Chapter 25. A Matter of National Pride
A home run.
Hoshino Yuki could only stare blankly for a moment.
Choi Seong had quickly read the sweeper Yuki considered his specialty and turned it into a home run.
The senior catcher walked up to the mound.
“Is that guy a Zainichi Korean?”
“Probably not.”
“Then why do you look so upset? Lucky hits like that happen all the time. You handled their table-setters just fine until now. Keep doing what you were doing.”
Yuki nodded.
The next batter was the cleanup hitter.
He was pretty big.
First pitch, four-seam fastball.
Yuki threw low and away.
Was his name Kim Hakseong?
Foul.
The fact that he could even react to that kind of velocity showed that he was definitely a professional.
Still, his bat speed couldn’t quite keep up.
Yuki threw the second pitch.
This time, the contact was weak.
Another foul.
The sign his senior gave him next was for an inside sweeper.
Since this was only a practice game, he probably wanted to experiment.
Yuki nodded.
Then he threw.
The sweeper broke inside.
Most hitters would instinctively flinch at an inside breaking ball.
But Kim Hakseong didn’t.
Instead, he swung as if he had been waiting for it.
“What?”
Yuki blurted out in surprise as the ball shot into the outfield.
It split the gap between left and center field.
A double.
In an instant, the runner was in scoring position.
His senior calmly shouted.
“It’s fine! That was a good pitch!”
But Yuki knew instinctively.
They had figured out his sweeper.
How?
When Choi Seong hit the home run earlier, he had looked far too comfortable against the pitch.
And now it was the same.
In the other practice games, hitters had barely been able to touch it.
Then Yuki saw Choi Seong whispering something to the fifth batter in the on-deck circle.
The batter was a foreigner.
He gave Choi Seong a thumbs-up as if he were already used to taking advice from him.
The fifth hitter’s name was Daniel Sanchez.
Had Choi Seong analyzed his pitches somehow?
A trace of unease began creeping into Yuki’s heart.
Even after calmly resetting himself on the mound, he couldn’t help thinking about it.
First pitch, four-seam fastball.
His senior called for the next pitch, but Yuki shook his head.
Then the catcher called for a sweeper.
Yuki shook him off again.
Choi Seong had clearly figured out something about his pitches.
If that was the case, then what remained was…
The catcher’s third sign was a curveball.
This time, Yuki nodded.
A normal-looking curve left his hand.
But the amount of drop was anything but normal.
It started around the batter’s neck and plunged all the way to the bottom of the strike zone.
This pitch and his fastball were the reasons he had been selected first overall.
Without hesitation, the fifth hitter drove the ball between first and second base for a hit.
Two outs.
Runners on first and third.
Yuki could only stare in disbelief.
His senior came back up to the mound.
“Are those guys really the last-place team?”
The catcher asked, sounding confused.
Yuki nodded.
“I think so…”
“Does this make any sense? Your stuff is good. Trust it and throw. But I seriously don’t get it… Even pros said your pitches were hard to hit.”
“For now, I’ll focus on the fastball and curve. Something feels wrong with the sweeper.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s save that one for left-handed hitters.”
Yuki nodded.
This was his first practice game after joining the pros.
He had never expected to get hit this badly.
At this rate, making the first team could become difficult…
Because Japanese professional baseball still had a certain degree of rigid hierarchy, most rookies began their first season in the second team.
The talented ones gradually worked their way up to the first team.
Yuki was standing right at that crossroads.
He decided to pull himself together again.
Then Choi Seong once more leaned toward the next hitter in the on-deck circle and whispered something.
Yuki and his senior exchanged a quick conversation after seeing it.
“I think they’ve figured something out about you.”
“Then… let’s challenge them with the four-seam first. They haven’t really been able to handle it anyway.”
His senior nodded.
They realized it was a mistake immediately afterward.
The moment the four-seam came in, the sixth batter, Yugam, hit it as though he had been waiting for it.
A clean single into center field.
Hoshino Yuki shook his head in disbelief.
The score was now 2–0.
He couldn’t help being bothered by Choi Seong, who kept whispering things to the other hitters.
“Damn it. Why are these guys so locked in? Don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong with your stuff.”
“Yes. I’ll go with the fastball again.”
Yuki nodded at his senior’s attempt to reassure him.
Two outs.
Runners on first and third.
Score, 2–0.
The seventh batter was Yoon Jaejun.
When Choi Seong approached Yoon Jaejun as well, Yuki frowned.
If Choi Seong was really talking about every single one of his pitches like that, it was a serious problem.
Still, Yuki would pitch properly.
This time, he put extra force into it.
There was no way the batter could hit this.
The pitch rose slightly above the strike zone, but that was fine.
Yuki trusted that pitch.
However…
With a loud snap, Yoon Jaejun’s bat broke.
The ball dropped into the awkward space between the first baseman and right fielder.
The score became 3–0.
Yuki angrily kicked the mound.
It was the first time since he had started playing baseball that he had ever given up this many runs in the first inning.
“Damn it.”
“Hold on…”
The catcher desperately tried to calm him down.
When he faced the eighth batter, Park Seunga, Choi Seong didn’t come over.
Yuki struck him out easily on three pitches.
I calmly watched the flow of the game.
After hitting that home run, I immediately understood what Hoshino Yuki’s current problem was.
In the future, that guy wouldn’t even use a sweeper.
