Chapter 10. After the Bonghwangdaegi (3)
The day after finishing the tournament and returning to school,
the atmosphere was noisy because Kang Jihoon had announced he would enter the draft.
But the commotion soon settled.
As expected, several sports agencies also contacted me.
Still, there was no reason to make a rushed decision, so I postponed choosing one.
When negotiating, comparing offers from several places was only natural.
I had no intention of immediately signing somewhere just because they had a famous name.
Meanwhile, with the tournament over, a new atmosphere had also started forming inside the team.
The mood has really changed.
All of the year's tournaments were finished.
The school team had been reorganized around the younger players.
Training and practice games now focused mostly on second year players.
They were sweating heavily as they prepared for next year.
There was no place for graduating seniors in that process.
So what were graduating players waiting for the draft supposed to do?
Individual training. What else?
After being selected by a team in the draft, there was little for us to do until joining the finishing camp in November.
We attended school.
We trained quietly by ourselves.
And we prepared for professional baseball.
That was basically it.
Because of that, a lot of players spent this period relaxing.
But this was actually an important period.
One that should never be wasted like that.
If you don't build strength and stamina now, you're fastening the very first button wrong.
School training focused heavily on real games because of classes and weekend games.
In other words, strength training and cardiovascular conditioning were often not developed properly.
But professional baseball was a world where you could not survive without stamina and strength.
If you lacked the endurance to play 144 games over six months,
your performance would collapse by the second half of the season.
Even among professional players, plenty failed to survive the intense summer heat and were sent down to the second team.
So how much harder would it be for a high school player?
If you did not train properly immediately after the Bonghwangdaegi,
you would not even be able to properly handle the finishing camp in November.
Just thinking about that kind of situation is terrifying.
Trying too hard just to keep up would also increase the chance of injury.
I suffered quite a bit before my regression too. I'm not letting that happen again.
During the early days of my professional career, injuries had caused me a lot of trouble.
This time, I planned to arrive completely prepared.
...That was why I had planned to quietly train alone.
"What."
Why was Kang Jihoon beside me?
The moment I started running around the field,
he immediately followed and began running beside me.
"What are you doing?"
"Training."
"Ah, right..."
"Problem?"
"No."
Lower body balance could be even more important for pitchers than hitters.
Hadn't Park Chanhwa, that famous Korean Major Leaguer from long ago, also been known for doing a lot of running?
Running was not some secret training method known only to me.
I erased the strange thoughts from my head and continued training.
After finishing the run, I moved indoors and started stretching.
I needed to reshape my body for the swing I had created before my regression.
My batting form was completely designed around my old body, so detailed adjustments are necessary.
I had been thirty five when I completed that batting form.
My physical prime had long since passed.
In fact, I was at an age where I constantly dealt with small injuries.
Naturally, my power, dynamic vision, bat speed, and other physical abilities had declined considerably.
That batting form had been created while taking all of those weaknesses into account.
Using it exactly as it was now would be difficult.
But I had returned to a young, healthy body with no injuries.
So I needed to adjust the form to match it.
My younger body's performance is actually better than I expected.
The power that came from my naturally strong wrists was still there.
Even my joints, which had once been stiff, were now soft and flexible.
The unexpected gain was my dynamic vision.
Because I had always been such a strikeout machine, I had never trusted my eyesight.
I thought I struck out so much because of my dynamic vision.
But after actually returning to the past,
I realized my dynamic vision was fairly good.
During the Bonghwangdaegi, my BB/K ratio had actually been 2.
I was not capable of identifying pitch types simply by watching the seams rotate.
Still, my eyesight was not bad enough to actively hurt my performance.
In the end, my mindset really was the important part.
It was probably because my family had struggled financially and I had always felt pressured to succeed.
That desperate mindset had created desperate, impatient baseball.
I had already known that to some degree.
But after returning to the past, I could feel just how true it really was.
Training is actually fun when your body is healthy.
Once I became confident in my physical condition, I also became confident that I could perform even better than I had before my regression.
This life had started from a completely different position.
KBO MVP?
I was aiming even higher.
"You're doing that wrong."
"......"
While I was briefly lost in thought,
a familiar voice interrupted me.
I turned my head.
Kang Jihoon had somehow come next to me and was stretching too.
He was lying on a strangely cute pink yoga mat that did not match him at all.
I let out a hollow laugh.
Running is one thing, but why did he follow me here too?
For three whole years, he had shown no interest in other people.
Seeing him suddenly act like this was simply ridiculous.
When I stared at him, he spoke bluntly.
"Flexibility is extremely important for pitchers."
"I didn't say anything."
"Your eyes are strange."
"Who do you think you are, Gung Ye?"
"Gung Ye? What's that?"
"Forget it, punk. Read a book once in a while."
Fortunately, he did not seem interested in following me into batting practice.
For a moment, I had worried that something had snapped in his head and he might suddenly announce that he wanted to become a two way player.
At least during batting practice, I managed to escape him.
But the moment batting practice ended,
he quietly appeared beside me again.
"Ah, why? What do you want?"
"Who skips cooldown exercises?"
"Go somewhere else already. There are plenty of empty spaces."
"If the monk doesn't like the temple, the temple should leave."
"It's, 'If the monk doesn't like the temple, the monk should leave.'"
"Same thing."
...I had no idea how this had happened,
but it seemed this strange coexistence would continue for a while.
Lee Myeonghak skipped the strategy meeting and headed toward Seongsin High School.
They already had old data on Kim Nahan.
But that information had become useless.
Kim Nahan before the Bonghwangdaegi and Kim Nahan after it are completely different people.
