Spring Camp (2)
"Hey! Nice arm!"
Thwack─
It was the first day of the Seoul Twins' spring camp, and a current of tension ran beneath the lively atmosphere. Manager Jeong Jin-haeng was watching each player with absolute concentration, assessing their condition one by one.
"Fastball coming!"
"All right, let's go!"
Thwack─
The pitchers were throwing at full effort, egged on by the catchers' enthusiastic calls. It being spring camp, the coaching staff had told them not to go all-out and wear their arms down, but of course nobody was listening to a word of it.
Still, even accounting for that, things didn't look bad at all.
"Dae-se is a different man this year. Last season must have really shaken him — his preparation is on another level."
"He even flew to the States to take lessons over the break. His fighting spirit and attitude are excellent right now."
Jeon Dae-se was the young pitching prospect who had come over from the Pyongyang Fighters in the deal that sent the Twins' home-run slugger Choi Hyuk packing.
He'd been promising enough to be called the centerpiece of that trade, but his results last year had been something of a disappointment. With both the fourth and fifth starter slots practically empty, he'd been handed chances in abundance — only to log barely 102 innings with a 5.60 ERA.
Worse still, he'd collapsed in the second half of the season and been demoted to the second team. The humiliation had clearly lit a fire under him, because this year he'd come back with his blade sharpened.
The velocity and stuff that had been flagged as weaknesses last year had improved considerably. If he could carry this form through a full season, he might look like a completely different pitcher than the one from last year.
"Splitter coming!"
Thwack─
"Ye-han's put in the work over the break too, hasn't he?"
"Yes, sir. I heard he'd been working on a splitter this offseason, and having seen it up close, I'd say it's already passing grade. With a little more polish, he could drop that changeup of his — which was never much to begin with — and have something genuinely usable."
The other pitchers had come prepared as well. Go Ye-han had thrown 83 innings last year, second on the staff behind only Jeon Dae-se in innings pitched. He had decent velocity, but his problem had been a monotonous repertoire built around the four-seamer and slider.
He, too, had clearly prepared thoroughly this offseason, abandoning his clumsy third pitch — the changeup — and showing up with a splitter instead. It couldn't be called masterful, but as a third pitch it looked perfectly serviceable.
Beyond those two, the rest of the prospective starters had also spent the offseason not resting, but preparing with real dedication — some more successfully than others.
Of course, this was still only spring camp, and the season stretched long ahead. If they peaked too early, it could work against them physically in the second half. But from the manager's perspective, what he was seeing right now was deeply satisfying.
Even if he couldn't give opportunities to every one of those players, perhaps this year — unlike last year's pitching catastrophe — he might actually find a homegrown starter among them capable of eating the innings required for official ranking.
If only those particular guys weren't hanging around.
"Fastball coming."
Fwoosh─
"Wh-hey!"
Just three months earlier, at the national team trials, Kang Min-hyuk's top velocity had edged up a bit beyond his high school days, drawing agonized screams from Kaesong Royals fans.
Fwoosh─
"Hey! Min-hyuk, isn't that a new personal best of yours?!"
"I recorded that once before, actually."
His velocity had climbed yet again.
148 km/h wasn't objectively blazing fast, but paired with his other abilities, it was more than enough to compete at the first-team level. And when the man throwing it was an underhand pitcher with five different breaking pitches and pinpoint control, you could expect even more than a roster spot — he might dominate outright.
What had he said, again? That at the national team he'd felt the ceiling of his old velocity, so he'd trained specifically to raise it? If wanting something were all it took to add kph like that, why had he and the Twins suffered so much last year?
"Gyroball coming!"
"Uh? Oh, uh... sure, go ahead..."
Thwack─
He does blurt out strange things from time to time. I suppose that's just what genius looks like.
And trailing behind that alien genius was another one — a different breed entirely, built like a wild stallion.
"Fastball coming."
Fwoosh─
"Oof!"