His strength would be unpredictable pitching built around a curveball, fastball, and forkball.
Either way, the moment I hit his sweeper, I realized something.
If the catcher hadn’t made that comment, I probably would have let things slide.
But now?
This matchup was a matter of national pride.
“Hakseong sunbae. You’ll probably get four-seam fastballs on the first and second pitches. Even if you hit them, getting a clean hit will be hard. Just foul them off. You’ve seen this kind of velocity from time to time anyway.”
“Yeah. Better work hard unless I want to get smacked around.”
“That’ll make it 0–2. Then the sweeper Yuki’s pushing right now will probably come inside. Their catcher wants to show off against Korea. He’s probably picturing a scene where the hitter flinches because he thinks it’s a hit-by-pitch. You need to hit that one.”
“That’s pretty detailed. All right, then. Let’s listen to our rookie prospect.”
As always, he really was a veteran without much prejudice.
My prediction was correct in that at-bat.
Then what about the next one?
Yuki had just given up a hit.
That meant he would probably want to rely more on his own judgment than his catcher’s lead.
He had always lived with absolute confidence in himself.
In other words, his self-esteem was high.
He would believe that the hitters were beginning to match the timing of his four-seam fastball.
So he would want to show them another weapon.
That meant he would probably choose a curveball for the first pitch.
I spoke to Daniel Sanchez in English.
“First pitch is definitely a curveball. The trajectory will probably start around your shoulder and drop to the bottom of the strike zone. Can you hit it?”
He was a foreign hitter who had just joined the KBO.
We hadn’t talked much yet, but he grinned and pointed at his own shoulder.
“Okay. I’ll give it a try, Mr. Han. Was that captain’s hit your work too?”
“Yeah. Trust me once. It won’t be bad.”
Daniel Sanchez smiled pleasantly and crushed the first pitch.
What would Yuki do next?
Probably go straight to the fastball.
And Yoon Jaejun had caught my pitches that reached nearly 160 kilometers per hour.
Not only that, whenever I practiced pitching alone, he always worked on improving his dynamic vision by tracking my pitches.
“Jaejun. First pitch will definitely be a fastball.”
Now that I was openly giving advice, the opposing battery would start feeling shaken.
They would feel as though I had figured something out about them.
That meant Yuki would become even more likely to rely on orthodox pitching.
In other words, he would trust his own stuff and challenge the hitter.
“A fastball…”
Yoon Jaejun’s confidence visibly dropped.
I didn’t understand why.
His quality of contact was already good enough.
And he had seen my fastball before.
There shouldn’t be any major problem.
“Sit on the first-pitch fastball. If you hit it, you probably won’t fall behind in the competition for a starting spot.”
Yoon Jaejun nodded at that.
Just like I said, he hit the fastball.
And he repaid my trust.
Then came the eighth hitter, Park Seunga.
I casually gave him no advice whatsoever.
He struck out on three pitches and came back to the bench.
The inning naturally ended.
He looked at me as though he felt wronged, but I ignored him.
I had absolutely no intention of comforting a guy who didn’t know his place.
Now it was my turn to protect the RBIs my teammates had earned.
Their cleanup hitter was someone I knew.
Kazauro, Hiroshima’s slugger, was currently recovering in the second team after suffering an injury the previous season.
He had hit at least twenty home runs for seven straight seasons and would become a top player who moved to another team in free agency the following season.
A fastball slammed into the middle of the strike zone.
Kazauro swung quickly, but he couldn’t match the timing.
Was he a little off today?
I threw a slider on the second pitch.
He couldn’t adjust to the fast slider either.
However, when I threw a circle changeup on the third pitch, he reacted quickly and made contact.
It looked like that was the only pitch he had been waiting for.
Still, it was just a routine fly ball to the outfield.
The fifth and sixth hitters were both foreigners.
Japanese professional baseball had no limit on the number of foreign players a team could keep on its roster.
The restrictions only applied to how many could appear in first-team games.
One relatively young white player and one Black player stepped up to face me.
They needed to develop their skills here and earn a spot on the first team.
If they failed to show enough ability, Japanese baseball was cold enough to release them without hesitation after a single season.
I threw a circle changeup as the first pitch, and the fifth batter hurriedly swung.
That was when I noticed it.
For some strange reason, these guys were sitting on my circle changeup.
The opposing bench must have decided that the circle changeup was the weakest pitch in my arsenal.
So they were probably telling the hitters to attack it when it ran inside toward right-handed batters.
I couldn’t deny that it was relatively weak.
But that wasn’t the only weapon I had.
Right after that, I mixed fastballs and sliders.
“Bravo!”
After I struck out both the fifth and sixth hitters in a row, a voice echoed through the quiet stands.
Startled, I looked in that direction.
A man wearing sunglasses had stopped recording my pitches on video and was clapping.
And the opposing dugout was looking at him with obvious envy.
“What’s with everyone?”
I said while tossing off my glove.
But none of our players seemed to know either.
Apparently, they were just jealous because some important-looking person was applauding me.
Either way, it wasn’t something I needed to worry much about.
The thing I really needed to worry about came afterward.
I was sitting on the bench, simply watching the other players, when Manager Rodriguez suddenly walked over and stopped in front of me.
For a moment, I was caught off guard.
This man had not interfered with anything during the game until now.
The other players noticed the mood and moved away on their own.
I asked him in simple English.
“Why?”
