Korean Baseball and Everything Else

Well, that ended quickly.

The top of the first was over in exactly eight pitches. The Seoul Twins' first trip to the plate fizzled out just like that.

Whatever had lit a fire under the opposing starter, he was throwing like a man determined to eat our batters alive — and our hitters meekly rolled over, spraying ground balls all over the infield on their way to a three-up, three-down inning.

Which was why, even in the bottom of the first, the mound still looked barely touched. Pristine. It was my professional debut, and yet a hush hung over the whole scene. The only reminder that this was, in fact, a real pro game came from the handful of broadcast cameras pointed my way.

Honestly, it felt less like live competition and more like a training session back at the facility. Besides, Director Cho had insisted that every single pitch be documented, so he was personally manning a camera too.

Feeling vaguely anticlimactic, I watched the next batter step into the box. The Mariners' leadoff hitter, Yoo Kang-hyun. His hitting was solid enough, but he was famous for his eye at the plate — a master of working counts, known for fouling off anything borderline.

And more than anything, he was a senior I'd played alongside on the national team. He'd come by before the game to say something. What was it again? Something about how he didn't care what I did to everyone else, but could I maybe take it easy on him?

Obviously, I had no intention of obliging. Against a contact hitter like him, burying him under pure velocity was the easiest way to handle things.

Min-seok, settled in behind home plate, clearly knew this style well too, and started calling for exactly the right pitches — the ones that fit my game plan to a tee.

Not that "game plan" is the right word for what I have. Against this type of hitter, what I'd throw was obvious anyway.

I set, and fired the first pitch.

"Striiiike!"

The pitch had smacked in just above the heart of the zone — a clean, crisp strike. To be precise, I'd been aiming for the top border and it drifted a touch toward the middle. But judging by the batter's expression, missing that way had actually been more effective.

He seemed to be saying something to the catcher, looking thoroughly rattled.

If you land a setup pitch like that, everything after it is the pitcher's fight.

I liked the catcher's next sign, too. We hadn't exchanged many words, but Min-seok and I seemed to click more than expected?

I adjusted my grip lightly and delivered pitch number two.

"Striiiike!"

Min-seok fired the next sign at me the instant I threw the ball back. Whoa — you're even keeping up with my sequencing on this?

I nodded without a moment's hesitation. Then, granting the batter no breathing room at all, I came set and delivered pitch three the moment he settled into his stance.

"Striiiike three! You're out!"

Good start. That'll do for a start.

"Aigoo, that's it, I'm retiring. Why do these damn monsters keep crawling out of the woodwork lately?"

"Hyung, you said the exact same thing two years ago. And last year. The man who kept insisting he needed a second FA contract is talking about retirement now?"

"No, this time it's actually different! Since when does a Korean throw a hundred-mile fastball? A changeup breaking one-fifty?"

Yoo Kang-hyun trudged back into the dugout, grumbling the whole way. Even now, replaying that at-bat in his head gave him a faint case of chills.

Sure, he'd watched the kid pitch up close with the national team. But facing him from the batter's box was an entirely different animal. On the first pitch, he'd genuinely thought something was wrong with his own eyes.

This wasn't even the major leagues, and here he was, stuck holding the monster tag. He honestly couldn't fathom what kids these days were eating to grow up like that — and birth rates were supposedly down, so there were fewer students than in his day, too.

"And didn't you hear what the coaches said? The kid's not just throwing a hundred — his arms and legs are so long he releases the ball way out front, so it's effectively one-sixty-two. Call it one-sixty-five in practical terms."

It was the kind of stuff that made you wonder what this guy had done to deserve existence. A pitching machine at that velocity would be hard enough to hit — a human being throwing it was another matter entirely.

"So you're saying there's just no hitting his stuff? Like, no approach at all?"

A junior teammate had sidled up beside him, clearly fishing for some hitting tip against Kim Yi-seon. As teammates, the decent thing was to help the kid out — but this once, the advice was going to be a little unfriendly.

"Guess."

"I'm sorry?"

"Don't stand there trying to read where the ball's going. Just pick a spot, commit, and swing. Do that much, and you're not at the completely-hopeless level yet."

The record bore it out — high schoolers had managed hits off Kim Yi-seon. Had even scored runs. He'd been nicked for his share of hits at the national team level, too. The kid wasn't invincible. That was the point.

"His fastball still looked impossible to time, though?"

"And what am I supposed to do about that? It's the only way. If you can't touch the fastball — he throws less of it, sure — then sit on the changeup."

In the end, the last resort left to any hitter — the weapon us old fossils deploy against the young monsters — was nothing but guess hitting, brute-forced through years of experience.

The problem was that reading what that kid was thinking was next to impossible. But with the answer key down to a coin flip, a man could at least shove all his chips onto one line, couldn't he?

Of course, pitchers and catchers weren't fools either — if you telegraphed that you were sitting on one pitch, one location, they'd sniff it out... but hiding that was exactly what veterans were for.

Thwack!

