Spring Camp (3)
For Ma Ho-yeol, every single moment of his professional career had been an act of desperation.
It went without saying, but up through high school he had been a talented prospect in his own right. He hadn't gone straight to the pros out of high school, but he'd torn through two years of the college league and done well enough to apply for the early draft.
While his classmates clung to their degrees with amateur teams or youth coaching careers in mind, he had the talent to challenge the pros with genuine confidence.
And his confidence wasn't unfounded — Ma Ho-yeol had gone pro with a fairly high draft position, 28th overall in the third round.
If you considered that the two players drafted ahead of him were raw, unpolished high schoolers, he'd even believed he was closer to being an immediate contributor.
Making the first team felt like anything but a dream.
"Don't get too down on yourself. Every rookie goes through it. Hold your head up!"
"...Yes, sir!"
Looking back now, it hadn't been a dream. It had been delusion.
The wall of professional baseball was high. He'd been a standout in the college league, so he figured if nothing else he'd put up decent numbers in the minors, even if the first team remained out of reach. What he received instead was a stat line of 21 games, 18 starts, and a 4.80 ERA — and he'd never once gotten a call-up to the first team.
Still, he survived. He apparently caught the eye of the minor league coaching staff with the way he kept improving as the season went on. Or maybe it was simply that a rare left-hander, even a slightly lacking one, earns a few extra chances.
Year two as a pro. He appeared in 18 minor league games and, grinding his teeth, posted a 3.60 ERA. He even made his first-team debut — for exactly one game.
Year three. Twenty minor league appearances with a 2.70 ERA, plus three or four outings in the first team.
Year four. He still spent more of the season in the minors, but he'd grown to the point of starting a season on the first-team roster. His minor league ERA had dropped all the way to 2.10.
Season after season, he'd tried everything to survive, and every time, he'd shown a little more growth. If things kept going like this, maybe — just maybe — the first team would finally stop being a dream.
But that was as far as it went.
"Ho-yeol. I'm sorry. The Twins claimed you."
"It's alright, Manager."
Unlike his minor league numbers, collapsing the moment he took a major league mound had simply become his routine. An ERA hovering around seven or eight — results so wretched they barely bore repeating. The wall between the first team and the second had been even higher than the one he'd felt moving from college ball to the pros.
He wasn't even on the club's 40-man protected roster. A nobody. Emergency relief brought up only when things got desperate, a designated mop-up man to absorb losses. After pouring four professional years into the game, the position he'd barely clawed his way up to was that humble.
And yet a sliver of hope remained. Because throughout his pro career, he had always, always kept growing. The Seoul Twins, having declared a full rebuild, were a team overflowing with first-team opportunities. If he grew again this time, maybe he really could establish himself for good.
—"The ball's getting barreled middle-in! And he pulls it — down the left-field line! It's GONE!"
—"Wow, he just cleared the vast expanse of Jamsil Dome, didn't he? The way it carried off the bat, that looked like a line drive. Great bat speed, and he squared it up perfectly."
—"And there's Ma Ho-yeol, head hung low, as pitching coach Choi Jung-bae makes his way to the mound."
As it turned out, this time wasn't the time either.
Steady growth had been an illusion from the start. He'd merely grown comfortable on the minor league stage and picked up cheap tricks along the way; his actual skill remained ordinary enough that the first team could pound him at will.
Even the breaking balls and command he'd once prided himself on did nothing at the top level. Something had to change yet again.
And so, after even the last shred of his pride had crumbled entirely—
Sixth professional year, spring camp had finally arrived. This not-at-all-young journeyman pitcher, pushing twenty-seven, now found himself bowing his head even to kids far younger than him.
"I mean, you can ask us for help, but we're not exactly coaches or veterans."
He'd bowed at an angle so sharp it was almost burdensome. Having someone suddenly beg for your help was startling enough, but with no idea what kind of help he even wanted, I was even more thrown.
Look, velocity is just something I have because I'm naturally fast, and Kang Min-hyuk was born with a body built for submarining. It's not something you can teach.
