Chapter 28
28. What Kind of Guy Is This?
August 22.
Mokdong Baseball Stadium, Seoul.
Late summer heat remained intense.
Tension filled the stadium.
Every player already gathered looked toward one place.
“He’s coming soon?”
Their eyes were fixed on the entrance.
They were waiting for a new player.
Unfortunately, that player was controversial.
Seo Ji-tae.
The sixteen-year-old pitcher who had rushed back from Double-A in America.
Naturally, he had already dominated Korean high school baseball during the first half of 2012.
Whether positive or negative, he had caused trouble throughout high school baseball and Korean baseball.
Not one player welcomed him.
This team carried heavy seniority culture.
Seo Ji-tae was an irritating existence.
“He’s still only a minor leaguer.”
They looked down on Double-A.
“Isn’t the minor league where failures who can’t reach the Majors play?”
To them, the minors were only a gathering of people who had failed to reach the Major Leagues.
Nothing special.
Captain Baek Se-ryong wiped away sweat and looked annoyed.
“When is he coming? Why are we waiting for him?”
“Hello.”
As if summoned by the complaint, Seo Ji-tae appeared.
A smiling boy entered through the stadium passage.
One wireless earbud in his ear.
Sunglasses.
Training clothes.
He walked casually into the stadium.
He did not seem to care at all about the seriousness of joining the national team.
“Please take care of me from today.”
Seo Ji-tae smiled toward everyone’s stiff faces.
His casual voice contained no nervousness.
He looked like he had simply gone for a neighborhood walk.
The seniors and coaches twitched.
“That crazy bastard…”
“No discipline at all. Does he think this is America?”
Complaints and curses nearly exploded.
Seo Ji-tae remained calm.
He almost seemed interested by how uncomfortable everyone looked.
Third-year Park Ha-gyu, leader of the pitching group, finally stood.
He faced Seo Ji-tae with authority.
“Hey, Seo Ji-tae.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t think you can act however you want just because you tasted some American baseball. This is the Korean national team. There are rules between seniors and juniors. Understand? What is that attitude?”
Seo Ji-tae’s expression changed.
Park Ha-gyu expected fear.
Seo Ji-tae’s answer was completely different.
“Why does that matter?”
“What?”
“I greeted everyone and I’m getting ready. Why are you picking a fight? If I played badly, I’d understand criticism. But why are you talking about attitude? Can attitude win us the tournament?”
Seo Ji-tae’s eyes sharpened.
“I came here to play baseball, not army games.”
Park Ha-gyu’s face became red.
“What did you say?”
“So, can acting like that make us champions? I came here to help win. That attitude has nothing to do with winning.”
“You crazy bastard!”
He raised a fist.
“Stop.”
Manager Seo Dong-won rushed in.
“Hah.”
Park Ha-gyu backed away.
A clash had begun simply because Seo Ji-tae arrived.
The team had operated according to old rules.
Now cracks were appearing.
And this was only the beginning.
Pitcher training began.
The main pitching coach stood before the mound holding a fungo bat and shouted.
“Pitchers, you’re taking fungoes too! Running first, then fungoes! Anyone who messes up gets more!”
“The world tournament is being held in our country! Throw until you feel like dying!”
Old-fashioned high-repetition pitching and running.
The session was simple and brutal.
Sweat poured under the burning sun.
Pitchers began losing lower-body balance.
Seo Ji-tae was different.
Instead of joining, he walked toward the dugout.
The coach stared in disbelief.
“Seo Ji-tae! Why aren’t you coming up? Are you ignoring me?”
He approached angrily.
Seo Ji-tae’s answer shocked him.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll handle my training.”
Seo Ji-tae cut him off immediately.
“What? Are you insane?”
“I manage my own pitching routine and shoulder condition. This team training looks like it’s designed to grind down shoulders, so I’m not interested.”
“You disrespectful bastard! How dare you lecture a coach? Get on the mound right now!”
Rebelling against a senior?
Maybe.
But rebelling against an older coach?
Unacceptable under their culture.
The coach grabbed Seo Ji-tae’s collar.
“Who do you think you are? You think you’re so great? You refuse training created by adults with decades more baseball experience than you?”
“Coach Kim! Stop. This is part of his contract conditions.”
