiling? If a ball hits the ceiling inside that line, it's live. Outside the line, it's a foul."

That much is standard ground rules at any domed stadium, but layered on top of the wind problem, everything gets complicated fast.

After a long stretch of groaning his way through the implications, Cha Il-sung finally seemed to sort his thoughts out and spoke in a thoroughly bewildered tone.

"So let me get this straight. If it's hit a certain height, the ball bends and carries toward center. A little lower than that, it drops like normal. And if it's hit too high, it clanks off the ceiling and dies. And we're supposed to field all three of those?"

"Yep."

"And how are we supposed to tell them apart?"

"No idea."

Cha Il-sung gave me a look of pure incredulity — and honestly, so did every single teammate who'd been listening to my explanation.

This is why I say Wonsan Dome is an unfair ballpark. Is "if you don't know baseball, that's your problem" really a defensible position?

For visiting teams seeing this stadium for the first time, the unpredictable reads on batted balls stretch their defensive range thin, and their legs and lungs pay for it too. And once they're worn down, they start scrambling — and a scramble is where a fatal error comes from.

The home team, meanwhile, fields everything smooth and effortless. They even weaponize the stadium's quirks in their play.

Like, say, right now.

"Out!"

The next batter, Kwon Ji-wook, went down on a flyout too. His ball wasn't a true pop-up — on any other field it was more than lined up for a Texas leaguer — but the left fielder, playing practically on top of the third baseman, took it in for an easy out.

Without a defensive shift even being on, having your left fielder camped that close to third base should be nonsensical. Leave a gap like that and any deep fly ball turns into — if not a homer — at least a stand-up triple.

But here in Wonsan Dome, you can gamble and crowd in with total confidence. Why? Because deep contact bends into center, right where the center fielder is waiting. Any extra-base ball bound for left field territory dies against the elliptical ceiling long before it gets there.

That's the structure of it — the center fielder holds his normal position while both corner outfielders creep in and play shallow, and nothing breaks. Of course, it takes real know-how to copy on the fly for a team that doesn't know this park.

An extreme, exaggerated team identity that could only exist because this is a manga. I could do without quite so much "manga" in my manga, thanks.

The top of the first fizzled out in humiliating fashion. Three batters in a row: flyout, flyout, groundout. Three up, three down. What made it truly insulting was that every one of those three balls was on a course that would have been a sure base hit at any other stadium.

The half-inning ended so quickly that I didn't even need to re-loosen the shoulder I'd warmed up before the game. I just trotted out to the mound, traded a few easy tosses with the catcher, and was ready to go.

The Wonsan Saedae school song thundered through the stadium the moment I stepped on the mound. Most of their cheering section was made up of locals and alumni, apparently, because the deep male voices belted it out with real force.

The Wirye Jeil High fans were giving it everything they had, determined not to be drowned out. But with headcount running a good seven-to-eight-to-one against them, there was only so much they could do.

Feeling a pang of sympathy for them, I raised my gloved hand and gave our section a wave.

And the instant they saw me waving at our fans, the boos came raining down. What, I can't even say hello to my own supporters, you stingy bastards?

Whoever claimed high school baseball fans are too classy to jeer at people clearly never sat in these stands. That sounded like the roaring of the underworld.

I shut my ears to the boos and the Saedae cheering section alike and locked in on the game. Right on cue, their batter stepped into the box.

Routine first: one look into his eyes, a quick read. Pretty vicious glare. Signs exchanged with Nam Kang-min, a nod — all clear. Ball tucked behind my back. Grip: changeup.

Volunteering to start today had, in truth, been my own call. Ordinarily the manager would decide, but he'd gone back and forth forever, torn between me and Kang Min-hyuk, so I just said I'd take it.

And it wasn't because I was confident in myself or felt sharper or anything like that. There was one contingency I wanted to rule out. A little "just in case."

Chewing over that possibility in my head, I went right for the strikeout pitch on ball one.

"Striiiike!!"

The circle changeup came out a little too shallow — not the full fade. But the batter's bat sliced through empty air by a mile.

Well, of course it did.

I already had my answer, but to seal it with final confirmation, I threw one pitch with deliberate intent.

Crack!

"Out!"

A four-seamer with a touch less than my usual stuff. I could tell from the crack alone that it caught the bat dead square — and yet somehow the ball didn't carry at all, dying into a grounder right in front of the shortstop.

Kwon Ji-wook snagged the bounding hop at the last possible instant and fired a bullet to first.

That settled it. Kwon Ji-wook, Sung In-hoon — sorry, boys, but you two are putting in a shift today. The guys who play dirty games deserve a taste of their own medicine; that's the only way they learn.