Same went for his breaking balls and control. I once asked Min-hyuk how he did it, and he told me, "You just go fwoosh and then wham, and it's done," so I smacked him on the back of the head. Coaching was hopeless for both of us.
But Ho-yeol hyung showed no sign whatsoever of lifting his head.
"It's fine. Just being around while you two train is more than enough. I'll watch with my own eyes and learn."
What exactly is supposed to sink in from that?
Kang Min-hyuk shot me a bewildered look. I had no idea what to do either.
We stood there staring at each other in silence for a long moment, until Min-hyuk finally nodded, as if there was no other choice, and spoke carefully.
"Understood, sunbae-nim. It's not a difficult request, so we'll do that."
"Thank you! Really, thank you so much!"
Ho-yeol hyung was genuinely delighted at Min-hyuk's answer. Seeing him like that, something in me — call it conscience or guilt — started to sting a little.
"We won't just show you, though — we'll try to explain things and help however we can. Honestly, I doubt it'll do much good? Would you rather I introduce you to a proper instructor instead?"
Lately, Director Jo Sang-shik had been doing brisk business under the title of "the coach who trained us." I heard he'd finally crossed past his equipment costs and into actual profit. Youngsters were coming, of course, but apparently even amateur-league players and pros had started showing up a few at a time — one more student surely wouldn't strain him.
But Ho-yeol hyung shook his head.
I appreciate the thought. Still, I made this request because watching you two up close seems like what would help me most. Is it too much of a burden? I'll do my best to stay out of your way."
"No, well. If you're that set on it."
And so, for the duration of spring camp, a slightly awkward coexistence with Ho-yeol hyung began.
"So you're telling me you do a solid hour of yoga every single morning?"
"Yep. It's been my routine since I was a kid... Ah! A beginner jumping straight into that pose could get hurt!"
Ever since that day, Ho-yeol hyung had been stalking our every move. He'd insisted on watching from a distance so as not to burden us, but that was somehow more distracting, so now we just let him stick close and ask questions directly.
And then, without warning, he'd started attempting to copy mine and Min-hyuk's routines, one by one.
"Hooook...! Hoo-oot! Hooo... Ha, this isn't easy."
"Straight running doesn't help much, you know. Switch to interval running — same five kilometers, but way harder."
"I maintain my feel by skipping stones into the Han River thirty times a day. There's no Han River here, so — toward the ocean it is!"
"Kang Min-hyuk, you absolute lunatic, stop teaching him your weird nonsense..."
The real problem was that he copied literally everything.
To be fair, Ho-yeol hyung was a pro ballplayer who'd managed his body diligently for years — he wasn't entirely hopeless at following our routines.
But how is any human being supposed to absorb overnight training that someone else had stacked up over years — some of it since middle school, some all the way back to kindergarten?
Watching him wobble through it, I genuinely worried he'd end up injuring himself.
"Ho-yeol, what are you doing with the rookies?"
"Training, sir!"
"Training? You're not being a nuisance, are you?"
"I'm doing my best not to get in their way!"
"That's what you think. Step back and get your own training done."
Veteran Kang Hyun-seok had stepped in and briefly called a halt with the full authority of the pitching captain, but there was no way to stop a man who would sneak off to observe our training from afar, quietly mimic it himself, and then come back later asking whether he'd done it right.
In the end, Kang Hyun-seok sunbae-nim simply gave up too.
Now, if he'd stopped at copying training routines, we could've chalked him up as a slightly odd, overeager guy. But Ho-yeol hyung showed no intention of being satisfied with that much.
"S-so, Ho-yeol hyung? Was your delivery always like that?"
"Does it look off? Can you point out which part's wrong?"
The form Ho-yeol hyung was throwing with in his practice sessions looked awkward, but anyone could tell — it was my delivery. A pitching form isn't copyrighted, and I wasn't particularly offended by the imitation, but the problem was that this was spring camp.
The season was about to start, and he was doing what with a brand-new pitching form?
"Min-hyuk's form needs his whole body to move in ways mine just won't, so I couldn't even attempt it. But yours, Yi-seon, is a bit more fluid — easier to pick up. The stride on this lead leg is a little tough to manage, though."
