Chapter 14. Out-of-the-Park Home Run
Starting with the game against Jamsil Saenae High, quite a few spectators had begun watching us.
Of course, compared to professional baseball, it was still nothing.
Even so, I was satisfied that the audience had grown.
This time, no strange surprise mission popped up.
Still, this was definitely a game we had to win.
“Choi Sung, fighting!”
“Let’s win again this time!”
“This year belongs to us!”
Unpolished cheers rang out from the stands.
It wasn’t just the parents. A few more students from our school had also come to watch the game.
There seemed to be around thirty of them.
I was pretty satisfied.
After all, more people had come for us than for Jamsil Saenae High.
Maybe because this area had such a strong academic environment, there didn’t seem to be many students who came out to watch baseball.
There were also quite a few reporters and scouts from various teams who had come to watch me.
Finally, things were starting to feel normal.
“Not bad.”
The problem was that Park Seoha’s mental condition was worse than I expected.
After walking the leadoff hitter in the first inning, he gave up three runs in a row.
“We can catch up.”
I casually threw those words at Park Seoha as he trudged back toward the dugout, completely deflated.
Everyone dreamed of winning the championship, but only one team could actually become champion.
I knew that.
And everyone else knew it too.
The other teams were just as desperate to win.
In the past, a certain manager who had built a Dodgers dynasty by winning championships as if it were routine had once asked me,
“Do you know what it takes to win a championship?”
“Not really.”
“The method is simple. You need one crazy bastard among the pitchers and one among the hitters. And then at least three other players need to perform at half their level.”
“So if I hit seventy home runs, the others need to hit at least thirty-five each?”
“Ahem… I didn’t mean it that literally. But yes. They simply need to contribute properly for their positions.”
It was difficult.
That was just how hard winning a championship was.
Even if you had a single superstar, the other players still needed to support him.
Looking at the bigger picture, even if the pitching staff performed well, the hitters had to back them up too.
“So basically, winning a championship is really difficult.”
“That’s about right. A manager can only show his true value when he has a large enough talent pool. Speaking of which, have you considered coming to the Dodgers?”
I had absolutely no intention of going.
For one thing, I had been injured back then.
And they hadn’t offered me enough money.
Anyway, there was only one reason that old conversation had come to mind now.
If Saeum High wanted to win the championship, we needed players who could at least reach half my level.
As a finesse pitcher, Park Seoha had shown exactly what he could do in the quarterfinals.
—3–0.
Kwon Geonwoo led off while we were losing and managed to get a hit.
And what had I been doing during all of that?
“Ball four!”
I was leisurely walking to first base.
The opposing team—Jamsil Saenae High—simply refused to give me a chance to swing.
Every single plate appearance against me had ended in a walk.
“Ha…”
And of course, their pitcher happened to be their ace.
He was a second-year kid who had created the greatest golden era in Jamsil Saenae High’s history.
The problem was that even in the MLB, he had later shown pretty decent skills—second only to me.
In other words, he was practically guaranteed to become the first overall pick next year.
He would perform brilliantly for the Seoul Magicians, enter free agency, and then eventually join the Dodgers.
The game dragged on in a boring fashion.
Park Seoha had managed to regain his composure after I told him we could still win.
Maybe because Jamsil Saenae High wasn’t used to facing a pitcher like him, they failed to score any more runs after the three in the first inning.
And so the dull game continued all the way into the seventh.
I kept doing my job at second base, then reached base on another walk.
At that point, I couldn’t help thinking that I needed to show them something.
So I decided to steal.
Of course, I hadn’t been given any sort of green light.
But if I could shake up the opponent…
I deliberately took a huge lead before sprinting toward second.
The catcher hadn’t expected me to steal, and his reaction came too late.
Safe.
Once I reached second, I repeatedly made motions as if I were about to run for third.
“Stop messing around. You’re going to get hurt.”
The opposing second baseman gave me a quiet warning, but I ignored him.
Then our third batter laid down a bunt.
In an instant, it became one out with a runner on third.
There was only one major problem.
Could Yoon Jaejun actually hit?
That concern was quickly solved.
“DO YOU WANT TO TRAIN WITH CHOI SUNG?!”
After Yoon Jaejun watched the first pitch go by for a strike, Park Seoha shouted from the dugout at the top of his lungs.
Yoon Jaejun stared at the dugout for a long moment.
Then, as if his mind had suddenly snapped back into focus, he swung the bat.
Personally, I didn’t think my training was particularly harsh.
I just did around three hours of weight training starting in the afternoon, then ran roughly twenty laps around the field.
After that, I threw around one hundred to one hundred fifty practice pitches a day.
Finally, for batting practice, I received around fifty practice pitches and took roughly one hundred fungo swings.
I needed to do at least that much for one of my stats to rise by about a single point.
But apparently, Yoon Jaejun thought differently.
The moment he heard those words, his expression changed.
Then he quickly attacked the ball.
The ball sailed over the fence in an instant.
The score became 3–2.
We had closed the gap to one run.
“Do you hate training with me that much?”
At my words, Yoon Jaejun gave an awkward smile.
Either way, every time someone asked whether they wanted to train with me, our players suddenly awakened.
And after recovering mentally, Park Seoha didn’t allow another run.
Was getting three consecutive wins always this difficult?
Still, it was too early to think we were going to lose.
By the end of our seventh-inning offense, we had reached the fifth spot in the batting order.
If we got just a few hits, another chance would eventually come back to me.
After finishing that calculation, I leisurely sat on the bench and watched our players hit.
“But that catcher over there has a seriously foul mouth…”
Yoon Jaejun grumbled beside me.
“What does he say?”
Maybe because I kept getting walked, the catcher hadn’t said much whenever I was at bat.
“He keeps saying things like, ‘You won’t hit anything,’ and ‘Saeum High is going to lose.’ He just keeps trash-talking.”
“Sounds like an interesting guy.”
Normally, you didn’t see that kind of thing often in amateur baseball.
The players were still practically apprentices, so they tended to be extremely careful about anything unrelated to actual play.
Then again, that second baseman had said something to me earlier too.
“Anyway, I’m glad it’s only trash talk…”
He was right.
At least they weren’t deliberately throwing at batters or doing anything worse.
Still, trash-talking in front of me?
That was something I couldn’t simply let slide.