In high school baseball, a ballpark with a sprawling outfield is a hitter's park. It's the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠exact opposite of pro ball, but it's genuinely true.

Even with today's generation of high schoolers bigger and stronger than ever, and hitting mechanics more refined than ever, they still can't hit like grown men. Their defense, put up against adults, still leaves plenty to be desired.

So the realistic extra-base hit in high school ball is a double or triple that rolls to the fence. And the parks where runs come easiest are the ones with vast outfields — wide coverage zones for the fielders, and all that space for a missed ball to roll as far from home plate as possible.

Which raises the question: how should a team with a park like that go about hitting?

One: swing for the fences and take your shots at extra bases. Two: put everything into pure contact and pray that any mishit rolls all the way to that distant outfield wall.

"Down swing. Swing down swing above all else. Pulling the ball means nothing. Hit everything with the feel of chopping it into the dirt — pound it into grounders."

Wonsan Saedaebugo's hitting coach had chosen option two. It flew in the face of modern baseball — and just as flatly against the common sense of the northern baseball establishment, which worshipped the American-style big-ball game. Naturally the alumni and player parents revolted, but the head coach couldn't have cared less about their protests.

"Second in the regional unified standings last year. First and second in each half of this season. Shall we compare that to before Coach Park took over? We're producing results like this, and I honestly don't understand why people inside this school keep trying to shake the team."

Results speak, in the end. He'd dragged a Wonsan Saedaebugo side that had been stumbling back up into the upper tier of the Hamgyongnam-do region. For the players' futures, a national tournament record built by chopping balls into the dirt meant more than some pretty, textbook swing ever would.

So they figured it would work this time too. Even a Kim Yi-seon, they reasoned, couldn't defy the fundamental principles of baseball.

"Kim Yi-seon is a pitcher who lives on high fastballs. So there's nothing to overthink. Do what we always do — chop the high pitch down with the down swing. Square it up, it's a line drive. Clip it under the bat? Worst case, a grounder. At the high school level, keep rolling grounders out there and errors will happen."

Even against a down swing, a high fastball that catches the sweet part of the bat does take off as a hard line drive — and in the vast expanse of Wonsan Dome, that was the most effective way to hit.

And even a mishit off the bottom of the bat would mass-produce hard-rolling grounders.

Their read wasn't wrong. The problem lay somewhere else entirely.

"Striiiike!"

A swing that whiffed a country mile above the ball.

A middling fastball velocity for a high school arm — except it was a changeup, and without much break. If you simply knew it was coming, even Wonsan Saedaebugo's boys had the bats to turn it into a base hit.

But the very next pitch—

"Striiiike!! You're out!"

What came in this time was a full-effort four-seamer. The very high fastball they'd been hunting all game long.

And the swing was a proper down swing. They already knew my ball rode higher than expected, so they'd adjusted their swing plane slightly upward to chase it.

But when even the fastball alone is hard enough to time, how exactly are you supposed to hit it after that sluggish changeup has floated in at you again and again?

Struck out on the whiff, the Wonsan Saedaebugo batter had no choice but to trudge back to the dugout.

"Hey, Nam Kang-min. They still selling out for nothing but fastballs?"

"Reckon so. What, want him throwin' nothin' but changeups next inning too?"

"If it keeps working, might as well. Squeeze 'em dry to the last drop."

They did it in the manga too. Swing for contact and singles, nothing more. And on the off chance a grounder finds a defender's error, that's a bonus — so swing with the feel of driving the ball straight into the ground, top to bottom, like hammering a nail.

Trouble is, a swing like that naturally leaves you hunting the top of the zone. And when the opponent swings hunting high pitches? The answer is simple: throw pitches that pretend to go high and never actually do.

Today, unlike any other start I'd made, changeups made up about half my total pitches. I'd mixed in a curveball every time the mood struck, which meant my four-seamer count didn't even reach half.

Under normal circumstances I would never pitch like this. A changeup is, first and foremost, a deception pitch that impersonates a fastball — make it your primary weapon and you get shellacked.

"Aigoo. In-hoon, Ji-wook — you boys are gonna sleep real good tonight."

"Ugh..."

Just look at our keystone duo, caked head to toe in infield dirt and so worn out they could barely keep their eyes open. They'd swallowed a whole lot more contact than usual.

Even with defenders throwing their whole bodies at everything, enough balls kept finding grass that a fair number turned into hits anyway. Thanks to which, my single-game record for hits allowed got rewritten today.