The battery coach was breaking into a cold sweat receiving the ball. With such young rookies, the staff wanted to check their condition firsthand, so instead of a bullpen catcher, the first-team battery coach had personally crouched behind the plate — and he was struggling just to catch it.
Not because the ball was hard to hang onto, but because the movement on it was simply no joke.
He'd naturally watched the national team games. During the evaluation matches held in Korea, he'd even gone to the stadium and watched from the officials' seats.
But seeing it from this close was a different experience altogether.
"...Coach Choi."
"Yes, Manager."
"We should register him with the first team for now, shouldn't we?"
No matter how gifted a young prospect may be, no matter how clearly he outclasses the current first-team roster, young players need time to adjust.
A game with a tempo and flow unlike anything in high school, a strike zone far tighter and stingier, and the whole arsenal of petty yet effective tricks deployed by players who had survived in the pros for years — this was too tender an age to face all of it at once.
"Their immediate roles will take some thought, but I agree we should register them with the first team. Neither of them looks like he'd have anything left to learn in the second team."
Even so, there were limits. Right now, those two were outstripping the first-team roster by a mile. If you asked who on the current Twins could match them, outside of the foreign players — Kang Hyun-seok in the rotation and the bullpen trio, perhaps — there wouldn't be anyone.
Rushing them up to the first team and ruining the future of Korean baseball? Please. Anyone could see those two would treat the first team like a second-division practice squad. As long as they weren't worked into the ground, this might actually be the better arrangement.
The manager and pitching coach nodded to each other and more or less reached a decision.
Let's give them a start in the next exhibition game and see.
"So, Min-hyuk — how's that gyroball I taught you, huh?"
"It's incredible, sir!"
Veteran Kang Hyun-seok had latched onto Kang Min-hyuk, sweet-talking him with practiced ease. He'd first told the kid to call him hyung, got rejected on account of the age gap, and now insisted on being called uncle instead. And clueless Kang Min-hyuk was only too happy to oblige.
"Yi-seon! So what do you think of your hyung's changeup, eh?"
"Uh... it's great, hyung."
Meanwhile, Ji Ha-seob had planted himself at my side, feigning a closeness that didn't exist.
The other players' glances stung a little. There was no real malice in it, but with everyone watching, even I found this mildly mortifying.
Whether they sensed my feelings or not, the two veterans just kept chattering away about themselves.
"At the end of the day, the coolest position in baseball is the closer — the fireman. This is what I'm saying. Who pitches from the rotation for fun? When a closer comes in, they play his walkout music. Big game? They put light shows on the stadium ceiling for him!"
"Watch your mouth there, Hades. You know who the word 'ace' belongs to. The starter is the ace, isn't he? A pitcher's gotta be a starter."
"Don't listen to that old fossil. Until he retires, the 'ace' title belongs to his seat no matter what. Once Min-woo hyung leaves, the closer job's an open throne. You two do well, and it's yours — I'm telling you right now."
"Hey, I should start taking it easy myself. How old am I? You think I need to grind out another 200 innings like last year? Once you two come up, I'll throw moderately and slide back into the four or five slot."
Kang Min-hyuk, whose convictions about baseball ran stronger than anyone's, kept firing off his honest opinions without a shred of awareness of the situation.
"I still think starting is the better path."
"See? A pitcher's a starter, isn't he?"
"This year you'd start out in the high-leverage bullpen anyway and move to the rotation slowly, right? See those guys over there? Last year they fought tooth and nail to start, and none of them lasted more than a few outings."
"Th-that's what they call work-life balance these days, right? Work-life balance is a good thing."
"If your work-life balance is so precious, then don't go poaching the kids — just live your life. Does stealing them away really soothe your soul that much?"
Honestly, I couldn't understand why the two of them were squabbling over us in the first place. Wasn't it bad for them to have more competition in their own roles?
