The Opponent You Can't Afford to Lose to, Even at Rock-Paper-Scissors (2)
Despite having dropped the preliminary matchup, the mood inside the Japan national team's clubhouse was better than expected.
"Attention! Today's game did not go the way we wanted, but the final still remains. Give everything you have until the very end. Dismissed!"
"Ossu!!"
They were frustrated by the loss and by a game that had refused to go their way, but there was no defeat in the players' bearing. Each man trudged off to his own room, quietly chewing over his private regrets.
Japan's manager, Matsuzaka, watched them go and replayed the previous game in his head.
Lee Si-hwan. He was a pitcher who had certainly earned his billing as Korea's ace. Japan's hitters had ground against his stuff all night, and contrary to the scouting reports, a splitter whose usage had spiked dramatically that particular day carved effortlessly through a Japanese lineup heavy with left-handed bats.
But that was where it ended.
"I honestly can't tell what the Korean manager is thinking."
Even Si-hwan hadn't fully solved the left-right split; he burned pitch after pitch on deception throws until his count ballooned. In the end, he was pulled after only five innings.
Japan had failed to score from there on out, but it had repeatedly dragged Korea to the brink, inning after inning.
And every single time a crisis flared, Korea's manager doused it with a lightning-fast pitching change, flipping the momentum and patching the inning shut without surrendering a run. In that game alone, three Korean pitchers had come in, faced one or two batters, and walked straight back off.
In a win-or-go-home tournament, that would have been textbook management. Frankly, his eye was so unfailingly sharp with every single change that you would have wanted to study under him.
But this game was not a tournament.
"Manager. The data is ready."
"Good. Let's go."
Tokyo Dome was Japan's home — a professional team's home park, at that. Which meant cutting-edge equipment collected every conceivable kind of data there, and the experience and archives needed to interpret it were equally abundant.
That was precisely why the Japanese side had deliberately assigned every one of Korea's games to Tokyo Dome, where the final was scheduled — even if it meant the nominal home team itself playing in an away ballpark.
"Um... So Myung-bin. Korea's only left-handed relief pitcher. He appeared in the last game—"
With yesterday's game, every pitcher on Korea's staff had now thrown from a Tokyo Dome mound. And the majority of the bullpen had taken that mound more than twice.
Flip that statement around, and it meant Korea's pitching staff had been dissected to perfection by the Japanese — strictly within the bounds of the Tokyo Dome environment and their current condition.
This was Japan's calculation in forecasting Korea as its final opponent. They never assumed Korea was blind to it. But the Korean manager had cheerfully marched his pitchers out there anyway, as if to say, come and try us, whenever you like.
If anything, it was Japan's own conservative bullpen use — hoarded out of fear of leaking their strength before the final — that had been the main cause of today's defeat.
"And Umioka? What did he say?"
"Having watched with his own eyes, he says he finally understands a little."
"Good."
On top of the data, Japan's hitters had today seen or faced Korea's key pitchers up close. Even the fine details that numbers alone could never capture had now been confirmed with their own intuition.
The most fearsome pitcher to a hitter is one he has never seen. Meet him a second time, and there is little left to fear.
"So tomorrow's outcome comes down to each team's starter."
"Yes. Korea has announced Park Dong-min, exactly as expected."
"A tricky opponent, certainly... but not beyond beating. Forget the textbook power approach — tell the hitters to focus on draining his stamina so we can knock him out early."
"Yes, sir."
The preparation was complete. Korea, for its part, seemed confident it could win regardless of any such preparation.
Go ahead and try, then. Baseball is, in the end, a sport of data.
Grandpa Lee Young-gil sat in front of the television again today, waiting for the ballgame.
The professional season was already over, but the game he was waiting for now mattered many times more than any league match — a national team game, and a Korea-Japan match at that.
"Grandpa, do you really have to watch it?"
"Don't try to stop me. And that boy you're so sweet on, Kim Yi-seon — he might take the mound. You're honestly not gonna watch?"
"Haah... I'll keep it a secret from Dad, so you cannot get worked up this time. Okay?"
Grandpa Lee Young-gil had a documented history of collapsing in a fit of rage during last year's youth national team's Korea-Japan game. Normally a gentle soul who would do no more than click his tongue when his beloved Seoul Dragons lost, he lost every shred of reason the moment Korea and Japan shared a field.