Riley Harrison finished the inning and returned to the bench, where he wrapped his shoulder in a hot pack and a towel to keep it loose. Then he leaned back against the dugout rail and thought to himself:

This is not easy.

He'd been told, plain and simple, that the KBO was Triple-A quality. But to Riley, who'd ground through a long stretch of the minors, this place was a damn sight harder to fool hitters in than Triple-A had ever been.

So far, the luck had been good and his defense behind him sharp, and the innings were coming easily enough — but fortune like that couldn't hold forever. The hitters in this league were not the hitters he'd faced in the majors or the minors.

It wasn't a question of ability. It was a question of temperament. His agent had given him a quick briefing on the characteristics of Asian baseball before he came over, but nothing had prepared him for this.

"Goddamn Asia."

A strange thing for a man to say who, until recently, had been seriously considering settling down here.

Riley Harrison threw a four-seam fastball, technically — but far more often he leaned on his cutter and his sinker, a classic groundball pitcher through and through. Add a changeup to the mix, and his whole philosophy favored coaxing weak contact over chasing strikeouts.

His velocity was more than sufficient for the KBO — downright fast, even. For the big leagues, it ran a touch short. And yet he'd once survived as a major-league starter for one reason: the guile of his groundball induction.

The trouble was that these Asian hitters looked like walking counters to exactly the Riley Harrison formula — and there were already a suspicious number of them in plain view.

"Hey, Riley. You okay?"

His catcher had wandered over while he was lost in thought. It was impossible to read an Asian man's age from his face, but he'd heard this one had been around this league a good long while.

He had questions, so he waved the translator over. The moment the man drew near, Harrison let out a sigh and got right to it.

"Is every hitter in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this league gunning for a batting title? What in God's name are these weird swings."

Somehow, in this league, three separate hitters had chased his cutter and sinker all the way to the end and muscled out contact anyway. Count the ones who'd tried and failed, and you were at five.

One of those five was, like Harrison himself, a hitter imported from the States — which meant five out of eight. In America, you'd be lucky to see one or two guys per lineup so single-mindedly devoted to contact. And that was on a good day.

Worse, he'd been told this very opponent was in the middle of a rebuild, with a lineup that wasn't even strong yet. And this was what a weak lineup looked like?

At the prickly starter's venting, Jang Soo-hyuk double-checked with the translator that he'd understood correctly, thought it over for a good long while, and then broke into a radiant smile.

"Japanese, more contact. Korea is angel."

The grammar was shredded and the vocabulary was wreckage, but Riley could grasp the gist well enough.

"Well. That is a deeply comforting thought."

Crazy Asians.

Saying it out loud would make him a racist, so he kept the thought strictly internal.

And so the Incheon Mariners grumbled on, pitchers and hitters alike — but that was, at most, a bit of sour complaining.

The Seoul Twins, already mired in a three-game losing skid, were in far worse shape.

"Ugh, if my bat had been just a hair lower, that was a base hit..."

"A hair? The ball drilled straight down into the dirt the instant it kissed your bat."

"The guys who couldn't even foul one off can keep it down."

The established starters could at least grouse like this and vent their frustration out loud, but the mood washing over the team as a whole was closer to outright gloom and despair. When a dugout sank this low, it started to bleed into the way a game got played.

Manager Jeong Jin-haeng could feel how bad things were getting, and racked his brain for some way to shake the team awake.

Pull the young players who were wobbling right now? It might work in the moment, but it risked shattering a kid's confidence — a net loss over the long season.

Ask the veterans to rally the troops? First of all, there were hardly any veterans of real standing left on the roster. Most of them weren't longtime Twins, or were middling players who'd never left much of a mark anywhere.

And that was the moment — rebuilding or not, leaving behind even a few pillar veterans would have been nice, and the front office had gone and traded every last one of them away for prospects — that he started genuinely hating his own front office.

So it came down to the manager stepping in personally, did it? But lean on that lever too often, and a manager's gravitas started to wear thin...

Right in the middle of that worry, a conversation drifted over to him.

"Hey, runt. Want Uncle to go over there and smack every last one of those hitters on your behalf?"

"No, thank you. I've been used to getting zero run support since forever. Wouldn't it be simpler for me to just throw the shutout myself?"

The team's last remaining core veteran, Kang Hyun-seok — loudly trading banter with today's starter, Kim Yi-seon, pitched at exactly the volume of a man who wanted the whole dugout to hear.

"Yeah? Confidence looks good on you, kid."

Still smiling, he let his gaze sweep the length of the dugout.

If the baby of the team can say it, what's your excuse, you lot? Not feeling it?

He never opened his mouth, but Kang Hyun-seok's face said every word.

"Don't leave the man hanging out there! If he says it's doable, then it's doable, isn't it? I checked — that foreign fella's stuff isn't anywhere near the monster our runt's is. Oi! Blockheads, ears on! It's doable, you bastards."

And answering that call, in a voice that pretended to find it all a chore but carried real steel underneath, was the Twins' captain, Lee Hae-ryong.

