Reasonable Doubt? (2)
By the time you reach the Round of 16 of the Phoenix Flag Tournament, only genuine powerhouse teams are left standing.
Even the squads that scraped through on luck and a favorable bracket start hitting their walls around here — thin player depth, glaring gaps between starters, problems like that catch up with you eventually.
Daehwa High, our Round of 16 opponent, was no exception. A legitimate upper-tier school that had finished second and third in the Gyeongbuk regional weekend leagues, and they'd climbed through the tournament so far without a single forced gamble.
"Dae-hyung, you ready?"
"Yes, Coach."
And this was Yoo Dae-hyung, one of Daehwa's key weapons and their starting pitcher.
"Sure, folks say that kid throws gas and whatnot, but he's nothin' but a sophomore. You're a year older — 'bout time you showed 'em what that's worth, ain't it?"
"Don't you worry yourself, Coach. I don't back down from nobody."
Daehwa's coach let out a hearty laugh at that answer. Kim Yi-seon throwing up that insane performance as a second-year was the anomaly; a heralded ace out of a storied program like Daehwa High was perfectly normal.
Yoo Dae-hyung was armed with a left-handed fastball touching 149 km/h and a splitter of genuinely elite quality — a name already floated as a possible first-round draft pick. matchups between aces like this always tilt toward a pitchers' duel.
"That punk's only popular 'cause he throws hard and got himself a decent-lookin' mug. Go on out there and show him there's more to pitchin' than that."
"Yes, Coach."
Yoo Dae-hyung was confident. He'd watched every scrap of game footage on Kim Yi-seon. There was no denying Kim Yi-seon's fastball was terrifying — but that was where it ended.
People were simply dazzled by velocity, a number you could read off a screen. As an overall pitcher, he didn't believe he was behind in a single category. So he would prove it today. That the true ace among high school southpaws was still Yoo Dae-hyung.
"Moon Young-chan — hot zone and cold zone?"
"Hot zone's the outer half, middle of the zone. Cold zone's up and in."
"Correct. And Ki Jeong-jin's—"
Inside the bus bound for the Round of 16 venue, I was running through the opposing scouting report one more time with Ye-eun.
Nam Kang-min took one look at us, shot me a stare that plainly read this punk's doing the thing he was told not to do again, and shuffled past. I ignored him cleanly and committed the material to memory.
"Whoa, Kim Yi-seon, didn't expect that from you? You've already memorized the whole thing?"
"Kang Min-hyuk memorizes the opposing players' data in a single day. You think I can't manage that?"
And he really does. The guy who can barely cram for memorization subjects and skates the edge of failing somehow devours baseball scouting reports — pages and pages longer than any exam material — like they're nothing.
Besides, if I couldn't do something that idiot finds easy, it'd be a matter of pride.
"So? What possessed you to prep like this all of a sudden?"
The question everyone was dying to ask but hadn't dared to, for fear of souring their starting pitcher's mood. Judging by the ears pricking up around us, the whole bus was waiting on my answer.
I'm not the hypersensitive type, so I'm usually easygoing — but in baseball, the day's starting pitcher is treated like fragile cargo, a glass ornament in a gift shop. That's why nobody wanted to risk lobbing a question at me, who apparently looked a little off today. Ye-eun could've asked me anything, of course.
"You'll find out the second the game starts anyway."
Not that saying you may ask means I promised to answer.
"You're seriously not going to tell us?"
I gave a light nod and shut my mouth. Didn't Sun Tzu say that to deceive the enemy, you must first deceive your own allies?
Once again, our game begins on defense. From the Central Rounds onward, there's no fixed home and away — the two team captains settle it with a coin toss during the pre-game interviews the day before.
And as it happens, Cha Il-sung hyung is uncannily good at calling coin flips — two home assignments in a row. He froze up stiff during yesterday's media interview too, but honestly, as long as he keeps winning tosses like this, he can freeze up in every interview he wants.
While I idly tapped my cleats against the mound of the Jamsil auxiliary field — more familiar than it should be by now — the opposing leadoff hitter stepped into the box.
If I remember right, Daehwa High never actually appeared on-panel in the manga; only their name did. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have known that hitter's face, let alone his name.
But now I knew. Third-year Moon Young-chan. Center fielder. A textbook leadoff type — a hitter who worked counts and laid off pitches rather than swinging aggressively. The gap between his hot zone and cold zone was wide.
I organized the information in my head and gripped the ball.
Nam Kang-min was flashing a sign. I had no intention of shaking my head no without even looking at it— and did exactly that.
And then, without a heartbeat of hesitation, the first pitch.
"Striiike!!"
Condition looked good today. Even the first pitch had caught the edge nicely.
The moment Nam Kang-min tossed the ball back, I went straight into the set position. The hitter flinched and scrambled into his batting stance.
The instant his preparation finished — pitch number two.
"Striiike!!"
Nam Kang-min tilted his head like he couldn't make sense of me. I waved him off with my hand — quit fooling around and get the ball over here — and took it the moment it arrived.
The instant I had it, back into the set. The hitter had been through it once already, but he still hadn't adapted; setting up took him a beat too long.
And just as he planted his form — pitch number three.
"Striiike!! You're out!!!"
Three pitches, three strikeouts, clean. I took the ball back and only allowed myself a breath once the hitter had trudged out of the box.
Nam Kang-min, clearly baffled by my behavior, started to pull off his mask and come to the mound. I signaled him back with hands and face — stay put. He sank back down with a sour expression.
Next into the box: Ki Jeong-jin.
There's a whole page of analysis on him, but I'll skip it.
"Striiike!!!"
"Foul!"
"Striiike!!! You're out!!!"
