Chapter 87, A Real Man
Even after Manager Lee Jun-ho was fired, the Seoul Panthers continued hovering around sixth place.
Their results had not changed, and they lacked the strength to climb any higher.
New manager Park Jong-guk sat in a small meeting room behind the dugout, letting his coffee grow cold as he studied his strategy board.
The words Busan Oceans had been underlined several times on the papers covering his desk.
A team analyst turned his laptop toward him and spoke.
“The Oceans have a team OPS above .900 over their last fifteen games. The key is Choi Seong. Whenever he gets a hit with runners on base, he drives them in. When there's nobody on base, he hits a home run.”
The pitching coach sighed.
“We can't beat him by challenging him directly.”
Park Jong-guk raised his head.
“Then we'll avoid him. Choi Seong has an OPS above 1.000, so throw him nothing but pitches outside the zone. Keep everything low against Yoon Jae-jun. Against the other hitters, attack the inside.”
The head coach added his suggestions.
“Yugam is unpredictable, so use fastballs against him. Pitch completely inside to Daniel Sanchez. And don't challenge Go Gyeong-tae on the first pitch.”
The manager stared at the gray sky outside the window for a long time before smiling to himself.
“We still have to win. Today, even luck will be part of our strategy.”
At the Seoul Panthers' training ground.
It was a stadium they shared with the Triples.
The bullpen was busy.
Norman's pitches were fast, but they always became unstable during the final stretch.
I placed a life-sized batting dummy in front of him and spoke.
“Aim inside. If you let the ball drift outside, you'll be the first one to fall apart.”
He gritted his teeth.
“I think I was afraid.”
“Then you need to get rid of that fear. Practice will make it disappear.”
We moved his release point half a hand's width backward and adjusted the pressure of his fingertips.
The ball struck the mitt with a low, solid sound.
I raised my thumb.
“That's it. That's your pitch.”
Norman took a deep breath, lifting his shoulders, then nodded.
“Okay, Teacher.”
Kim Byeong-hee was our starter for the first game of the series.
A headwind brushed against our uniforms, and the grass at the Seoul stadium felt damp, as though it had absorbed the rain.
Kim Byeong-hee's first pitch came in at 143 km/h.
His next pitch was a sharply dropping curve.
He finished the batter with a rising four-seam fastball for a strikeout.
A scoreless first inning.
When my turn came, the Panthers' battery followed their plan and refused to give me anything good to hit.
An outside changeup.
A low slider.
A two-seam that barely missed the strike zone.
Everyone's been avoiding me lately.
I muttered to myself.
Apparently, word had spread that I was an easy source of runs if a pitcher made a mistake.
Nobody wanted to challenge me directly, and nobody was willing to throw even one decent pitch.
At this point, they might as well just give me a walk.
One strike, three balls.
Then one mistake stayed high.
There was no reason to hesitate.
CRACK!
The ball's path cut through the raindrops before disappearing beyond the left-field wall.
1-0.
As I rounded the bases, I noticed a familiar face wearing a scarf in the middle of the visitors' section.
Lee Su-rin.
Her small wave stayed in my mind for a strangely long time.
After my home run, Kim Byeong-hee grew more confident and became even harder to hit.
He was perfect through three innings and allowed only one infield hit through the fifth.
The atmosphere inside the Panthers dugout grew heavy.
Inside the Panthers dugout, the players kept lowering the brims of their caps.
Park Jong-guk drew another line on his strategy board with a dry marker.
“Keep walking Choi Seong. We'll fight somewhere else. We can't beat that guy.”
But the other hitters came alive.
Kwon Geon-woo hit a triple.
Go Gyeong-tae added a sacrifice fly.
Daniel Sanchez struck a powerful double.
The score became 3-0.
In the sixth, Yugam attacked the first pitch and drove it deep into left-center, allowing Go Gyeong-tae to score.
4-0.
I received an intentional walk in the seventh, but Yoon Jae-jun waited for his pitch and hit an RBI single up the middle.
5-0.
As the game slipped away from the Panthers, the rain began to weaken.
When the final out settled into the catcher's mitt, Manager Park Jong-guk let out a long breath.
He tapped the dugout railing once and nodded.
We lost today. But we'll win tomorrow.
He had no choice but to accept the result calmly.
This game had shown that the Seoul Panthers currently lacked even the minimum strength needed to defeat the Busan Oceans.
All he could do was prepare for the next game and think about how to beat Yang Gi-won, who was considered one of the relatively weaker members of our starting rotation.
That was the only thing he could focus on.
On the way back to the locker room, Norman walked beside me.
His eyes looked different.
“I'll practice exactly the way you taught me tomorrow too.”
“Good. Keep practicing your inside pitches until they become your own.”
He smiled.
“How much is the registration fee for Choi Seong School?”
“There's no tuition, so don't try to give me anything extra either.”
When I opened the window of my hotel room, the night sky over Seoul was spreading into a deep blue-black.
My phone vibrated.
·
You didn't get hurt today either. That home run was amazing.
·
Another message had appeared beneath our previous conversation.
I sent a short reply.
·
Thank you. I actually saw you wearing that scarf. You were sitting in the most expensive section. I can give you tickets if you need them. Come watch with those next time.
·
·
Maybe later... Please do that for me then. I don't want to accept help right now... Haha.
·
For some reason, that simple message gave me strength.
I calmly cleared my head.
I had hit a home run, and today's MVP was Kim Byeong-hee.
Opposing pitchers had been avoiding me more and more lately.
But that was actually beneficial to me.
I was beginning to wonder if I might end up recording the highest OPS in history.
Every pitcher seemed to lose confidence the moment he faced me.
The following morning, a simple sentence was written on the meeting room's whiteboard.
It was written in crooked Korean, but I thought I knew who had written it.
It was probably Manager Rodriguez.
Our goal this year is to win the championship.
The players leaned back in their chairs and nodded.
We were the first-place team being chased, while the Panthers were desperately fighting to reach the postseason.
But hadn't we already demonstrated the enormous difference between our abilities yesterday?
They were no match for us.
No. Even if our team were suddenly placed in Major League Baseball, I believed we could at least reach the postseason.
Before the game, the gray clouds above the stands cleared, and the summer sunlight settled over the stadium.
Inside the batting cage, I shifted the bat's weight from my palm to my fingers, carefully adjusting my feel for it.
The coach spoke.
“Those Panthers are probably going to walk you again today.”
“I know.”
“Are you just going to accept it?”
“If it's for the team, I should. Being too greedy isn't good.”