He wasn't quite Kang Hyun-seok, but he was a one-club man in his own right — a franchise star who'd worn the Twins uniform and nothing else since his debut. It was only his age, thirty-six being plenty for a position player, and his fading skills that had left him out of today's starting lineup.

But he seemed to draw courage from Kang Hyun-seok's words, stepping to the front to pull the hitters' corner of the dugout back together.

Only then did the manager allow himself a small breath of relief. Thank God, he thought, for the handful of veterans who still knew how to do their jobs.

Bottom of the third, and Kim Yi-seon took the mound again. Facing him once more was the leadoff hitter, Yoo Kang-hyun — who called up, one more time, the very advice he'd personally passed down to that junior.

The last at-bat had been a helpless wipeout. This time had to be different.

He was, after all, a textbook Asian hitter — the exact breed Riley Harrison had been cursing. He trusted his eyes to see pitches and lay off the bad ones, and he trusted his bat just as much to foul off the close ones.

The first time he'd faced ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Kim Yi-seon, he couldn't read the ball at all. But one encounter, plus steady observation, had uncovered a single crack in the kid's armor.

The velocity gap between the changeup and the four-seamer was smaller than it had any right to be. If anything, factoring in that the changeup came in a touch slower — the changeup was far easier to hit.

Granted, "relatively small" still meant a real gap, one most hitters would struggle to wait out for even a single timing.

But if you half-abandoned any thought of extra bases and committed to contact — and if you drilled the trajectory into your body until it was second nature — you could put the ball in play.

So: sit on the changeup. Against the fastball, just match the timing and cut at it. Deciding to cut a pitch that came in faster and higher than the timing you were hunting was, on paper, complete nonsense — but a job as a team's starting leadoff and a national team regular wasn't one you earned by playing it sane.

Kim Yi-seon locked eyes with him, exactly as he had in the first at-bat.

The instant the staring contest ended, the first pitch came screaming in.

"Striiiike!"

Once again, a strike without a shred of mercy. One-fifty-six was velocity you'd catch a glimpse of in this league only once in a great while — and yet it felt nothing, absolutely nothing, like those pitches.

Swallowing the futility, Yoo Kang-hyun made a fine adjustment to the rhythm ticking inside his body. So far, Kim Yi-seon's pitching had broken down to roughly three-quarters fastballs and one-quarter changeups. The odds were good that at least one changeup was coming.

Especially on pitch two, when the pitcher went to work establishing the count, the changeup appeared often. A small mercy, too: Kim Yi-seon's changeup ran with more horizontal movement, boring in on the body, rather than dropping straight down. That much was trackable with bat control.

"Ball!"

But what had come in was a setup-style high fastball. He'd caught it tailing just a touch toward the outside, which made holding his swing easy enough. If that trajectory had been the changeup, it would have landed dead center in the strike zone — and no debutant prospect was going to hang a pitch like that, was he?

The count reset to zero. This was where the mind games truly began.

Pitch three.

"Striiiike!"

His timing had been late.

He'd read it — he was certain of it. Both the pitch and the location. But a ball over one-sixty simply operated on different physics.

A single pitch snapped his head clear. And the count had backed him into two strikes and one ball. From here, there was no escape from the mind games even if he wanted out.

And yet one certainty took root in him: he really had almost caught up in this duel of reads. He'd only been steamrolled by a difference in sheer weight class, nothing more.

Which meant this — this — was his chance. Kim Yi-seon threw the changeup roughly one at-bat in four. And he'd just thrown three fastballs in a row. He favored dropping the changeup at the bottom of the zone, and regularly used a center-of-the-zone fastball as the setup for that low changeup.

The pattern was already known. The deductions built on it were solid, too. Pitch three had been called middle-of-the-zone, but it had only drifted there by accident — it had plainly been aimed at the bottom. Which meant the odds that pitch four was a changeup had never been higher.

A curveball out of nowhere here? Fine. He could live with that. If it came in high, the umpire's tendencies made a called strike unlikely; if it stayed low and buried, he'd already be loading an upward ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠swing from the bottom anyway — he'd just delay his swing by half a beat and let it fly.

On the outside, nothing — no hint whatsoever that he was locked onto a single pitch. As far as anyone could see, he was simply loading up on ordinary fastball timing.

Here it comes!

Crack!

It was a fastball.

Fine. That much, he could accept. He'd allowed for the possibility it might be a fastball, and had prepped that timing in advance, too.

But then suddenly switching to a high fastball in that spot? Wasn't that just taking things too far? Back on the national team, in this exact situation, you always came in hunting the strike, always. Why was it suddenly a textbook setup pitch now?

Choking on the injustice of it, Yoo Kang-hyun turned and looked back at the catcher. Only to find the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man's face an even mix of bewilderment and grievance.

"...Just asking, mind you — did you throw something other than what he called?"

At that, the opposing catcher gave a slow, solemn nod.

A long sigh came pouring out of Yoo Kang-hyun. Guess hitting, against a guy like that? Some guess hitting. Patterns, sequences — none of it meant a thing with him. He should have caught on back during the Korea-Japan series, when the kid threw three curveballs in a row just to watch the world burn.