Before the tournament, Kim Nahan had excellent physical ability but major mental weaknesses.
His chronic plate discipline problem came from those mental weaknesses.
That had badly damaged his evaluation.
His relationships with teammates were ordinary too.
His teamwork was nothing special.
No matter how Myeonghak looked at him, it had been difficult to give him anything above a C grade.
However, that harsh evaluation had completely changed after the Bonghwangdaegi.
What in the world happened to him?
During the Bonghwangdaegi, Kim Nahan had practically become a master of guess hitting.
Guess Hitting.
Predicting what pitch the pitcher would throw, or where it would be located, then swinging based on that prediction.
Because the hitter prepared his swing specifically for that situation, a correct prediction could produce extremely powerful contact.
But like every method, it did not come with only advantages.
If it had nothing but advantages, everyone would be a guess hitter.
If the prediction was wrong, the hitter had a very high chance of striking out helplessly.
It was difficult for a young player with little data or experience against pitchers to use properly.
But Kim Nahan was different.
He behaved almost as though he had already faced every opposing pitcher several times.
And that happened to catch the attention of the Hawks,
who desperately needed a new third baseman.
As a result, the club had decided to take another serious look at Kim Nahan.
After stopping at a highway rest area for a moment, Lee Myeonghak called someone.
"Hello?"
"Hello, sunbae. This is Lee Myeonghak."
"Oh, Myeonghak. What's going on?"
The other person was Seongsin High's coach, Choi Jaehoon.
The two had been senior and junior members of the same high school baseball team.
Myeonghak had never been so happy that he and Jaehoon had attended the same school.
"It's nothing major. I'm actually on my way to Seongsin High right now."
"...Who are you coming to see? Kim Nahan?"
"Yes. Our team is interested in him."
"Got it. You're coming quietly, right?"
"Of course."
"All right."
Myeonghak wanted to observe Kim Nahan as quietly as possible.
If Nahan trained harder than usual just because a scout was watching,
it would only hurt both the club and the player.
Myeonghak needed to see his normal training attitude while Nahan did not know a scout was present.
After driving for some time, Lee Myeonghak arrived at Seongsin High.
It was still only two in the afternoon and classes had not finished yet.
So he first went to find Jaehoon.
Knock, knock.
"Yes."
"Sunbae, it's Lee Myeonghak."
"Come in."
Myeonghak entered the office.
He and Choi Jaehoon smiled and shook hands.
"How long has it been? It's been impossible to see your face lately."
"Haha, sorry about that. You know how busy scouting work is."
"I know. I'm joking."
Choi Jaehoon handed Myeonghak a cup of coffee.
After taking a sip, Myeonghak immediately spoke.
"I won't drag this out. I'd like to hear about Kim Nahan's normal training attitude, his relationships with other students, his personality, things like that."
"Your personality hasn't changed. Why are you always in such a hurry?"
"I left in the middle of our draft strategy meeting. We need to understand the player as quickly as possible before making our decision."
At his explanation, Choi Jaehoon laughed loudly.
It had been a long time since he had seen Lee Myeonghak acting like this.
"The Hawks must be pretty desperate, huh? Well, your third baseman is about ready to retire."
Choi Jaehoon leaned deeply into the sofa and began explaining.
"There's nothing special about his friendships. He feels a little separated from the others, but there's nobody he's on bad terms with, so don't worry."
"Does that mean he has difficulty fitting into an organization?"
"Hmm, somewhat? Personally, I think his family situation had a big influence on why his personality became like this."
"Is there a problem with his family?"
"There is. But don't worry, it's nothing involving violence or anything like that."
Choi Jaehoon briefly explained Kim Nahan's family situation.
But it was exactly that.
Brief.
He did not want to talk too deeply about a sensitive issue involving a student he cared about with an outside scout.
Even if that scout was Lee Myeonghak, a close junior he had known for years.
"You have his old data anyway, so you probably already know. His play was always too rushed. He trained hard, but his training lacked direction."
"Yes, I remember that too."
"That's because his family situation was so difficult. He believed he absolutely had to produce eye catching results somehow. That desperation appeared in his play."
"Hmm. I see."
"But at some point, the kid completely changed. He became calmer. Started thinking more deeply too. You'll understand when you see him yourself."
Around four in the afternoon, Lee Myeonghak quietly left the office.
Coach Choi Jaehoon had only told him where Nahan trained before leaving first.
Eventually, Myeonghak reached the training area and saw Nahan exercising.
Surprisingly,
he was training together with Kang Jihoon.
"Kang Jihoon, your stamina... is worse... than I thought. How do you... throw 158... with that stamina?"
"You... bastard..."
...I heard Kang Jihoon wasn't close to his teammates because of his personality. Is he actually close to Kim Nahan? Maybe Kim Nahan is more sociable than sunbae thinks. Or maybe he has some kind of charm that naturally pulls people toward him.
Nahan seemed to be teasing Kang Jihoon in a strange way, like an older neighborhood man bullying a little kid.
Still,
the two looked much closer than Myeonghak had expected while training together.
Other graduating players also occasionally gathered around them and joined their conversations.
He's steadily focusing on stamina and strength training. He understands that if you want to survive in professional baseball, the first thing you need is enough stamina to play throughout the entire year. And he doesn't slack off just because the training is difficult.
Kim Nahan seemed to have an established routine.
He carefully completed each step in order.
Lee Myeonghak watched him train with serious eyes as sweat poured down Nahan's body.
After observing his training for several days,
Myeonghak finally called someone.
It was September 14.
There was not much time left before the draft.
