The Championship Race (2)
Crack!
His teammates tracked the flight of the ball as it screamed off the bat—a line drive that never came down, clearing the right-field wall. Ramirez's second home run of the night, and it had come in the top of the ninth.
He trotted in and high-fived his way through the dugout, then launched into that signature celebration of his. The man could play, no question, but he was also just a joy to have around, so the whole roster cheered for real every time he went deep. Tonight, though, a current of anxiety ran underneath the noise.
Over in the other game, the Busan Marines and the Daejeon Golden Eagles had seen their lead shrink to two runs in the ninth. Two outs, bases loaded. And on the mound for the Golden Eagles was Jeong Chanwoo—the closer every baseball fan in the country kept one eye on.
The running joke was that whenever he came in with a ninth-inning lead, even fans who had been cheering for his own team would frantically flip the channel. Not because they wanted to watch him carve through a lineup. Because they wanted to see how he was going to blow it this time.
Two outs. Bases loaded. A two-run lead. Jeong Chanwoo on the hill. Even our guys—professionals who knew better than to talk down a fellow pro—were quietly losing their minds.
I was the youngest on the roster, and I hadn't played today, which meant I was the one stuck watching the other game and reporting back to the seniors.
Fuck—Karim's ball was sailing toward the center-field wall, and the center fielder had stopped moving.
"Hah…"
The camera angle had just been terrible. The center fielder settled under it at a jog and squeezed it in front of the wall like he was taking a Sunday stroll.
"That's the ballgame! Jeong Chanwoo held the lead!"
The dugout let out a collective breath.
"That Jeong Chanwoo kid makes me nervous every single time he comes out of the bullpen."
"The annoying part is he somehow pitches better against us."
"No kidding. Next time we see him, we flatten him."
The tension broke, and the jokes started flying. Everybody was grinning.
After steamrolling them by fifteen runs, we went over to greet the traveling fans packed into the away section at Suwon. Players and supporters alike were in a great mood.
Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been nothing to celebrate. The opponent was a respectable club, we had been the underdogs in the starting matchup, and a losing series for a team in a pennant race is never something you smile about.
But then the Busan Marines got swept by the Golden Eagles—a genuine shock to the standings—and heading into the weekend series we suddenly sat three and a half games clear. It didn't look like a chasm yet. As the season wound down, though, that kind of gap would start to feel very heavy if you were sitting in second place.
Suwon was behind us. Next up was the Jamsil Derby against the Seoul Buffaloes.
The Buffaloes were firmly in fifth, and the gulf between us this season was especially wide. That ranking, though, had everything to do with a starting rotation that had been absolutely demolished. The fact that they had climbed this far with pitching that thin meant the lineup and the bullpen still had teeth.
They were also the most aggressive club in the league—by a mile the fewest bunts, a mountain of stolen bases, and baserunning that never took a pitch off. That style had won them a disproportionately young fan base.
The real problem was tomorrow. Their ace, Dustin, was taking the ball.
Dustin was one of the rare foreign arms you could legitimately call a franchise legend, right up there with our own Albert. He was the best starter in the league this season, and he was in the hunt for every pitching title on the board.
And yet I couldn't help thinking it was a stroke of luck that I was the one drawing him. If I could take the edge against Dustin, the rest of the series would open up for us.
I set my jaw and started hunting tomorrow's game.
"How's the body feeling today?"
"Best it's ever been, same as always."
"Being young is a hell of an advantage, but you're not overdoing it, are you? You're actually reporting your condition to the coaches, right?"
"Of course. Nobody looks after this body more carefully than I do."
Park Ujin and I talked through pregame work. He had always looked out for me, but the more indispensable I became to the club, the more often he checked in on how I was holding up.
"Winning's great. A championship is even better. But if you don't take care of yourself, you don't get to play this game for long."
"I'll keep that in mind."
Well… I was a man who found every year, every single day, too precious to waste. I had already gotten far too addicted to getting better, to punching out hitters, to winning—and to the sound of a crowd roaring my name.
We were playing at Jamsil, but make no mistake—the Seoul Buffaloes were the home team tonight. That meant they took the field first. Dustin was already on the mound, and our hitters were waiting on deck.
Jamsil was a sellout again. Both clubs needed every last game they could get, and the fans were locked in at a level you could feel in the air. Even setting that aside, Buffaloes supporters had every reason to like their chances with Dustin on the hill, and Dragons fans had shown up because I was taking the ball.