"Hyung, are you seriously trying to change your delivery right now?"
Ho-yeol hyung nodded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. What an absolute headache of a human being.
While running the training sessions, Manager Jeong Jin-haeng had been steadily sketching out the shape of his opening first-team roster.
The position players gave him far less grief than the pitchers — even last season, plenty of them had shown promising development, so apart from lacking a clear-cut everyday starter, trimming the list down to first-team caliber hadn't been too painful.
This spring camp, those same players were keeping last year's momentum going, their form looking solid.
The pitching staff, painfully tangled at the start, was now being whittled down remarkably smoothly. That was only possible because of the happy miscalculation that Kim Yi-seon and Kang Min-hyuk had turned out even more talented than anyone had imagined — but a win was a win.
Even so, there were bound to be players hovering precariously on the borderline between the first team and the second.
"How's Ho-yeol looking this time?"
"He seems to have prepared earnestly enough... though since arriving at camp, he's been up to something strange again."
"Ha..."
The most prominent of those borderline players was Ma Ho-yeol.
Ma Ho-yeol. He'd joined the Twins through the second draft and been classified as a spot-starter, given steady opportunities in that role.
Spot starter or not, as a left-hander on a team whose left-handed pitching depth was thin, he was a pitcher who could seize opportunity at any moment.
In fact, his Futures league numbers were decent, and the evaluation had long been that if he could secure a first-team spot, he was worth projecting as a serviceable fifth starter or a trusted lefty specialist. That made him a key management priority for the coaching staff.
Manager Jeong had explored his potential last season too, giving him 12 first-team appearances and 9 starts.
"A man's confidence is so hard to win back once it's gone. Isn't that right, Coach Choi?"
"It's a shame, sir."
The results hadn't been good. Twelve appearances, fifty-three innings, a 7.02 ERA — you couldn't call that promising even as a polite fiction.
"Still, we have to give him his chances through camp at least. In your view, Coach, when would be the best outing for him?"
"I'd say give him the chance early. From what I've seen, Ho-yeol's real problem is a lack of conviction in himself."
"Conviction, huh... I spent my own time in the minors, so I understand, but Ho-yeol has it worse than most."
It was the shared judgment of both the manager and the pitching coach that while Ma Ho-yeol's poor results had roots in his raw ability, the psychological side was the bigger issue.
Whatever kind of coaching he'd received at his old club, the man revised his delivery after every rough outing, and whenever he watched a senior or teammate pitching well, his bizarre compulsion to start by copying that very delivery showed no sign of ever being cured.
There wasn't enough time to properly hone even a single delivery — and this man was tearing his apart and rebuilding it every year, every month. How could results possibly follow?
And if a coach tried to talk him down, the anxiety only swallowed him whole and collapsed even his current form. That form, after all, was never the one he'd thrown since childhood — it was something hastily relearned after going pro, and apparently not very sturdy for it.
This was exactly why you didn't touch a pitcher's delivery rashly. Silently cursing Ma Ho-yeol's former team for seemingly squandering decent talent, Manager Jeong agreed to the pitching coach's plan for the exhibition schedule.
As it happened, that exhibition opponent was Ma Ho-yeol's old team — the Busan Giants.
Ho-yeol hyung, who already seemed slightly unhinged, got three times worse the moment the exhibition game came up.
Utterly unable to calm himself, he kept drilling his imitation of my delivery. Pile on his copying of mine and Min-hyuk's training routines, and anyone could see he was running himself into the ground.
Worse, apparently out of some misplaced fidelity to his promise not to bother me, he'd taken to practicing in secret and saving up all his questions into one concentrated interrogation a day. The man is relentless.
Look — my delivery was built through Director Jo's thoroughly scientific analysis, adjusted over time to fit my body. Someone else studying it wouldn't get any dramatic payoff, and it might actually backfire on him.
As I clicked my tongue, Kang Hyun-seok sunbae-nim came over.
"So, is Ho-yeol still copying you two?"
"Yes, sir. He got worse after hearing he's pitching in the exhibition game."