Thanks to that, his son and daughter-in-law had banned him from watching baseball — Korea-Japan games above all — but since when had he ever been the sort of man to listen to such talk?
"When it comes to those Jap bastards, you can't afford to lose even at rock-paper-scissors. If all we ever did was win, where would I find a reason to get worked up? It's because they keep losing in the most absurd ways, that's why."
Unfortunately, this year's youth national team — tournament champions though they were — had dropped a game to Japan's youngsters in the preliminaries, then taken one back in the Super Round. An even split of one win apiece, and it had left a bad taste in the mouth all the same.
But this time was different. They had already crushed them once, flawlessly, in the Super Round. If they won the final on top of it and popped the champagne right in the heart of the Japs' own capital — what in the world could be more satisfying?
Just as he was nodding away to himself, his granddaughter's voice drifted over.
"Do you really think Yi-seon will pitch today?"
"Hard to say... The boy's got a fine arm, no question. But he's still young, so the manager will be agonizing over it."
The gargoyle-faced ballplayer his granddaughter was so hopelessly devoted to had already won a place in Lee Young-gil's heart as well.
First of all, the kid could flat-out play. That was the single most important thing. As long as a player could play — and so long as he wasn't an actual criminal — baseball fans would gladly paper over any number of small flaws.
And second, he was unfathomably tough, nothing like the players of today.
"But in this old man's eyes, there's nothing that boy is lacking. Players like that are the ones who ought to be playing international ball. These days they call it baseball, and yet they're all soft and skittish, no guts to a single one of them..."
The audacity to brush a batter back with a dead ball on the very first pitch. The composure that refused to waver afterward. A toughness that could throw a 140-pitch perfect game, even if it was high school ball. Set against the jittery young players of late, he was a joy to behold.
In Lee Young-gil's estimation, Korea's wretched record in recent international games against Japan came precisely from the absence of such scrappy brawlers. A theory befitting his ninety-one years.
This old-school fan had come to believe Kim Yi-seon was a player so fine he would consider handing over his youngest granddaughter to him — if only the boy wore the storied Dragons' colors instead of some club of unknown pedigree like the Twins.
The moment the granddaughter saw how taken her grandfather was with Kim Yi-seon, she made a careful proposal.
"Grandpa... then would you cheer for the Twins with me? You'll be living in Wirye soon anyway, so Jamsil is the closer ballpark. Right?"
It was painfully obvious she was dressing up her own scheme to attend games in person as the noble duty of accompanying her grandfather. He could have let it slide as the endearing request of his youngest granddaughter, but as a baseball fan, Grandpa Lee Young-gil was immovable.
"You were born and raised in Twins country, so sure — you ought to root for the Twins. But this old man was born a Dragon."
He had been born a native Seoulite, and through his high school and industrial-league days he had cheered for Jongno, the beating heart of old Seoul — not for some rootless club that didn't even sit within the four great gates.
"Oh, come on, Grandpa. Just think it over. Once. Please?"
Half yielding to his relentless granddaughter, he tossed out a hollow word he had no intention of honoring.
"If that Kim Yi-seon boy pitches today and throws well, I'll give it some thought."
Starting pitchers are usually slaves to elaborate routines and long superstitions, prone to emotional swings before and after their outings — but Park Dong-min was among the quietest of them.
His routine was a vow of silence. More precisely: he didn't want to speak, and he didn't want anyone speaking to him.
"..."
"..."
As if in consideration of this, the coaching staff passed him every scrap of their analysis of the opposing hitters on paper, along with today's catcher, Yeon-joon hyung, who kept equally quiet.
The final checks were complete, and his condition, once again today, was flawless. Better than flawless — perfect.
Over the past several days of practice, elbow pain had been quietly gnawing away at his nerves, but when he woke this morning it had settled completely — and somehow the ball was coming out with excellent velocity, too.
With his body in this state, he could more than hold his own. No — he might genuinely dominate the game.
Then came the din of voices spilling in from the dugout connected to the ready room.
"...Dong-min. The game's starting."
Yeon-joon hyung, silent until now, finally spoke. Park Dong-min gave a small nod, rose from his seat, picked up his glove, and headed for the field.
His second pre-game routine: never run on a start day — unless the ball was live.
He walked out slowly, passing through the ready room, the corridor, the dugout, and stepped onto the mound. Save for the faint traces of the Japanese starter's warmup, the mound was pristine — as if to remind him that he was the man entrusted with the start.