Seo Dong-won calmed the coach.
“It was discussed with Houston.”
“Why are we giving special treatment to this kid? We shouldn’t have selected him at all.”
“Calm down. His personal routine is very established.”
“Manager, you’re spoiling him.”
The situation ended for the moment.
But Seo Ji-tae’s attitude shocked everyone.
This was 2012.
There were barely any protections against overuse.
The coach’s words were considered absolute.
Seo Ji-tae had rejected that authority.
Then his training became even stranger.
“What is he doing?”
“Is that a joke?”
The national team stirred.
Seo Ji-tae pulled a yoga mat from his bag and lay down.
Then he raised himself into a full bridge posture, bending like an arch.
He began aligning his spine and hip rotation axis.
Everyone else suffered through brutal work.
Seo Ji-tae did yoga?
They laughed.
“Guys like that always collapse later.”
“Making a show by himself…”
Seo Ji-tae ignored them.
Then he stood and pulled a mini javelin from his bag.
He completely relaxed his shoulder.
Using only torso rotation, he tossed the javelin through the air.
Everyone laughed at the strange motion.
“What is he doing? A baseball player practicing circus tricks?”
“Did America break his brain?”
“If it’s pitching practice, why not just throw a baseball?”
Seniors and coaches mocked him.
Seo Ji-tae did not care.
This javelin training improves whole-body rotation and flexibility. Remember, the body needs to be strong. One advantage is that it reduces unnecessary shoulder strain.
It could develop velocity and command by organizing the whole body.
No one understood the training.
Seo Ji-tae continued anyway.
Pitchers and hitters moved through separate sessions.
Coaches shouted across the field.
“Pitchers, prepare for fungoes! Your lower body has to be strong to survive on the mound!”
The pitching coach walked toward the box with a fungo bat.
In reality, it was almost torture under the sun.
They claimed it strengthened the lower body.
That was only the surface reason.
[You need strong mentality. Make them suffer now so they become better later.]
That was the real belief.
Mental strength.
Hunger.
No measurable reasoning.
Only the idea that training was good if the player suffered enough.
The pitchers were already exhausted.
They spread across the field.
The coach hit baseballs violently left and right.
Their tired bodies became covered in dirt.
“Ugh!”
“Get up! Catch it! You’re complaining over this?”
Groans filled the field.
Seo Ji-tae only watched.
“Seo Ji-tae! Why aren’t you moving? You’re skipping team training alone?”
The coach pointed the bat toward him.
“I’m not doing it.”
Seo Ji-tae’s answer was firm.
“Forcing pitchers to chase hard fungoes left and right is not lower-body training. It only creates joint fatigue that cannot recover properly. It damages pitching mechanics and increases shoulder and elbow injury risk. It’s ignorant training. I refuse.”
“This bastard, all the way to the end…”
The coach’s face turned red.
Seo Ji-tae was not simply refusing.
He had theory and reasoning.
That made the coach even angrier.
But under the agreement with Houston, Seo Ji-tae had the right to refuse.
“I really don’t know why we selected him…”
The coaches complained behind him.
“Whatever.”
Same as Cheongryong.
If training was wrong, Seo Ji-tae would not do it.
He simply followed Houston’s program.
“Hmm?”
During a break, Seo Ji-tae noticed another player.
“Catchers must be dying in this heat.”
The temperature was above thirty-five degrees.
Catchers had crouched in full equipment for hours.
One catcher caught Seo Ji-tae’s attention.
Every time the catcher stood, his left knee moved awkwardly.
His reaction became slower.
His leg followed late.
Seo Ji-tae approached a coach.
“Stop that catcher’s training.”
“What? Seo Ji-tae, now you’re interfering with the coaches too? What do you know?”
“You’re the coach. Manage him before he gets injured.”
The coach snorted.
“Are you a doctor now? Don’t interrupt training. Stop sticking your nose into everything and worry about yourself. Tae-su! Keep catching!”
He deliberately continued.
The catcher moved again.
The moment he threw his body forward, all his weight loaded onto the left knee.
The joint twisted in an abnormal direction.
“Aaaagh!”
The catcher collapsed.
He immediately grabbed his left knee.
His face turned pale.
“Tae-su!”
Medical staff rushed out with a stretcher.