Without pause. Pitch after pitch after pitch.
The Daehwa dugout was in a daze. Not fury, not frustration — just plain bewilderment.
Something had whooshed past in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing to analyze, nothing to discuss. Which meant there wasn't even anything to get angry about.
They threw. We couldn't hit it. An extremely simple outcome.
"What the hell is that kid?"
Moon Young-chan, the first man into the box, said it for all of them. Every hitter who heard it nodded in wordless agreement. There was no other sentence that could hold it.
"He takes it back from the catcher, goes straight to set, throws. Then takes the next one, straight to set, throws again. Man, how much time between one pitch and the next?"
"...Someone timed it. Fifteen seconds."
As if to say you lot aren't worth any more than this — no strategy, no preparation, just raw force smothering them flat without a gap to breathe in.
"Fifteen seconds from one pitch to the next? Not from starting his delivery on the mound — one pitch to the next?"
The teammate who'd repeated the question got a light nod. Was that even possible?
Even for a pitcher planning to hammer fastballs down the middle the whole way, almost nobody could throw at that tempo. That was a feat only possible when your delivery's balance was machined to perfection.
Once the thought traveled that far, there was nothing left to be angry about. Because the truth was, for the likes of them, that was plenty. Eight hitters already flattened, just like that.
"Ha, damn it. What kind of monster do they go around breeding, anyway."
He remembered the internet chatter — that this kid had ridden friendly umpiring to the top. That monster? Give me a break.
The plan I'd arrived at — with all that unusual scouting-report grinding — was simple: hammer everything into the dead center of the strike zone.
The logic ran: they say I won on questionable ball-strike calls, right? Then I'll remove even the possibility of that accusation by burying every hitter so completely there's nothing left to argue.
You could ask why I bothered with the scouting report at all, then — but I needed to know the hitters' handedness splits at minimum, or how would I decide whether to throw lefty or righty?
And I didn't actually pour every pitch straight down the middle. If a hitter was genuinely good at handling pitches over the plate, I'd come in a touch higher. Though even then, anyone watching would call it a strike, no question.
Even those split-second judgments were designed not to linger in my brain — queued up so the next pitch could leave my hand immediately. That's how I kept raining fastballs on the opposing hitters faster than their minds could catch up.
Of course, the haters are going to hate no matter what I do here. Even the people we call the GOATs of sports never escaped slander — did I really think a stunt like this would make the trolls evaporate?
But I could make them look ridiculous. What's that? A bought team that rode favorable calls to victory? Funny — turns out we win even when we bury everything dead center? One sentence, and suddenly their whole argument needs pages of pathetic extra footwork to hold together.
That's how arguments on the internet always go. To rebut one sharp, punchy line, you need dozens of sentences — and in that moment, you look petty and desperate.
So I left no gap at all — no time to think, let alone breathe — and simply threw four-seamers over the heart of the plate.
Nam Kang-min catching them wore an expression of pure disbelief. When the first inning ended he demanded answers, and when I explained my reasoning, he just stared at me, flabbergasted.
"So yer sayin'... you're just gonna throw nothin' but fastballs all nine innings?"
"Are you insane? Even I'd get lit up doing that."
I waved off his protest that he wasn't the crazy one, and made a promise: just until the lineup came full circle — until I'd faced all nine hitters, and then I'd stop. As symbolic displays of force went, this was exactly the right size.
Some might say: ignore the nasty little basement-dweller slander and just play the game — what is this stupid pride contest? And sure, viewed sanely, what I was doing right now was, objectively, an idiot move.
But do you know this? Catchers started wearing helmets a full seventy years after groin protectors became mandatory in baseball.
That is precisely the caliber of brain possessed by men who play baseball. Pride is a matter of grave importance to a ballplayer.
Before I knew it, the promised final hitter had arrived. Daehwa's number-nine batter was stepping to the plate.
Having apparently learned from watching the hitters before him get flattened without even a moment to breathe, he deliberately took his time — plenty of practice swings, a thorough loosening-up routine before he even entered the box.
Fine, knock yourself out. I deliberately loosened my own stance and stood there watching with my arms crossed.
"""Boooooo—!!!"""
The moment I settled into that leisurely pose, the jeers came raining down on the time-wasting hitter. Our fans were never this vicious before — but the away game at Wonsan Sadaebu High and the recent wave of bad-faith smears had apparently leveled up their combat power considerably.
Caught between the boos of thousands and the umpire's urging, the hitter finally cracked and stepped into the box. Dragging it out had probably only scrambled his balance further.
The instant he was set, I threw the first pitch.
"Striiike!!"
His balance was still a wreck; he never even got the bat around. But after that first pitch, something finally clicked — he set his stance properly.
I couldn't drag this out forever either. Pitch two.
"Foul!"
This time he clearly had the timing down — foul ball. They said this number-nine hitter was Daehwa's best among second-years; he was living up to it.
Which was perfect. Time to put a proper exclamation point on this whole circus.
For the first time in twenty-nine pitches, I finally took a rest between throws.
I rolled my shoulders, shook out my legs, ran a full check of my body. Couldn't be better.
And then, slowly, I settled into the set position.
Now I was the one dragging things out, and the roles reversed — the hitter floundered. Still, he steadied himself and held his focus.
And to that hitter, I swung my left arm with everything I had. Genuinely, completely, everything. A sensation utterly different from anything before it swept through my body—
"Striiike!!! You're out!!!!"
"""WAAAAH—!!!"""
Bathed in the roar of the crowd as they read the scoreboard, I turned and walked quietly back to the dugout.
"A new high school record for left-handed velocity—"
The broadcast booth was so worked up I could hear the shouting all the way over here.
A pitcher's pride, after all, is velocity.