As I stood there wearing my confusion openly, Park Ha-neul came over to my side. As the youngest of the Olympus Trio, he was the only one I could somewhat talk to like a normal person.
"They're like that because they suffered so much last year. Cut them some slack."
"Suffered, you say?"
Senior Park Ha-neul shuddered slightly, as if the memory were something he didn't even want to think about.
"Last year, Ha-seob hyung threw 77 innings. Ba-da hyung, 74. And me, 78."
Huh?
"Ryan, who went back to the States, threw 85 innings as a foreign hire. Our manager dumps lost causes early, right? Fair enough — but even so, you've got to fight for the games that are still winnable. Otherwise even a .300 winning percentage starts to crumble."
I had watched Twins baseball last year, but I'd never dug deep enough into individual player stats. My impressions went about as far as: huh, pitching changes come pretty often, and the bullpen gets used a lot, doesn't it.
Still, with the winning percentage creeping toward .400, I'd simply assumed it wasn't bad for a last-place team two years running. But hearing it from a player who'd actually lived it was a shock.
"What about the other pitchers, then?"
"What about them. They pitched in other games. You can't exactly bring those guys in with the game on the line."
My words caught in my throat. Senior Ha-neul's careful, methodical explanation made me understand viscerally how frightening those casual observations from a spectator's seat become once they're your job.
Among last year's rotation, the only starter you could trust to give you innings was Kang Hyun-seok. The two foreign starters threw well enough but lacked stamina, reliable five-inning clock-punchers, and the rest of the spot starters were men who could neither prevent runs nor eat innings.
Both foreign pitchers barely scraped together the minimum innings requirement. On any other team, imports that thin would be cut immediately and replacements scouted — but the current Twins were a cold, calculating tanking club. The foreigners threw the ball well enough, the front office had no interest in wasting extra money, and so everyone simply had to endure.
In blowouts, they'd send up a spot starter as a long reliever to sloppily bridge the gap — but in any game with a flicker of hope, the only trustworthy arms were those three relievers and one foreign bullpen arm. Of course they got ridden into the ground.
"Try to understand Hyun-seok hyung's position too. He's a person, and he's not young. When his body's off, of course he'd want to skip a rotation turn now and then, or come out of a game a little early. But he can't trust the other starters, and the bullpen's already been spent on other games. That's how he ended up throwing 200 innings at his age."
As he said this, the corners of Senior Ha-neul's eyes grew steadily moist.
"It wasn't like this before Min-woo hyung left, or before Min-guk hyung left... Yi-seon. I'm asking you seriously. Why not try the bullpen, just for this season? No more, no less — if you and Min-hyuk throw just 50 innings each this year, us hyungs could actually breathe. The innings barely change; it's the extra rest days that keep us alive. Really."
"Wouldn't it be exactly the same if we pitched out of the rotation...?"
"You think the manager would run a full rotation with you two as starters? No matter how desperate he is, he'd cap your innings like clockwork for development's sake. Honestly, the only way us hyungs survive is if you two pitch out of the bullpen. Yeah?"
Now he'd escalated to outright pleading.
Even when a manager tries his best to run the team sensibly, if the pitching staff implodes around a handful of trusted arms, this kind of scene is inevitable.
And that's when I finally understood why these cheerful, good-natured men didn't extend the same affection and attention to the other pitchers as they did to us. Even a genuinely kind person would struggle to keep the faith after taking this kind of beating, year after year.
It reminded me of my past life — the sergeants tormented by useless junior soldiers, scrambling to claim the rare elite new recruit for their own squad.
Great. I can't tell if team life just started off fun or completely tangled.
"So, what did you two decide?"
"How would I decide my own role? The seniors are only half-joking anyway. If they were really desperate, they'd be clinging to the manager's leg, not ours."
What Kim Yi-seon didn't know, of course, was that Kang Hyun-seok and Ji Ha-seob were already whining to Manager Jeong as well. Not that Manager Jeong — pressed for time himself — had any intention of granting such clumsy requests.