And still — no problem at all.

So what if they rack up hits? Every last one is a bloop single or a grounder — there's no run-scoring threat in it. Suppress the extra-base damage, and a few extra hits allowed cost you nothing. If anything, all that grounder-heavy contact just makes double plays easier to turn.

Our offense was grinding through the top of the seventh as I said all this, and my pitch count still sat at just 62. Every baserunner they managed off a hit got wiped out in a double play — that's how it goes. In a duel with a pitcher, you'd better plan on winning the head-on confrontation, because banking on luck produces exactly what you'd expect.

Crack!

Nam Kang-min's ball rocketed off the bat in style. Since we were winning, our cheering section had come back to life compared to earlier.

But thanks to that godawful wind path, the ball wobbled mid-flight and got slurped into the center fielder's glove.

With the same picture playing on a loop, the Jeil High fans finally caught on that something was off and let the boos fly. The Saedaebugo faithful answered the jeering with their school song, belting it louder than ever to crush the booing underfoot.

Look, I'm all for not booing, and cheering hard is a fine thing. But a little hypocrisy stinks, doesn't it?

Feeling mildly mischievous, I stepped toward the on-deck circle, gave the trudging, dirt-covered backside of the retired Nam Kang-min a firm smack, and said my piece.

"Yo, big brother's gonna return the favor for you."

"If yer gonna do that, why don't ya hit one every day, then."

"Should I?"

"Lord, rather die than suffer."

Getting all shy when your big brother offers to avenge you.

I stepped into the box, rapped the plate twice with my bat, and pointed at the fence.

Our fans roared their approval at the taunt; the home crowd showered me in boos.

But this wasn't just cheap provocation to get under the opposition fans' skin.

For one thing, the opposing pitcher was visibly straining not to react to my gesture — and failing. Twenty-five thousand people lose their minds like that, and you expect him to ignore it?

First pitch:

"Ball!"

A slider buried well off the outside corner.

Why, you ask, didn't I recognize Wonsan Saedaebugo's starting pitcher despite having seen the whole manga? They were a supporting school of some consequence — I'd faced them twice in the original story!

Because of exactly this team identity.

Pitch two:

"Ball!"

Another chase pitch, same as the first.

Wonsan Saedaebugo's pitching philosophy was simplicity itself: never, ever throw the batter a good pitch. Avoid the confrontation at all costs. Fling nothing but waste pitches until either a strikeout lands in your lap — hallelujah — or a soft grounder finds a glove — even better. A walk? Well, can't be helped.

But wait, you might say, doesn't that pile up pitch counts and burn through arms? Exactly why they rotate pitchers constantly. Wonsan Saedaebugo was a school of some pedigree — player quality aside, their roster depth was genuinely solid.

The man on the mound right now, in the top of the seventh, was already their third pitcher of the day. Pitch like that and no individual arm ever develops a character — they're all just extras.

And this one had already run the count to 2-0 against me. No runners aboard, deep in the count — any normal pitcher throws a strike there. But these cowards from Wonsan Saedaebugo, facing the guy who'd just taunted their stadium into a frenzy, were not about to hand me a gift.

Their silent prayer was for me to chase and whiff, or maybe accidentally foul one off and at least spot them a strike. So out came yet another ball begging to be chased.

A school that gambles on luck at every level — batting, pitching, all of it — and then convinces itself that this is the royal road to good results. That was Wonsan Saedaebugo as they appeared in the manga.

Our fans hurled boo after boo at the pitcher who kept throwing nothing but balls, and the home crowd did their level best to answer in kind — though even they seemed embarrassed by it, because their school song was shrinking quieter and quieter with each verse.

I settled into my stance and studied the pitcher again. One look at his face said he had absolutely no intention of challenging me this pitch either. At this point, that discipline was almost worthy of respect. If it were me, I'd be so furious I'd just throw one right down the middle out of spite.

Pitch three. The moment it left his hand, I felt it — a slider drifting just off the outside edge. An ambiguous pocket that, with luck, might clip the strike zone.

Apparently there were people who assumed I couldn't hit the other way at all, since all I ever did was pull the ball. I've spent years doing nothing but eat and play baseball — you think opposite-field hitting is beyond me? I can slap a meatball to the opposite field just fine.

CRRAAACK!!!!

And a slider with its movement completely spent, flattened into something this mediocre? All the more so.

The ball floated up, caught the dome's signature center-field current, drifted lazily upward — and cleared the center fence marked 134.

Now that's a pleasant sound. I'm not into guys — why on earth should I have to listen to men's voices while playing a ballgame?