And along the way came the roar of the crowd. But it was not the voice of the small Korean cheering section stranded like a lonely island in one corner of Tokyo Dome — it was the wall of sound from Japanese fans packing the stadium.
It didn't matter. He had far too many years behind him to feel the weight of being a starter, or flinch at an opposing crowd, like some kid.
Sung Yeon-joon — who had set off at roughly the same time yet somehow finished first — was already settled into position, buried under the full weight of his catcher's gear.
After a light round of catch, Dong-min raised a thumb. Flawless, as ever. He had never once had a catcher who made a pitcher this comfortable — Sung Yeon-joon might be the only one he'd ever known.
Then a Japanese hitter stepped into the box. This game might, just possibly, truly be Park Dong-min's last start in a national team uniform. With the umpire's call, the game began.
"Play ball!"
It was a perfect day.
—"Fifth pitch. Two and two. He takes it for strike three! Called strikeout! Yoshida Hisaichi never even got the bat off his shoulder!"
—"Beautiful. Park Dong-min's fastball has been anything but ordinary today. There was talk his velocity had dropped — that maybe he was worn down from the end of the season — but it seems he managed himself meticulously through the national team window."
—"Helpless against Park Dong-min's heat, Japan's hitters! He works a scoreless first inning!"
Pitching coach Jung Eon-young still felt uneasy.
Park Dong-min's condition wasn't merely good — it was the best it had been in recent memory. Even now he was throwing fastballs close to his personal ceiling, flattening Japan's hitters with nothing but power.
So why did his own instincts keep firing warnings about the situation at hand? Why did he keep catching himself thinking Park Dong-min needed to come off the mound, that someone else needed to go up?
Given Park Dong-min's routine on start days, it was something he would never normally do — but to steady his flickering dread, the pitching coach asked the man himself how he felt.
"Dong-min. How are you holding up? Can you keep going?"
"Yes, sir. Feeling great."
On any ordinary day, Park Dong-min would answer with an unspoken flash of irritation and clamp his mouth shut. Today, apparently overflowing with composure, he replied without a hitch.
And that only deepened the coach's unease. Not that there was a single thing he could do about it.
Pull a pitcher who's dealing, with one inning in the books? Or, failing that, start warming relievers in the first? Neither was a choice he could bring himself to make.
So he chose to trust instead. Praying that he had simply been gripping at shadows, he watched the game.
The top of the second: Korea's offense ended in frustration, stranding runners without a run. Three hits in the inning — but a double play had reset the bases.
Still, one thing was certain: the momentum of the bats belonged to Korea right now. Japan, aside from a single walk in the first, had been retired hitless by Park Dong-min.
As the half ended, Park Dong-min climbed the mound at his unhurried pace. His condition still looked superb.
Japan's number-five hitter, Matsuda, stepped into the box.
Matsuda went over the scouting data on Park Dong-min one more time.
His primary weapons were the fastball and the changeup. Not a circle change, but something close to a Vulcan grip — a changeup with a hard, vertical drop.
As a third weapon he used a cutter, though it was hardly a premium pitch — a look-what-I've-got offering, nothing more.
Loading all of that into his head, he squared up the first pitch.
"Steee-rike!"
—"First pitch, a called strike on the outer corner. Park Dong-min jumps ahead in the count."
—"He threaded that corner to absolute perfection. A pitch like that is miserable for a hitter to do anything with."
The first pitch was a fastball nailed precisely to the outer corner where a bat could barely reach. A different umpire might have called it a ball, but this one was decisive. That was the beauty of facing an opposite-handed pitcher: attacking the outside corner with hard stuff worked in your favor.
And then came the second pitch.
"Ball!"
—"A changeup that falls off the table. But Matsuda held his swing."
—"He laid off that one. Japanese hitters really are comfortable with sinking pitches. It's technical, the way they do it."
One ball, one strike. A textbook sequence. The dugout had even instructed the hitters to stretch the counts and drain the opposing pitcher's stamina, so by that measure the flow was fine.
Having watched those two pitches, however, Matsuda had already rendered his verdict: it was safe enough to swing.
Japan's lineup was stacked with lefties, and even among its right-handed hitters — whose splits against left-handed pitching ran notoriously poor — Matsuda was one of the rare few who hit lefties well.
For a hitter of that caliber, reading a pitcher with this repertoire after this kind of setup sequence and inferring the third pitch was no great feat.