The starting catcher could not stand.
Seo Ji-tae looked at the knee and suspected serious damage.
“What the hell did you do?”
Harsh training.
Training that ignored players’ careers.
Exactly what Seo Ji-tae hated.
His life before regression came back to him.
“What kind of garbage training was that?!”
Seo Ji-tae exploded.
The coach looked shocked.
“Why are you blaming me over an accident? You think I tried to break him?”
Shameless.
Seo Ji-tae’s anger reached its peak.
“A promising player got injured under an incompetent coach.”
“You little bastard. Don’t you have a father? Is that how you speak to a coach?”
Seo Ji-tae and the coach finally had a full argument.
Others separated them.
Training could no longer continue.
Seo Dong-won sent the players to rest and entered a meeting with the coaching staff.
“We need to reduce training like this.”
“Manager, why are you acting like this? Just leave it to us.”
The manager and coaches were looking in completely different directions.
“The association assigned us to help your career.”
“I’m the manager. We’re changing the training.”
“Come on, Manager.”
After several rounds of adult politics, Seo Ji-tae found Seo Dong-won looking exhausted.
“What are you doing about the catcher replacement?”
Seo Dong-won pressed his aching temple.
“Less than a week remains before opening day. Under international federation rules, we can only replace him using the submitted reserve list…”
“You contacted Ian Kim when calling me up, right? Remember what I said then?”
“Your friend on the reserve list?”
“Call Lee Jin-woo.”
Seo Ji-tae smiled.
“Pitcher and catcher need trust. There isn’t enough time to build chemistry with someone new anyway.”
“But Lee Jin-woo is only a freshman backup catcher. If he replaces a better-known player, there will be controversy.”
“I don’t care. There is one road to the championship. Manager, trust me. I’ll make South Korea champions.”
Seo Dong-won looked into Seo Ji-tae’s eyes.
The spirit did not feel like a child’s.
“You may get criticized for this. I’ll take responsibility either way.”
“Blame me as much as you want. Jin-woo coming has that much value. If I’m comfortable, we win.”
“I know exactly how good you are.”
Seo Dong-won accepted the confidence.
That evening, Lee Jin-woo unexpectedly joined the South Korean youth national team.
No one had expected Lee Jin-woo’s selection.
Naturally, public opinion exploded.
More than anything, everyone had one question.
, Who the hell is he?
Seo Ji-tae had a bad relationship with online fans, but he had crushed the Golden Lion Tournament and gone to America.
His ability was proven.
Lee Jin-woo was so unknown that even people deeply familiar with high school baseball barely recognized him.
One internet user searched the rosters and posted the key information.
, I looked him up. He isn’t even a starter. He’s a freshman backup catcher. Why was a first-year backup even on the youth team reserve list? Is the association insane?
, Wait, he went to the same high school as Seo Ji-tae. They played together before Seo left for America.
The controversy exploded.
A seventeen-year-old freshman who had barely worn the starting catcher’s mask making a national team reserve roster looked like obvious favoritism.
The next day, reporters found both the manager and Seo Ji-tae.
Their questions were sharp.
“There is major controversy online over freshman catcher Lee Jin-woo. Is it true that Seo Ji-tae used his connections to force a backup player onto the national team?”
Seo Ji-tae stopped walking.
Then smiled.
“I brought him through my connections. A pitcher needs a catcher he works well with. Anyone in baseball knows how important battery chemistry is, right?”
The reporter became speechless at the direct admission.
“W-What do you mean? This completely destroys fairness in national team selection…”
“Fairness?”
Seo Ji-tae cut him off.
Hesitation?
Guilt?
Seo Ji-tae had no room for either.
“Lee Jin-woo is the catcher who understands my pitch trajectories most accurately. We made the best choice for winning. You know battery chemistry matters, right?”
“But there are more famous players…”
“If I’m more comfortable with him than with that one famous catcher, South Korea can win.”
“You truly believe you alone have that much value? The entire team can win because of you?”
“Yes.”
Not even a second of hesitation.
The reporters could only stare.
Korean society did not easily accept someone this shameless and this confident.
“What kind of nonsense is this?”
[Seo Ji-tae’s connection baseball, parachute selection?]
Negative articles began pressing down on him.