Day two of spring camp. Lunchtime at the facility. Today was also the first day training moved beyond simple condition checks into serious work, so the players' families had come to observe.
On top of that, there was an event where players ate lunch at the camp with their families, just like this. Which was why Ye-eun and Min-ah were sitting across from me right now, eating.
Apparently my story interested them more than the food, because both had practically set their spoons down and were talking nonstop. Min-ah gave a small nod and spoke up.
"That's a relief. At least it doesn't look like you'll drift around the team without a single friendly face, Yi-seon. I'm comforted."
"I'm not a kid on his first day of elementary school. You worry too much, Min-ah."
I really couldn't fathom why those two saw me as some social maladroit. I just don't make many friends — that doesn't mean I can't function in society.
The real problem was Kang Min-hyuk, sitting beside me and eating with an inexplicable sulk on his face. This guy had spouted whatever was on his mind, zero filter, right in front of towering veterans.
Just look at him now. Refusing to crack a smile whenever he looks at me. Are you a child? Sure, my mother-in-law couldn't come because work is busy, but your adorable little sister showed up — cheer up a little. My own parents stayed home too, since Ye-eun was coming.
"He is a child. And it's not just you — I hear the other players are all the same. Are baseball boys just built that way?"
Somehow, in that remarkably short time, Ye-eun had already befriended the wives of other players in the organization. I hear there's even a group chat for first-team players' wives — and she'd already been invited.
Truly terrifying social prowess, Ye-eun. It scares me every time.
Anyway, the mood around camp right now was pretty good. With family close by and stomachs full, that sharp edge that had been hanging over the camp had settled.
Except for Kang Min-hyuk, who sat beside me radiating something he badly wanted to complain about.
And so, in that leisurely atmosphere, we finished our meal and I sent the two of them off with a promise to meet again in the evening. They'd seen me doing well enough; surely they wouldn't worry.
With that thought, I was slowly turning back toward the training grounds from the camp entrance when—
"You two. Could I have a word?"
A man with a stiff expression stepped in front of me and Kang Min-hyuk.
It was Ma Ho-yeol, one of the players at this spring camp. He was one of those pitchers hovering precariously between the first and second teams, wasn't he?
So. I'd been trumpeting how well I was getting along in society, but the truth is I'd been a little anxious about exactly this. In the army or at a company, getting chummy with seniors several ranks above you while skipping your direct superiors looks great for a moment — and then real life becomes miserable. Wasn't that just how the world worked?
A baseball club was a gathering of nothing but men, so I'd more or less expected something like this. But whether out of some minimum decency or out of a nastier wish to pile on psychological pressure, to wait for the family event to end and strike at precisely this timing—
"I suppose we should. Shall we talk here?"
"No, this isn't something to discuss out in the open. Let's go somewhere quiet."
Now this is getting serious. Memories of my army days came flooding back one after another. I had a pretty good idea what was coming.
I had roughly figured it out, but Kang Min-hyuk beside me — having apparently never experienced anything like this — was visibly flustered. I thumped his ribs to snap the greenhorn into focus. Only then did he show a hint of tension.
Honestly, I could guess exactly what was about to happen, but I couldn't exactly just run from it. These things only get resolved when you face them head-on at least once. People love to say athletes live by a rigid hierarchy and whatnot, but at the pro level, everything is ultimately decided by skill.
So I agreed with my head held high. Let's see what nonsense a fringe reliever hovering at the edge of the first team has to say to the club's core prospects.
I followed Ma Ho-yeol as he led the way. Judging by his frame, he looked notably smaller than even Kang Min-hyuk. If the worst came to worst and this turned physical, I was confident enough.
When we reached a secluded corner at the edge of the training grounds, Ma Ho-yeol finally turned around and fixed his eyes on me. I braced myself, wondering what would come out of his mouth.
"I know I have no right to ask — but please help me with my training!"
It was the last thing I expected to hear.