He'd shown fastball and changeup; the third pitch would be the vertically dropping cutter. Whichever one he sat on, the third option was bound to arrive — a pitch that could only produce a flyout or a groundball.
If you predicted it, all that remained was to swing. The brief exchange of signs between pitcher and catcher only hardened his conviction, and the instant the ball left the hand, Matsuda fired his anticipated swing without a second thought.
Crack—!
—"Third pitch. Count one and one... He hit it!"
If there was misfortune buried in this moment, it was that Park Dong-min's cutter dropped more vertically than anyone expected — the ball never climbed; it died downward instead.
And of all possible directions, it screamed almost straight at the pitcher.
At his usual level of condition, he might have missed it — or simply dodged it. But today, in the form of his life, Park Dong-min's animal reflexes fired before his own conscious mind caught up, and he caught the line drive barehanded.
And last of all — the raw physics of that batted ball drove the killing blow directly into Park Dong-min's elbow.
"Out!"
"..."
A pitcher who had just made a spectacular play, snared the ball, and recorded the out — yet he hunched over, head bowed, unable to rise from where he stood.
The Korean dugout, electrified at first, sensed that something was wrong and began to fall silent, little by little.
"...Dong-min. You did well."
Strangely, it was only now, at this very moment, that the unease lifted and the question was finally answered. Pitching coach Jung Eon-young — while everyone around him stood frozen — climbed the mound and offered Park Dong-min a word of comfort.
Only then did the Korean dugout erupt into motion.
"Guess I really am a has-been after all. Good thing I timed my retirement so well."
Manager Ban Il-soo said it as a joke. A man renowned for his uncanny instinct in picking the hottest hand for short tournaments — that was precisely the kind of joke he reached for.
"You couldn't have known, sir. Honestly, all I ever had was a strange, niggling feeling — I never knew the reason for it. And when I asked, the doctor said he'd likely be fine for a few more games. Truth is, I pushed too hard; most likely nothing would have happened."
"So you looked at the surface and claimed to see what even the doctors couldn't? Our Coach Jung — turns out he shouldn't have been a coach at all. He should've been a physician. Or no, wait — should he have been a gut-reading shaman?"
In the middle of a full-blown crisis, the manager simply laughed it off. And so, in a dugout frozen solid by an accident nobody saw coming, only Ban's laughter rang out.
"Look at the lot of you, frozen stiff. Tch — this is why I keep telling you to tell me who to use. Right, then. In this situation, who do you think should go up next?"
"By the book, it's Dong-ho. He's already gone inside to loosen up."
"Spare me the obvious."
The manager glared at him, as if ordering him to be honest. Exactly what answer he wanted was plain as day. And setting the manager's gut aside, on paper it was a reasonably sound choice too.
Set aside Gu Hyeok, who had pitched three days ago, and Lee Si-hwan, who had pitched two days ago, and the only remaining starter was Choi Dong-ho — a chameleon who won with a deep arsenal of breaking balls rather than velocity.
But with so many of Japan's contact hitters comfortable against off-speed stuff, Choi Dong-ho, short of truly overpowering stuff, was a shame to start against this lineup. Worse, with so many left-handed bats, a sizable chunk of his repertoire would be neutralized outright.
Beyond him, the spot starters — Yoon Young-il, Oh Joo-hyun, Jang Dae-hee, Im Myung-su — not a single one carried a weapon good enough to hold down Japan's hitters.
And stretching the other relievers across multiple innings was no answer either — the bullpen had already been bled dry against Japan just the day before. Even with a day of rest, they might not be at a full hundred percent, and having watched these very pitchers up close, Japan would have analyzed them down to the last detail. One batter, one inning — maybe. Anything longer was off the table.
Erase the less-than-ideal arms one by one like that, and what remained was...
"As it happens, our national team has two fellows who've thrown exactly one game — no data to analyze — and are fit enough to start. One of them throws a 160 fastball you couldn't hit if you knew it was coming, and the other carries at least three breaking pitches built specifically for left-handed hitters."
It was, genuinely, the rational call. If only those two weren't still in high school.
But comically enough, the man who should have objected loudest had already arrived at the very same conclusion as his manager.
"Dong-min's arm slot runs high, so put Min-hyuk up first. Let Min-hyuk take an inning or so, then bring in Yi-seon."
The manager twisted the corners of his mouth into a ferocious grin.
"Right. Get them ready."