The Seoul Twins' first exhibition opponent was the Busan Giants, holding their own spring camp in Okinawa just like us. Hearing the story, I understood — the Giants were Ho-yeol hyung's old team. Still, I wasn't sure he wouldn't end up killing himself at this rate.
He wasn't even throwing a real ball, just drilling partial movements and shadow pitching all day long in his quest to copy my form. Frankly, spending that time on actual practice would do far more for his immediate improvement.
Kang Hyun-seok sunbae-nim studied my expression, then let out a small chuckle.
"Honestly? It's annoying, isn't it?"
"Excuse me?"
"You help him out because the man's desperate and you can't just turn him away, but you can tell it won't even do him any good, and all it does is grate on your nerves. Annoying. Does his desperation make everything fair game? What a hilarious mess."
It came out sounding a bit like an old man griping, but I couldn't help agreeing. I just hadn't expected to hear it from the affable Kang Hyun-seok sunbae-nim of all people.
"There's no need to strain yourself trying to be a saint. You're just a high school rookie — what exactly do you owe anyone? Baseball players are all independent contractors. I told you that before, didn't I?"
"You did. It's not like I'm losing anything, though. I'm just helping out."
"And the fact that it's weighing on your mind? Isn't that a loss too?"
He let out a hearty, uncle-ish laugh and clapped me on the shoulder.
"Go say what you need to say and be done with it."
Then he gave me a push toward where Ho-yeol hyung was practicing.
"Do I really have to?"
"Bottling this stuff up gives you a sickness of the heart. Between pros, you say things straight. That's how it should be."
I really didn't want to, but Kang Hyun-seok sunbae-nim had a point.
Right. When have I ever held back something inconvenient? Time to say what needs saying. And this wouldn't just be for my own comfort — it'd be better for Ho-yeol hyung too.
Steeling myself, I walked over to where he was practicing.
"Hyung. Practicing again?"
"Yep. If your skills are lacking, you practice. What else?"
As he said it, Ho-yeol hyung's eyes were desperate — and underneath, shot through with anxiety. I saw those eyes and nearly turned quietly around. Almost. No — Ho-yeol hyung deserved to hear it properly too.
And so I managed, at long last, to force out the words I'd been swallowing all this time, aimed at the man who'd been weaponizing my guilt.
"Hyung, I'm going to be honest. That delivery you're copying? It's painfully awkward. You can't use it in a real game."
"Huh?"
The whole core of my delivery is the long stride that comes from my long legs. For Ho-yeol hyung — shorter than me, with worse proportions — spreading his legs at a similar angle would accomplish precisely nothing.
"Also, my form is tuned to blow hitters away with velocity, and when I watched you work on your speed, you topped out at 145, remember? Fine, it was practice and you were taking something off — but you know that's not enough to overpower anyone."
By the time I finished, Ho-yeol hyung had gone quiet. But having already steeled myself, Kim Yi-seon showed no mercy.
"There's less than two months until the season, and rebuilding your delivery from scratch now is just inefficient. I heard from the other sunbaes — you did the same thing last year and burned half the season doing it."
Right. It should've been obvious, but if he was coming to me and Min-hyuk for instruction, of course he'd gone to everyone else first. Apparently every pitcher and coach in the organization who'd ever thrown a decent ball had handed down their delivery to Ho-yeol hyung.
Counting the forms he'd learned back with the Giants, the man had probably absorbed more than ten pitching deliveries in a single career.
"I don't know what's driving this compulsion. But this is going too far, isn't it? At this rate, one day you'll be changing your delivery between every single pitch."
"...Hold on a second."
Perhaps getting lectured by a junior so much younger than him was the shock he needed, because Ho-yeol hyung — who had been going quiet — suddenly came back to life.
"That's it... Yi-seon! You really are a genius!"
"I'm sorry, what?"
Why is this man like this all of a sudden?
"Thank you, really! I'm heading off to practice right now!"
"No, wait, what are you—"
I glanced back to see Kang Hyun-seok sunbae-nim, who'd been watching the whole exchange, looking just as bewildered as I felt.
What on earth is he about to do?