The home side got their player introductions and the national anthem, and then our lineup started stepping in.
I had seen Dustin from the dugout plenty of times. Tonight that ridiculous frame of his looked even bigger than usual.
"Out!"
Kim Junsu's ball was a routine groundout, fielded with time to spare. Dustin strolled off the back of the mound like the whole thing bored him, and the home crowd swelled into a roar.
I had been loose for a while. I grabbed my glove and climbed the hill.
On paper it was an away game, but I had pitched well here last time, and when I reached the rubber I could hear my name coming from the visiting section in a lot more voices than before.
"You heard the plan, right? We're going all-out tonight. Pitch like you're on a tight leash for five or six."
"Got it."
Dustin was excellent against everybody, but he had a particular reputation for owning us. Tomorrow and the day after, though—the two games he couldn't start—tilted our way. I was confident in myself. The club, for its part, wanted this one in the bag no matter what.
I had no intention of playing along with that. I wasn't planning on giving up a run, and I wasn't planning on coming out early. I was going as deep as I could.
Lee Jongsu, the Buffaloes' leadoff man, stepped into the box. He didn't give off that suffocating, can't-pitch-to-this-guy feeling, but he could put the bat on anything and he could fly. Let him on and he became a headache fast. Left-handed hitter.
The fastball painted the outside corner. Jongsu watched it go by.
"Strike!"
No interest in jumping on the first pitch, then?
My sweeper broke off the outside edge. Jongsu's bat cut through empty air.
"Strike!"
I had been told he was good at shooting outside pitches the other way. Against me, that didn't mean a thing. I kept working at my own pace, nice and easy.
I went back to the sweeper away, hunting a looking strikeout. Jongsu got a piece of it. The sound off the bat was dull and heavy, a chopper toward third. Even with his wheels, a ball like that was an out.
Huh?
The third baseman's throw skipped past Ramirez at first, and Jongsu never broke stride, taking second on the play.
If you weren't sure, you shouldn't have thrown it. Not that it had been a clean look.
Error on the third baseman. Runner on second, nobody out.
Up next was Oh Yeongmin, the two-hole—a genuinely versatile player, famous for how well he executed whatever the situation asked of him. The Buffaloes preferred the hit-and-run to the bunt as a rule, but with Yeongmin at the plate I honestly had no idea which way they would go.
Park Ujin put down a sign to waste the first one off the plate away. I threw two fastballs, both of them deliberately out of the zone to the glove side.
Ah—Yeongmin dropped a gorgeous bunt on a ball that was already off the plate. It rolled out dead slow. We conceded third and barely retired him at first.
So the Buffaloes understood the value of a single run. It wasn't the ninth, and giving one up here wouldn't end anything—but surrendering the first run of the game in the first inning, and doing it because of an error, was how you let the air out of a ballpark.
The problem was the next hitter. Gi Suhun. A left-handed bat who, against all orthodoxy, handled left-handed pitching just fine, and who almost never struck out.
How was I supposed to keep the ball out of play? Jongsu was so fast that throwing him out at the plate was a fantasy.
Then again—when had I ever played this game by thinking like that? Hit it if you can. I was going to throw my best stuff, and if the defense couldn't help me, so be it. The thought that something was absolutely not allowed to happen was how you ruined everything.
I put a fastball on the inner half. Gi Suhun swung through it.
"Strike!"
A strikeout, or a ball so miserable he couldn't even think about putting it in play. Those were the only two outcomes I would accept.
I went back to the fastball away. He fouled it off. I went there again. He fouled that one off too.
This was the count where you threw the sweeper, the one that looked like a strike and died off the plate. I wasn't lacking for conviction. But if everybody in the building could see it coming?
I shook off Park Ujin's sign.
The curveball painted the outside corner, fat and full. Gi Suhun froze in the box.
"Strike three!"
Oh-and-two, and instead of a chase pitch—instead of the sweeper everyone was sitting on—I had thrown him a curve. He never had a chance.
The home section, which had been screaming since the first pitch of the inning, went quiet. The next hitter was someone their fans could get excited about, sure. But one out and two outs were not the same weight. Not even close.
Fernando, the cleanup man, walked to the plate. If you had to rank them, he sat a cut above Gi Suhun. With two outs, though, my head felt light. The noise in it had gone, and what rushed in to replace it was focus.
Fastball. Fastball. Fastball—the last one a high heater on the hands.
"Strike three!"
The inning was over, and the away section drowned the home crowd clean out of the building.
Tonight was going to be a fight.